Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  1. The first role was coloratura, the second lyric, and the third dramatic, and no one could possibly sing them all.

  2. Three divas on a playbill are three times as attractive as one diva. The public gets more for its money, so it believes.

  3. If he had one soprano sing all three parts he would have to pay her too much, which would set a bad precedent and damage morale among the other artistes.

  Lloiseaux addressed himself solely to the first of these three points, at least in the preliminary stages.

  “There is Herma,” he said.

  “Ah, the famous Minnie. Well, we can do the Fanciulla later in the season, if you want.”

  “She refuses to do the Fanciulla anymore, parbleu. She’s fed up with it.”

  (And this was shrewd on Lloiseaux’s part, because prima donnas are supposed to be temperamental—as much as managers profess to be annoyed with this—and if they aren’t temperamental it sometimes causes doubts as to whether they have any talent.)

  Meyner said, “Let her go sing in Milwaukee or somewhere then.”

  Lloiseaux made his next chess move. He only advanced a pawn, but into a shrewd square.

  “At least she could do a magnificent Olympia.”

  “That I’ll concede.”

  “Of course, to sing Olympia one need only be a walking music box,” Lloiseaux went on craftily. “Yet she could do the others too, ma foi. She has an impressive versatility.”

  “Three sopranos,” said Meyner. Lloiseau was crafty, but Meyner was no fool himself, and like everybody else he knew that Lloiseaux had lent Herma money to buy an apartment.

  Lloiseaux pretended to surrender ground.

  “Giulietta then? And Antonia?”

  “Maggie Teyte is available. She will just have finished Pelleas et Mélisande at Covent Garden.”

  “A Debussy specialist. Although a charming woman, I’ll admit.”

  “And we can try Moellendorf for Antonia.”

  “Ah, ma foi. Is she still around? I thought she had died in the previous century.”

  “She did a Tosca at the Met just last season. And the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro.”

  “Yes, the Countess is what she should always do. There’s no singing to the part.”

  “Pol, I tell you, three divas are three times as many as one diva. And Moellendorf, although I agree she is something of a relic, is indisputably a diva.”

  “Antonia is not a grandmother,” muttered Lloiseaux.

  Meyner was hardly listening. He seemed to be gazing at the poster on the Morris column.

  “with

  WLADISLAW CZERMAK

  FEODOR CHALIAPIN

  Mlle HERMA

  MAGGIE TEYTE

  and

  ALBERTINA MOELLENDORF

  of the Metropolitan Opera Company.”

  Lloiseaux said, “Well, why don’t we try everybody in town, and see who does it best, parbleu.” Meyner didn’t notice that he said “it” and not “them”—Lloiseaux still had the notion that one soprano was going to do it all.

  The upshot was that a kind of audition session took place, more or less as though they were recruiting Conservatory students for parts in the chorus. Meyner sat in the back of the theater with his secretary, who couldn’t typewrite but who could answer the telephone in his office and made an excellent Wienerschnitzel—as an Austrian he had a nostalgia for the cooking of his native land. He and Lloiseaux, on the stage, shouted back and forth. The Moellendorf was still in America and didn’t attend, even if she had been willing to lower herself to such a demeaning contest, but there was no shortage of sopranos. The wings were crammed with them. Some were in street clothes and some had contrived a makeshift costume or other. Maggie Teyte, in a fur coat and busby, sat in a third-row orchestra seat while waiting for her turn; she refused to mingle with all these second leads and fugitives from the Opéra Comique. There were a half dozen or so contenders for each of the three roles, and in general they all offered the same selections: the Olympias the Doll Song, the Giuliettas the Barcarolle, and the Antonias her “Elle a fuit, la tourterelle.”

  “En avant, tout le monde,” said Lloiseaux. “THESE ARE THE OLYMPIAS,” he shouted to Meyner at the rear of the theater.

  “All right, all right.”

  They came out one by one and twittered their “Les-ois-eaux-dans-la-char-mille,” accompanied by a bored pianist. Teyte didn’t compete in this. She sat in the orchestra in her fur hat, buffing her nails with an emery board. As each contender appeared the prompter called out the names from a list. Meyner dictated notes to his secretary. Herma, in her strawberry- colored frock and a bow in her short hair, tossed off the song with élan, almost as though she weren’t paying attention. She held the E flat at the end so long that the pianist looked up from his keyboard. Gracefully she curved down to the tonic and ended. Meyner shrugged and made a remark to the secretary. He had expected Herma to do Olympia anyhow.

  “Allons, allons, mesdemoiselles. THESE ARE THE GIULIETTAS.”

  “All right, all right.”

  Teyte got up, came to the stage with a hand negligently on her waist, and sang a very respectable Barcarolle indeed. It was so beautiful that Lloiseaux across the stage couldn’t help humming the Nicklausse part along with her. Without pausing in the song she gave him a meaningful look: Will you shut up? She went on with her “O belle nuit d’amour,” but this imprudence of Lloiseaux had thrown her off a little. She stalled slightly on a low note, but got through to the end.

  “She probably has a cold,” said Meyner. “Are you free afterward?” he asked the secretary.

  “Of course.”

  “Why don’t you go on ahead to the apartment. Make some coffee.” He glanced at his watch. “Give me the notes. I’ll come around after this boring business is over.”

  “Tina Ferrari!” announced the prompter.

  “Who? Ah, the one from La Scala. I didn’t know she was in town.” He turned to the secretary. “Better, have some champagne sent up.”

  Ferrari came out onto the stage, in a Titian-blond wig and a well- padded flowing gown. The low notes of her Barcarolle, powerful and vibrant, made the longer strings of the piano thrum slightly. The resonance of her voice gave the impression, almost, that she was singing the Nicklausse harmony part at the same time. Meyner glanced her curiously. “Not bad.” He made a note. “Dinner afterward at LaRue’s, if you like,” he suggested to the secretary.

  The rest of the Giuliettas were indifferent. They were all competent, but the song was so easy that you could hardly tell them apart.

  “THESE ARE THE ANTONIAS,” shouted Lloiseaux.

  Teyte’s “Elle a fuit, la tourterelle” was masterful. It was exactly her sort of music: a French art song, melodic but oblique, slightly odd, almost Debussyian. Meyner didn’t bother to take a note. Teyte would do Antonia. The last of the contenders was announced as Emma Schweitzer. Meyner had never heard of her. He glanced at his watch again. A quarter after four. Since his position called for him to work at night, he had over many years formed the habit of amour at five in the afternoon. The secretary had already left. He sat alone in the back of the theater, wishing that idiot Lloiseaux would get on with it.

  The Schweitzer, a Rhenish-looking Fräulein in a kind of white nightgown and a russet wig, did a surprisingly impressive Antonia. It was almost indistinguishable from Teyte’s, but not quite. It was as though she were ingeniously imitating Teyte, or had heard her on a phonograph record. Meyner gave her a four on his scale of one to five. It didn’t matter, Teyte would do Antonia.

  “THAT’S ALL,” shouted Lloiseaux from the stage.

  Meyner came forward with his notebook.

  “Very well, cher maître. You are the Artistic Director and I wouldn’t dream of interfering with your aesthetic judgements. I am only the Dirécteur en Chef, but I will tell you what I think. Herma for Olympia, Ferrari for Giulietta, and Teyte for Antonia.”

  “The decision is of course yours, mon cher ami.” They were
both very polite. They almost exchanged bows. The singers, who were still on stage, stood around in a little crowd listening to this vital exchange.

  “Unfortunately,” Lloiseaux went on, “the Ferrari was unable to attend, and so Mademoiselle Herma was kind enough to stand in for her.”

  Herma, with a bright smile, took off the Germanic nightgown and dropped it on the stage, revealing herself in her strawberry-colored frock. She threw away the russet wig and clapped on Giulietta’s wig of Titian blond. Never mind the padded gown. The voice was enough. The pianist, coached in advance, gave her the chord, and she did the song again. “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour,” she intoned in the lower register, again making the piano strings vibrate a little.

  “Pol, is this another of your tricks?”

  “Just a quod erat demonstrandum,” said Lloiseaux smoothly. “Would you like to hear her do the Tourterelle again?”

  “No, don’t bother. Very well, you sly scoundrel. Herma can do Olympia and Giulietta. Teyte will do Antonia. It will skew the playbill, to have one do two and the other one. I personally like symmetry. But …”

  Now Lloiseaux advanced his queen across a board already swept almost bare of opposition.

  “But Julian.”

  Meyner stared at him suspiciously. “Yes?”

  “You have forgotten about the Nicklausse part.”

  “Well, what about it?”

  “Maggie Teyte,” said Lloiseaux simply.

  “Teyte is doing Antonia.”

  “Yes. Well, Herma could do that too, as she has just demonstrated, ma foi.”

  “La Moellendorf could do it.”

  “Why not Patti? She’s still in her seventies and perfectly healthy.”

  “What are you up to, Pol?”

  Meyner glanced at his watch again. But Lloiseaux took his time.

  “I can give you two good reasons why Teyte should sing Nicklausse,” he said. “Her left leg and her right leg.”

  Meyner glanced at Teyte. Under the fur coat was a long Paquin gown that came down to her ankles.

  “You have beheld these famous limbs?” Lloiseaux inquired.

  “Who hasn’t?”

  Teyte colored, but Meyner meant only that she had played many breeches parts before and they had all seen her do Cherubino.

  “No, it won’t do, Pol. We are not hiring legs. She sings the best Antonia.”

  Lloiseaux stroked his imaginary beard. “Julian, an opera company exists to make money, ma foi, exactly like a soap factory. Why should I have to tell you this? It is what you have told to me many times,” he pointed out with his sly and Hoffmannesque smile. “Imagine—you could advertise Maggie Teyte in breeches in all three acts, and at the same time Herma singing three heroines—an unprecedented feat.”

  “It’s not unprecedented. Gatti-Casazza did it at the Scala.”

  “Yes, but it was a fiasco, because he tried to do it with his mistress and she made a wreck of all three parts, parbleu. “We’re going to do it right.”

  Everybody stood about listening to the discussion. This was the place for Teyte to have a tantrum to show that she had temperament too. It was clear enough what was happening. She bit her lip in the direction of Lloiseaux and seemed about to say something.

  “And Madame Teyte of course sings magnificently,” put in Lloiseaux quickly. “Nicklausse is an important part. She appears in all three acts and actually, ma foi, sings more lines than the three prima donnas put together. I recommend silver breeches. And very closely fitting. I can even recommend a tailor if you like.”

  “Our own costume people can do it.” Meyner was beginning to feel a little cornered by all this brilliant end game of Lloiseaux, even now after the match was won.

  As for Herma, she seethed at the thought of Teyte’s shapely calves. With difficulty she retained her bright little smile, playing a doll-like Olympia to Lloiseaux’s Coppélius.

  “Maggie, my dear,” said Meyner tactfully, “how does this strike you?”

  Teyte said nothing. She stalked back and sat down in her seat in the orchestra. But she didn’t say no.

  Meyner turned back to Herma, who had taken off her Giulietta wig and was her slim and adolescent self again. He told her sarcastically, “Why don’t you give Monsieur Lloiseaux a great big kiss for what he has just done for you?”

  This reminded him of something and he looked at his watch once more. A quarter after five.

  And indeed, why didn’t she! That is, give Lloiseaux a great big kiss or something. Sometimes this bothered her a little. There was no objection on grounds of—affection. He was sympathique enough. It was, as she always told herself, because it was she who liked to be the one who chose. And in this case it was he who—for some reason—had chosen her as the object of his favor.

  And this was where the bother came in. It wasn’t his casting her for all three roles of the Tales that caused her the twinges of conscience. It was the money he had lent her for the apartment. Because there really were no altruists, were there? There couldn’t be. If a person gives you money, it is because he expects something in return—if only the pleasure of an apéritif with you at the Café de la Paix. Which was harmless enough, Herma went on in her helical and constantly ascending coil of feminine logic. And then too, a person might give you money simply because the act of giving gave him pleasure. As you might take pleasure in giving money to a beggar-child. Herma always gave money to Gypsies when they came up to her on the street—smiling falsely and pathetically, the mother kicking the older daughter and hissing under her breath, “Show the baby! show the baby!” The Gypsies played out their personal opera and she played hers—one in which Lloiseaux was her funny uncle, who sang Amelia in falsetto and gave her coins.

  And besides—she told herself, still coiling in her serpentine way around the subject—Madame Modjeska said you should always take money when it’s offered you, because it is only for your Art, and Art is never highly paid enough. And then, Giulietta takes money from men too, doesn’t she?

  At the very moment, in fact, Dapertutto is preparing to offer her a diamond. Alone on the stage, he gazes at the gem. “Scintille, diamant! Miroir où se prend L’alouette,” he booms to himself in his powerful basso. The lark to be caught with it is Giulietta herself, although she will only use it to steal Hoffmann’s reflection. She watches from the wings, waiting for her cue. Chaliapin is a vain creature. Where a soprano can be vain about her high notes, a basso has the advantage that he can be vain about his low and his high notes. In this case the low note is the A two octaves down, at the beginning of the aria, and the high note is the E on “on y laisse la vie.” This is his principal aria of the opera and Chaliapin takes his time. He lingers over these two feats of the larynx, and does the whole thing over again from the coda. Then, after a pause, the two chords and the flourish from the orchestra, Herma’s cue.

  She slips lightly out from the wings and comes forward, as though fascinated by the diamond that Dapertutto holds out to her. “Cher ange,” he rumbles, slipping it onto her finger.

  And what does he require of his servant? she inquires with light irony.

  Only to steal, through the power of the magic gem, the reflection of Hoffmann.

  What! His reflection!

  Yes, it amuses him to possess the life and soul of others. He has already done it with Schlemil. “Je varie mes plaisirs.” And at that moment Herma understands why Lloiseaux gives her money. Through this jewel—her voice—he will exert his power over others—he will have his way with Meyner. For some reason this notion makes her feel even more affection for Lloiseaux, and even more dislike for Chaliapin.

  But now comes something more pleasant—her love duet with Hoffmann, or rather the seduction scene in which he is transported with love and she is all charm and deceit. Dapertutto slips away and Hoffmann dashes onstage, having lost everything at the gaming table. Instantly he falls under the spell of the magic gem. Although she urges him to flee, warning that his rival Schlemil may “strike you down
in my arms,” it is to no avail. She listens, smiling faintly under her domino, while he embarks passionately into his love aria.

  “O Dieu de quelle ivresse embrases-tu mon âme!

  Comme un concert divin ta voix m’a pénétre …”

  Oh, but that Vladi is beautiful! Not for nothing has he sung romantic tenor parts for thirty years. One hand on his breast and the other held out to her, he pours out his heart in a voice flowing with gold and emotion. With an easy legato he soars over the stretches, some of them four or five notes—rising effortlessly to a high E, an octave above Chaliapin’s. “Oh! with what rapture you fire my soul!” He has dominated and hypnotized the audience, Herma notices without a trace of jealousy. The coughing and program-rattling stop and every face in the theater is fixed on him. He has even hypnotized her; not as Herma, and not even as Giulietta the character, but as Giulietta the singer. For, on the stage, one voice can only enchant another voice, not a person. The character belongs to the librettist, the singer belongs to the composer. (All this Herma thinks behind her mask, in a kind of a trance yet keenly aware of what is going on, while Vladi sings his aria.) Thus the performer, singing and acting, is the creature of both at once and is divided in two. Insofar as she is Giulietta she is the creation of the librettist; insofar as she is a soprano singing, she is the creation of Offenbach. And it is this second creature that is enchanted by the voice of Vladi. “Your glances into mine have poured their flames!” he concludes in his rapture.

  Herma waits for the applause to end after the aria. Well, she counters with a sly smile, but Hoffman has lost all his money at the table, and she is—in business. She has a proposal. She enlaces him in her arms and picks up a mirror from the table.

  “What I ask from you is your faithful likeness … your features, your look, your face … this reflection.”

  “What! My reflection! What madness!”

  Ves, she tells him, it can detach itself from the polished glass, to hide itself intact here, in her heart.