A quick introduction to Don Stoddard of Cotati, California. I “met” Don last year when I answered his advertisement on eBay for a Placido Domingo tee shirt from a concert at the San Francisco Opera in 2000. After negotiations, I bought the shirt and was/am thrilled to now have that shirt in my collection! I sent him a thank you note and he responded with a great card that he had made with photographs from a few of his roles as a supernumerary at the San Francisco Opera! I had never, ever, heard the term supernumerary before! So we exchanged some correspondence and I asked him if he would become a part of Personage! He said yes!
Don was born in Portugal, his father being in the United States military, but grew up in Maryland, right outside of Washington DC where he graduated from Bladensburg High School in 1970. He became a hippie during high school and had enrolled in arts classes and liked them. After graduation, he took art classes and liked them as well, but then decided to hitch hike around the United States for eighteen months, leaving home with $100 in his pocket. Arriving in cities, towns and villages across the country, he stopped and took odd jobs to obtain money to keep travelling. Finally in 1978 he arrived in California!
In California, Don met a girl that he wanted to date so he asked her what she would like to do on their first date. She wanted to go to the San Francisco Ballet to see a performance by Rudolf Nureyev. He was astounded at how much he liked everything about that experience. He began going to the ballet, getting standing room tickets for $10! He started going to the San Francisco Symphony too. One day, in the late 1980’s, a friend handed him a newspaper advertisement with an ad for extras to be on stage at the San Francisco Opera. He answered the ad, got the job and played Napoleon’s cook in the opera War and Peace. The photographs that accompanied the front page reviews for the opera in the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner included Don Stoddard! The opera asked if he would like to appear in another one and hence came Tristan and Isolde, Tannhauser and forty more performances over thirty years as a supernumerary. He has played priests, soldiers, assassins, and been killed numerous times. He says that when he stands on the stage, he looks around and says, “wow” every time!
Back to the Placido Domingo concert. Don appeared with Domingo, on stage in a tuxedo, as one of the guests in a party scene. They gave him a commemorative tee shirt and that is the shirt I know happily own!!
Don also appears on stage with the San Francisco Ballet! He appears in Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker as Lord Coffee and now has 500 Nutcracker performances behind him as one of the non-dancers with other supernumeraries on stage!
Don has also written extensively about his experiences with live entertainment in local entertainment papers and other periodicals! He loves to write and five years ago won a writing contest! He wrote about the subject he was given – a figurine of a leaping cougar! This piece is amazing and I’m going to ask him if I can publish it on my other Blog, cognacforus.com. He has also hosted his own radio show talking about his experiences as a music enthusiast.
Lord Coffee did think of leaving California a few times, but many years ago he went to Cotati in Sonoma County with a friend and stayed. It is a charming small community north of San Francisco. He rented a house, became a painting contractor and now owns the same house he once rented – able to buy the house from the sale of his long time investment in Apple stock!
While he loves classical music and the ballet, Don has been a lifelong lover of almost all music! He has never missed (except for a covid-19 break) the New Orleans Jazz Festival. He takes the train from California, using different routes to see the country, meets people and ends up in New Orleans for this very famous festival. Don says that he was an avid concert goer early in life and attended lots of concerts! He has many tee shirts and tickets from those concerts and sells them on eBay.
I asked what he would tell his 21 year old self and he said, “save your money, invest wisely, learn to dance!” (He says that a male knowing how to dance is a woman magnet!) Also to learn to listen to music, learn to move to music and make New Year’s resolutions and keep them. He must have listened to his younger self, because Don has taken and lived all of his good advice.
During the pandemic Don was happy to see people’s eyes – he says you can fake a smile but not a look. Don also attended many driveway concerts in Cotati and wore his hazmat suit so he could dance! He also spent time listening to the San Francisco classical music station KDFC, taking on painting contracts and enjoying some quality time with Miss Underfoot, his cat.
Talking with Don was such a pleasure – we talked for almost two hours! Sometimes, people just connect. When the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Ballet open again, post-covid, Don will be on the stage again, happy to be a part of such spectacular venues. In the next run of The Nutcracker, Don will play the policeman in the opening street scene for two minutes and thirty seconds. If I ever get to San Francisco again, I will be in the audience! ….and he, like me, is dyslexic!
How very cool!