You’d have a hard time finding a more cultured New Yorker than Ven. He’s a regular at the Met, Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall. He’s game for Baroque opera in the Gershwin Hotel’s lobby and has sat through five-hour Handel operas — a feat most can’t manage.
All this, and Ven’s only 3 years old.
Also, he’s a German shepherd.
Ven is the guide dog of David De Porte, a 65-year-old Greenwich Village resident.
Born with poor sight, De Porte always was an arts lover. After graduating from Cornell, he reviewed theater for The Village Voice and later freelanced. He completely lost his sight in his early 40s but didn’t let that get in the way of his passion for cultural events: He just went out with his guide dog.
Ven is De Porte’s third guide dog, and he seems to be more interested in the arts than his predecessors.
“My first, Siri, sometimes grumbled a bit between songs,” De Porte says. “I think the second, Xia, preferred theater. I do feel Ven has a special fondness for music.”
The pair had just finished training together when Hurricane Sandy hit.
“I have music on from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed,” De Porte says. “But during Sandy I was listening to the news on NPR, so I didn’t have music, and Ven seemed very despondent.”
For De Porte, this confirmed that his dog was a fellow enthusiast.
“I think he loves it,” De Porte says, adding that he and Ven have seen some 40 shows together, and attend a production about every 10 days. “Ven’s quiet. If he’s facing the stage and I can feel his head is up, I figure he’s interested. ”
In the duo’s experience, the venues are accommodating of service animals. “We don’t want to interfere with anyone’s independence, but we also try to be helpful,” says Susan Hayes, the Met’s director of customer care.
Fellow concertgoers often start conversations when they see Ven, and ask who his favorite composer is.
“I think it’s Rossini,” De Porte suggests. “He’s heard a lot of it and he seems to like it. Even the more serious Rossini is pretty spry.”
But Ven is not afraid of difficult material, either. He’s sat through four-hour-long Baroque epics and recently attended a performance of Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein’s avant-garde opera “The Mother of Us All” at the Manhattan School of Music.
“The friend I was with told me that Ven was watching very intently,” De Porte recalls. “I think this one intrigued him.”
Ven doesn’t stop at the classical realm; his cultural diet also includes plays and musicals. This summer, he and De Porte attended a production of “The Tempest” at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park.
“We were in the front row and all these people were running by us playing musical instruments and singing,” De Porte says. “Ven thought that was great fun.”
De Porte and his dog travel by subway, bus and Access-A-Ride van. They also venture outside the city: Ven enjoyed the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts outdoor concerts in Katonah, NY — even if he was a little baffled at first.
“He hears music, he sees grass and trees and he’s like, ‘Am I allowed to pee here?’ ” De Porte says. “He won’t because he sees all the people.”
No matter where he is, Ven remains well-behaved, which is more than can be said of many audience members.
“He knows he’s supposed to be quiet, and sometimes he just goes to sleep,” De Porte says. “You hear snores at the Philharmonic sometimes, but they’re not from Ven!”