About eight years ago, with his brothers Victor and Lawrence visiting him in New York for two weeks, Neville assumed in his hotel room that he had two tickets to the sold-out new presentation of Aida, went to the old Metropolitan Opera House, moved to a faster-moving line, caught a tall blond con man short-changing the ticket seller, called him back, and was rewarded with two VIP seats in the center of the horseshoe circle for twenty dollars, which his brothers used that evening.