When I became a chorus member with the opera in Charlotte in 1983, the Soviet Union was still intact, gas cost just over a dollar a gallon, and I’d never gone onstage without my pants.

None of that stayed true for long.

Few people today recall the costume calamity, but it’s my main memory of that long-ago performance of Romeo and Juliet. I’d changed into a Renaissance doublet and hose and rushed to the wings for the ensemble sword fight. I bolted onstage just as a fellow chorus member whispered, “LT, where are your pants?”

Lawrence Toppman photograph by Jerry Wolford & Scott Muthersbaugh

I panicked. Forgetting the fight choreography I’d learned, I screamingly hurled myself at my opponent like a deranged third grader on a playground. He charged me, as he was supposed to, and our metal swords clanged with a ring that shook the fillings in my teeth. Luckily, nobody bled. The only casualty was my pride.

Nowadays, after 40 consecutive seasons, I’m slower and smarter. Men’s voices descend gradually, so I’ve gone from high baritone to baritone to bass; eventually, I’ll sound like the guy who sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” I make myself an asset by learning the whole libretto of an opera, including soloists’ parts, and by responding emotionally to the action around me. (You’d be surprised how many chorus members fixate on the conductor like deer in the headlights of an 18-wheeler.)

Opera Carolina often imports soloists who’ve worked in big venues, such as the Metropolitan Opera House, but the chorus members are local. We get paid enough to cover our meals and gas for about 20 rehearsals and three or four performances. In my case, that’s $500 for the run.

I’ve put together the longest streak in OC history by escaping illness and injury, singing when I’ve felt rocky (though not contagious), and being lucky that outside obligations haven’t intervened. There’s no thrill like sailing your voice out over an orchestra, especially in a small solo part. I’ve had half a dozen of those, and it’s like surfing a killer wave and knowing you won’t topple off the board.

• • •

When I joined, auditions were a breeze. Mine went something like this:

Chorus master: “What arias do you know?”
Me: “One from The Marriage of Figaro, one from The Magic Flute.”
Chorus master: “Do you know any that aren’t by Mozart?”
Me: “Ummmm … not really. (Remembering Handel’s The Messiah, the only other classical music that I knew by heart.) How about ‘The Trumpet Shall Sound’?”
Chorus master (Sighing.): “The Mozart will be enough.”

We sang in English in my early years, not the original languages used now. We performed as Charlotte Opera at Ovens Auditorium, which was acoustically superior to the average furniture warehouse but inferior to most concert halls. Big-name singers were tired veterans on their way down, people whose portrayals had calcified long ago and would not be fine-tuned for Charlotte. But every minute was thrilling for me — so thrilling that I didn’t always think about details like trousers.

Blumenthal Performing Arts Center in Uptown Charlotte photograph by Jerry Wolford & Scott Muthersbaugh

Today, as Opera Carolina, we perform in Belk Theater, which is awkwardly designed — there’s almost no wing space on stage right, facing the audience — but easier on the ears. Principals are younger and likelier to be en route to greatness, not receding from it. Some have come out of the chorus, such as soprano Melinda Whittington, who sang the title role in La Traviata last year and has been hired by the Met.

Opera Carolina takes chances with smaller-scale productions, including one about soldiers with PTSD and another about Madison native Mary Cardwell Dawson, who founded the National Negro Opera Company. But it performs familiar works in the mainstage season, when I sing, so I’m typically relearning lines rather than encountering new ones. That’s a good thing: Like Luciano Pavarotti, I don’t sight-read music, and thus I learn every role by ear — 43 so far. I’ve sung about love, death, war, murder, and treachery — the Big Five opera plots — in seven languages.

• • •

Four decades along, I now know four operatic truths. First, animals are bad news. I’ve walked behind a horse that left a pungent obstacle in my path during the parade in Carmen and a terror-struck zebra that squealed through Act II of Aida, nearly stumbling into the orchestra pit. (Only one human performer has actually fallen into the pit — a tenor who squashed a cellist and her instrument during a dress rehearsal.)

Second, singers too seldom seem to care about acting. There are exceptions, of course: I heard a fatal wheeze in Whittington’s voice during the last act of Traviata, as her character died of tuberculosis. Mostly, though, lovers swoon generically, and villains sneer without exploring why they’re so malevolent. I’ve sung Carmen five times, and all but one of the women playing her has settled for Scorn and Sex with capital letters. It’s like being in Mean Girls in 19th-century Spain.

The author has spent many hours at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center in Uptown Charlotte, both as observer and participant in operas like Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. photograph by Perry Tannenbaum

Third, diversity onstage isn’t reflected in the audience. Opera Carolina has blazed trails locally: We did another Romeo and Juliet (the fully clothed version) with singers who were white, African American, Asian American, Latino, and Middle Eastern. Yet the crowd remains mostly a sea of white faces. Opera Carolina has sought a wider fan base by staging a work in Spanish (La Vida Breve) and pieces about the Black experience, such as Porgy and Bess and the Martin Luther King Jr. opera, I Dream. But like regional companies everywhere, we have a long way to go.

Fourth, we fight the continued perception that opera is inaccessibly highbrow. I tell skeptical friends that people attend in jeans, and that English supertitles translate the lyrics. I tell them that plots often come from Shakespeare or the Bible and are easy to follow, because they deal with the same emotions as those seen in Netflix series. Those friends sometimes give in when they learn that tickets will be free; I get two comps for singing and hand them out to newbies.

And I will keep trying to persuade people. After all, opera has been around since 1597 because, when it’s done right, it combines music and drama and dance and stagecraft in a way that no other art form can touch. And I’ll continue adding my own tiny contribution — pants on, of course — until a hook comes out of the wings someday and yanks me off by the neck.