I forget how I heard about it, but somehow, I found out about an opera concert in Nairobi.
This might sound unusual – and it is – but one of the things you learn pretty quickly about Nairobi, is that you can find anything there – anything – if you look hard enough.
At one time, Saudia Airlines sponsored a program with the Metropolitan Opera that they called The Ambassadors of Opera. The airline would fly a group of world-class opera performers to perform in Saudi Arabia, and one other city in the world without access to opera. The troupe would be made up of veteran sopranos and tenors, plus one or two up-and-coming singers who would be able to polish their resumés by performing with the Met.
I managed to get hold of a pair of tickets, and asked a very nice lady if she’d like to go to the opera with me. She seemed receptive, and agreed to meet me at the hotel, where the performance was being staged in a ballroom. In the evening, we met in the lobby, then went to the ballroom, got a couple glasses of wine, and found our seats.
The program was in three parts. The first half hour or so were classic arias and numbers from classic operas. The second act was listed in our programs as a tribute to Cole Porter. I had heard of Cole Porter, but I was young and callow, and really didn’t know anything about his music. The third and final set of performances was entirely up to individual singers to perform whatever they wanted to.
I’m afraid the particulars of the Grand Opera were a little lost on me, but even someone as shallow and dumb as me could tell that they were very, very good.
(“Gee, what are the odds?” I asked myself. “Performers from the Metropolitan Opera Company, good, you say? How strange.”)
I will say however, that for the final encore at the end of the evening, three world-class sopranos performed a number a cappella. Many of the people around us chuckled at this, and I found out later that this was a number that the Three Tenors – Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and José Carreras – were famous for. I was utterly transfixed by the cascading wall of sound that filled the ballroom. I will remember it until the day I die.
The second most memorable performance of the evening was when one of the up-and-coming sopranos – a beautiful German girl – performed her song of choice, a traditional German folk song. We happened to be sitting near the German Ambassador and his wife, and they were a soppy, weeping mess.
But for me, the highlight of the night – and a musical number that changed my life – was during the Cole Porter tribute. A very beautiful soprano let her Brooklyn accent bleed through, as she sang, My Heart Belongs to Daddy.
I had never heard the song before, but as she worked her way through the first chorus:
If I’m tearing off,
A game of golf,
I might make a play for the caddy.
But if I do,
I don’t follow through,
Because my Heart belongs to Daddy.
And she made it extremely clear what the lyrics meant. She plainly wasn’t singing about her actual father.
It might have been the most wonderful song I’d ever heard. Every phrase was perfect. Those six lines featured two world-class puns and a really cynical, sexy innuendo. Clearly, this was a song from the 1930s, but it was as catchy, delicious and dirty as anything I had ever heard. I had never suspected that anyone in the ‘30s could be so clever and off-color. Since that night – since that moment – I’ve been a 1930s cocktail culture junky. Cole Porter, William Powell and Myrna Loy, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Cary Grant – they have all lived rent-free in the back of my brain.
And when I drink a classy cocktail, one – which is like opera – is far above my grubby station in life, sometimes I think back to a hot, stuffy ballroom in Kenya.
Then I go and look for more ice.
Malfy Rosa Grapefruit Gin
750 ml
82 proof
$28.99
This is a heavily botanical gin; in this case the main botanical is Sicilian grapefruit. It packs a punch, but is fruity – though not sweet – and a beautiful pink color. The flavor is too good to cover up, so a straightforward, classic cocktail is probably in order.
Malfy Sour
2 oz. Malfy Rosa Grapefruit Gin
1 oz. Fresh squeezed lemon juice
¾ oz. Crème de Banana
Combine all three ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly.
Strain into a Nick and Nora glass.
Sip while listening to a Cole Porter song. My Heart Belongs to Daddy, is an obvious choice, of course, but you could not possibly go wrong with Helen Merrill’s cover of You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.
Sours, daiquiris, and margaritas are all very similar cocktails, they all start with a base spirit, some sort of citrus juice, and a syrup or a sweet liqueur to take the edge of. When they are done right, they let good liquor shine through, and give you a little gift in the aftertaste.
In this case, the spirit is the grapefruit gin, the acid is lemon juice, and the gift comes courtesy of the crème de banana. Bananas and grapefruit work beautifully together, and lemon is everybody’s friend. This cocktail is crisp and not too sweet, with a beautifully subtle banana aftertaste.
It will make even someone like me feel a little sophisticated.