Space is so tight for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing Verdi’s Requiem this week that your loyal critic-turned-mogul needed to buy a ticket. Ain’t got no comps, no how. I’ll be in the last row of the gallery (Row J), which happens to be where the hardest of the hard-core sit. (That doesn’t sound like the compliment I intend, somehow.) Orchestra Hall is so steep that I remember feeling as if I was going to tumble out and fall straight down to the stage. A Requiem would be fitting for such a fate.
I first bought tickets in Orchestra Hall for an Adolph Herseth Appreciation concert in 1998, and those, too, were in the last row of the hall, with the distinction that time that the seats were also the last seat on the right. I feel like I’m at Homecoming. High fives all around.
