Charles Hansel has it figured out:

        “They turned my life around — River City and the Cincinnati Opera.”

        River City (Correctional, or RCC) is jail, a 200-bed facility for non-violent felons, most of them with substance abuse problems. Mr. Hansel did seven months for possession (cocaine) with intent to sell.

Charles Hansel gets fitted with his costume for Nabucco. ([name of photographer] photo) | ZOOM |

        Cincinnati Opera, at least for Mr. Hansel, is Aida. He was one of 21 prisoners from RCC who worked as supernumeraries, or non-singing extras, in last summer's production. It got him hooked on opera.

        Chatting backstage last year after Aida, Mr. Hansel said, “Opening night, I was onstage and looked out and — wow! — 3,500 people sitting there. I'll be back next year. As a regular citizen.”

        And so he is. Released Sept. 12, and clean for more than a year, he's back in the opera, this time working as a super in Nabucco.

        “It's funny. Last year I arrived by van, with a guard,” Mr. Hansel says. “This year, I still arrive by van, but I own it.”

        Nic Muni, the opera's artistic director, is directing Nabucco. Dressed in his customary black, sitting in row 23 and armed with a live mike, he's relentlessly giving, uh, suggestions as the cast rehearses:

        Over there, stage left, loosen up. It looks too much like you're having an opera moment . . . Let's take the exit again and watch the stairs ... Ooooh, that looks right. Yesssss . . . More intensity, guys. Much more . . . No, don't turn around. You don't know yet that someone's behind you.

        “I'm all hyped up about this,” Mr. Hansel says. “I'm one of the soldiers, and I take what he says seriously. At one rehearsal he said, "don't act the part of a soldier, be a soldier.'

        “I never thought life could be like this. Two years ago, I was so coked out I didn't know my own name. Now I'm sitting here talking about opera. RCC did a lot for me, but Aida did more. It taught me you don't have to sell drugs to be part of something big.”

        Right now, Mr. Hansel is a part of several big things. Besides squeezing in 14 rehearsals in three weeks, the 30-year-old west-sider is working as a carpenter, sometimes up to 50 hours a week, getting reacquainted with his daughter, 10-year-old Catherine Hansel, and planning a wedding with fiancee Kimberly Long.

        “She's in Nabucco, too. She came down to watch me at rehearsal, and as soon as they started singing, she was hooked. She's never seen an opera (Mr. Hansel had never seen one before Aida), but now I think she feels like I do. This is something I intend to do as long as they offer me parts.”

        This is how much of an opera family the two have become: “A couple nights ago, we sat on the couch and read Nabucco (the libretto). We could have spent $1,000 and not had as good a time.”

        And this is how serious he is about it: “I looked into getting in full time. It's my next goal, maybe as a stage hand or building sets. I know it will be difficult because I'm a convicted felon, but I also know if they saw my (carpentry) work, I'd be a shoe-in. The idea of 3,500 people looking at something I helped build, my set, that's better than any high in the world.”

        Getting high. Mr. Hansel is brutally candid about it: “I thought and thought about doing it again, but then I think about what I went through. I think about when my daughter said, "Dad, if you do it again, that's it.' Life's too short and too good for that. The things I have now, I'd never trade. Especially for a toot.

        “When I was in RCC, my daughter wouldn't even talk to me. Now, I get her every other weekend and talk to her ever day. There's nothing more precious than to have her call me and say, "Hi, dad.'

        “I didn't have that when I was getting high. I almost lost my daughter, my parents, everything. Now, my parents are behind me, my daughter's over it and I know what I missed. There's nothing that would make me go back.

        “I like walking down the street without looking over my shoulder.”

        No, you're too evenly distributed. Get clumpy, not like you've all been through a trash compactor . . . Get threatening, like you're ready to kill them . . . Lift your bodies, arch your backs. You're sleeping, but with some weird kind of tension.

        Driving through Over-the-Rhine to Music Hall rehearsals these past three weeks has brought back memories: “I did a lot of drug buying in that neighborhood,” Mr. Hansel says. “Now, I drive up and see the same people buying and selling. Sometimes, they try to flag me down to sell me something. I don't even stop. These guys aren't going to help me with my life.”

        But opera, well, he's convinced that will. “It's so amazing watching a show come together. When it first started, it was so disorganized I couldn't believe it. Then all of a sudden it came together, boom, and it looks like a show.

        “One thing I really like about rehearsals is hanging around older people. I listen to what they say and I remember it. They tell you stories about what life is like and you learn stuff. Life lessons.”

        Some of those lessons, he hopes, will help out in married life: “I've never been married, but I soon will be. We're going to do it in a park because I'm Catholic and Kimberly's Baptist. We haven't set a date, but I'd like it to be Sept. 12, the anniversary of my new life. That still may happen, but if it doesn't, we'll do it soon. I'm ready.

        “Cocaine and I had our lives together. Now I'm ready to begin my life together with Kimberly.”

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