Opera porch: the singer puts on concerts right on the street in Brooklyn

Ignoring the hum of garbage trucks and car horns, 56-year-old Peter Clark puts on one of New York's most unique live performances - on his front porch. The opera singer and musical theater performer gave his first concert in the garden of his home on May 1, 2020, on the evening of his debut at the Tri Cities Opera in a production of Little Night Music, postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. How these concerts on the porch of a house in Brooklyn became known throughout New York, told the publication New York Post.

“I didn't want to feel sorry for myself,” Clarke said. "I just put the speaker on and started singing a song from Carmen."

Since then, Clarke, who teaches music at St Anne's School, has played 154 concerts on the porch. Before the pandemic, he enjoyed stage roles, including Henry Higginsa and Sweeney Todd. Various audiences come to the concerts, mostly elderly people who enjoy the sonorous performance of arias and Broadway standards.

On the subject: 20 interesting and useful phrases in English

At first, Clark gave 100 concerts in a row, and then took a break in early August. In the fall, he started singing outside again on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings until asked to stop by neighbors.

“The people in my building are tired of this,” Clark said, suggesting that the building's residents felt uncomfortable trying to go outside or in the middle of a show. "So we just went up a block to Rita (129 Hicks St., Brooklyn)."

Rita Schwartz, 83, a longtime Hicks Street resident and musician with a classical education, was happy to host the show on the steps of her house.

“Anyway, the acoustics are better in my house,” Schwartz said. "We are all connected because he brought us all together."

“I stopped making music many years ago,” said Sara Orlando, 49, a resident who moved from Bellevue, Washington to Brooklyn Heights about 15 years ago with dreams of being on Broadway.

One evening last December. It was Wednesday (since Clark only performs one night a week in winter) she passed by during the concert and has been attending them regularly since then.

On the subject: What laws will go into effect in New York in 2021

After the show, Orlando started a conversation with the artist and offered to sing a duet.

“We started talking about Sondheim,” Orlando said. That evening, the duo began rehearsing the song “Barcelona” from the musical “Company”, and a few weeks later they performed it on the porch.

Since then, Orlando, the red-haired church choir conductor, has performed in four shows with Coark.

"I am more confident in my voice now than I have been for many years," admitted Orlando.

Even Clark's downstairs neighbor, Patricia Roberts, who called working from home with an active opera singer "an interesting experience," goes to weekly sets that she says bring her "joy."

“Some people have a dog barking in the background of their Zoom calls,” she said. "And I have the Metropolitan Opera."