A Night at the Opera, Lost in the Memory of Another

I was ready to end 2013 by looking in on a fancy New Year’s Eve party that was supposed to be unfolding in fin de siècle Vienna. The invitation was right there on a curtain that went up at the opening performance of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Die Fledermaus.” But when the conductor walked into the pit and bowed, I was transported not to Vienna in 1899, but to Michigan in 1985.

I had read up on the new production of “Die Fledermaus” and the director Jeremy Sams. I knew that he had assembled a production called “The Enchanted Island” at the Met a couple of years ago. I knew that he had presided over theatrical productions like “Noises Off” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

Somehow I did not notice, until I opened the program book, that the conductor would be Adam Fischer. As he and the Met orchestra sailed into the overture, the only thing I could think about was how I made him late for a concert in Michigan all those years ago.

As in “Die Fledermaus,” this little story will detour by a prison.

I was a correspondent in The New York Times’s Detroit bureau then, and I was on assignment for the Arts and Leisure section. The classical-music editor wanted a feature about a Hungarian conductor who was on tour with the Hungarian State Symphony. The editor had noticed that a concert in Jackson, Mich., was on the itinerary. Jackson was a bit more than an hour’s drive from Detroit. Go there and interview the conductor, the editor told me. File an article that would be published a couple of weeks later, in time for the orchestra’s appearance at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Off I went to interview the conductor â€" Adam Fischer.

The interview took place over dinner before the concert. I have a clear memory of the way the restaurant looked. It was in a chain hotel near Interstate 94 where the orchestra must have spent the previous night. The color scheme was mostly mauve and taupe. As I said, it was the ’80s.

The way I remember it, the conversation proceeded slowly. The restaurant began emptying out as the orchestra players left to get on the bus that was to take them to the concert.

Curtain time was 8 p.m., as I recall. I looked at my watch. It was only 6:30. I said I would drive Mr. Fischer to the concert. I figured that would buy more time to talk. I remember saying that surely the desk clerk at the hotel could give us directions.

We talked on, and by 7:45 or so, I had enough material. We said we had plenty of time. We said the auditorium could not be that far away.

A blinding rainstorm was shimmying across the horizon, with gusts of wind that fought the car as I edged out of the parking lot. Worse, the hotel desk clerk’s instructions made no sense. We were lost. Not to repeat myself or anything, but this was the ’80s, before GPS devices, before turn-by-turn navigation, before even cellphones. I had not thought to bring along a map.

Over there â€" the biggest landmark on the horizon. In a smallish town like Jackson, that had to be it.

And so we pulled up to Jackson State Prison, which once had some 6,000 inmates. This is funny because Act 3 of “Fledermaus” is set in a penitentiary. Herr Frank, the onstage warden, dreams of a career as a theatrical producer, the impresario of something called Penitentiary Productions. It was not funny at the time. I was verging on panic. Mr. Fischer was more relaxed than I was. He was the one who talked about the time he had gone onstage, only to realize he had no idea which piece he was supposed to conduct.

We saw another large building in the distance, and drove there. It turned out to be the auditorium where the orchestra, and the audience, were waiting. Also waiting â€" in the driveway, and fuming â€" was the presenter, the local person who had booked the orchestra for the performance. It was 8:12. I apologized. The presenter angrily rushed Mr. Fischer off to his dressing room. I parked the car and went in.

For all that, I don’t remember the concert. I went back to Detroit and filed the article. The orchestra made its way to New York. Its Carnegie Hall concert got a good review. Later Mr. Fischer sent me a couple of letters about his signature project, establishing the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra with musicians from the Vienna Philharmonic and Hungarian orchestras. In its way, the orchestra prefigured the fall of the Iron Curtain: Its purpose, according to its website, was “to musically overcome the border” between Austria and Hungary by playing Haydn’s music. It went on to record all of Haydn’s symphonies.

And Mr. Fischer went on to conduct at the Met â€" a hall he found, on time, with no help from me.