My friends and I meet Thomas Hampson

As a young baritone classical singer, I had idolized the American baritone Thomas Hampson as a role model of what a great baritone sounded like. I was, and still am, especially in awe of his interpretation of German Lieder and American art song.

In college, when I heard that he was going to be performing in San Francisco where I lived, I was very excited to see him perform live. So a group of friends and I got tickets. After the performance he was signing autographs in the lobby, so we got ourselves in line.

When we were next in line, standing a distance away, Hampson looked up and called out to us, “are you all singers?”. We looked at each other surprised. Had he heard the resonance in our speaking voices? Perhaps our charisma gave off the air of stage performers? We replied, “We are! How did you know?”.

In an instant Hampson replied, in his resonant baritone “you all look slightly homeless”.

Oh…

I still got the autograph though!