by Barbara Paul
“Ah, but the young soprano—she does not kill herself, remember. An accident, cara Gerry.”
And such a bizarre one, Gerry thought. Right before the final scene of last Friday’s performance of Samson and Delilah, an ornamental urn had toppled from its pedestal on to the head of the chorister unlucky enough to be standing beneath it. Fortunately the curtain had not yet opened and the audience was spared the sight of a member of the Metropolitan Opera chorus dying on stage. “It wasn’t even a real urn,” Gerry said. “It was only a stage prop.”
“But heavy enough to crush the skull,” Scotti remarked. “The opera stage—it can be dangerous place, no?”
“So can the street,” Gerry gasped as the limousine unexpectedly swerved to avoid hitting a crowd of people. “What is it, Albert?”
“Don’t know, Miss Farrar,” the chauffeur said. “Buncha men carrying signs. Couldn’t see what they said.”
“Veterans, probably. Could you read the signs, Toto?”
Scotti shook his head. “Anarchists,” he muttered darkly. “They are everywhere.”
Gerry peered through the tiny back window of the limousine. “No, I think they’re veterans. Several of them are on crutches. What a sad sight.”
The war had ended two years earlier, but the peace that followed had proved an uneasy one. Nothing could go back to what it had been, but the discontent that muttered and throbbed and threatened constantly to erupt into violence was in its own way as frightening as the war itself had been. The Allies’ long-awaited triumph over the Central Powers had not restored harmony to the world, as everyone had been so sure it would do.
That lack of political harmony was nowhere more evident than at the Metropolitan Opera, where the international make-up of the company was a source of constant friction. During the war, singers, conductors, managers, members of the orchestra, valets, maids, and backstage workers had all divided into antagonistic camps, each individual loyal to his or her home country. Gatti-Casazza had responded to the American audiences’ patriotic fervor and let all the German soloists go, vowing that the Metropolitan would be at least half American. Wagner was dropped from the repertoire.
The wound left by the war was deep and only now beginning to heal over. In the fall of 1920, Gatti-Casazza had nervously restored Wagner to the repertoire—but Wagner sung in English; the German language was still anathema to most of America. The first postwar performance of Tristan and Isolde had gone off without incident, however, and the opera company began to breathe a little more easily. But now a few weeks later, in December, resentments and bad feeling still lingered; it would be a while yet before any ‘family’ atmosphere returned to the Metropolitan Opera.
The limousine carrying two of the Met’s most lustrous stars turned on to Park Avenue just south of Grand Central Station and came to a stop in front of the Vanderbilt Hotel. Enrico Caruso and his wife had moved into the penthouse apartment only a few months earlier and had been ‘warming the house’, as the tenor put it, ever since. Gerry Farrar had missed one of the Carusos’ lavish dinner parties the evening before because of a prior engagement, so both Enrico and Dorothy Caruso had insisted she come to lunch to make up for it.
“You eat the left-behinds, yes?” the tenor had said, his face a study of guilelessness.
It was a joke; Caruso would slit his wrists before he’d allow leftovers to be served at his table. So Gerry had come to the Vanderbilt for her compensatory luncheon; Scotti, who had been at the dinner party, came along because he always came along.
“Cara Gerry! Toto!” Caruso greeted first the soprano and then the baritone with a warm embrace. Dorothy Caruso smiled and extended her hands in a less Italianate welcome.
“Rico!” Scotti exclaimed in mild alarm. “Something you eat—it does not agree with you?”
The tenor spread both hands and placed them on his expansive waist. “Everything I eat agrees with me! Why you ask?”
“You do not look well.”
Caruso waved one arm dismissively. “È niente.”
“His color is not good,” Gerry said to Dorothy, low. “Has he seen a doctor lately?”
“Several,” Dorothy answered with a delicate grimace. “But I do not trust them. Besides, Rico thinks it’s a sign of weakness to give in to illness.”
Italian men, Gerry thought glumly.
Lunch was light—broiled chicken; Dorothy had finally convinced her dangerously overweight husband that it wasn’t necessary to eat pasta at every meal. Halfway through the luncheon Caruso sighed and said, apropos of nothing, “I miss you, Gerry.”
The other three at the table knew what he meant. No one had seen the names of Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar on the same printed program since opening night of the preceding season. The two stars sold out the house every time either one of them sang, so Gatti-Casazza had figured he was losing money by scheduling them in the same production. It had been over a year now since they’d sung together. “Maybe Gatti will change his mind,” Gerry said to Caruso, not really believing it.
Talk inevitably turned to the man who’d hanged himself in the chorus dressing room. There was some speculation as to why he’d done it, but no one knew the man well enough to suggest a reason with any certainty. Then someone mentioned the young chorus woman who’d died on Friday.
“I see it!” Caruso exclaimed, bug-eyed. “I stand in the wings and look straight out to the stage and I see it happen!”
“Try not to think of it, dear,” Dorothy said in her genteel voice.
As a matter of fact, Caruso had been flirting with one of the dancers in the ballet at the time of the accident, but by now he was thoroughly convinced he’d witnessed the whole thing. The last scene of Samson and Delilah takes place in the temple that the hairless hero ultimately brings down; with the soloists, the chorus members, and the corps de ballet all on at the same time, the stage did get a bit crowded. It was understandable how someone might jar the pedestal and dislodge the lethal urn.
“Perhaps she did it herself,” Gerry suggested. “Bumped against the pedestal, I mean. What a horrible way to die! I’d just assumed all those urns and pedestals and things were anchored in place.”
“They are supposed to be,” Scotti said.
“No, no, she touches nothing!” Caruso insisted. “She just stands there, and—crash! The urn, it falls on her head! Per dio! We are none of us safe, no?” The tenor shuddered as intimations of his own mortality touched him.
“A lot of people are on stage for that scene,” Gerry commented. “I suppose vibrations from the stage floor could have started the urn wobbling.”
“That stage, it is not safe!” Caruso exclaimed.
“Nowhere is safe,” Scotti contributed somberly. “On our way here, we see anarchists rioting in streets, Gerry and I!”
“Oh, Toto!” Gerry laughed in exasperation. “That was no riot. And they weren’t anarchists, they were veterans. Don’t exaggerate.”
“Veterans can be anarchists too,” the baritone proclaimed earnestly. “These anarchists, they are everywhere. And those two in Massachusetts—they want to set them free!” Of the entire Italian community at the Metropolitan Opera, Scotti was the only one who thought Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty.
“Let’s not talk politics,” Dorothy murmured quickly as she saw her husband starting to turn red. “Tell me, Gerry—when do you sing your first Butterfly this season?”
The soprano acknowledged that a change of subject might be wise. “Not for another few weeks. On Christmas Eve.”
“But …?” Dorothy cast a puzzled look toward her husband. “I thought you were singing La Juive Christmas Eve, Rico.”
“Sì, Doro—La Juive.”
“Butterfly is the matinee performance,” Gerry explained.
“Ah. Then, Toto, you must be singing the matinee with Gerry.”
“Ma certo,” Scotti said, lifting Gerry’s hand to his lips with a smile. “Always.”
Gerry sighed; it was a little scene she should be
used to by now. Scotti was perpetually announcing to the world that he was head over heels in love with Geraldine Farrar.
Again.
Gatti-Casazza sat in his office at the Seventh Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street corner of the Metropolitan Opera House. Although the steam heat was on full, he was wearing overcoat, muffler, and gloves. Even after twelve years, Gatti had never gotten used to New York winters.
Less than a month into the new season, he was worried. Caruso was not in the best of health. Baritone Pasquale Amato had cancelled a performance, unusual for him. Soprano Emmy Destinn was not herself—had not been, in fact, ever since her return to the Met after the war’s end. And it had been a mistake to let Geraldine Farrar sing Marguérite in Faust. Her top notes, alas, were gone—and not only her top notes. Since her throat operation a couple of years ago, Gerry’s voice had lost something. The operation, coming as it did in the midst of the trauma of an ugly divorce, had taken its toll; the voice had never quite returned to form.
Not that it made any difference to the singer’s popularity; Geraldine Farrar was still the public’s beniamina, the pet child who could do no wrong. She was the only Carmen the Met audiences wanted. Her Zazà, now in its second year of production, was a succès de scandale. A Farrar performance still filled every seat in the house, and every year the soprano attracted new gerryflappers—those hordes of teen-aged girls who jumped up and down and squealed every time their idol opened her mouth. But the role of Marguérite in Faust was too high for Gerry now; letting her sing it had been a mistake.
All of which was why Gatti-Casazza was thinking now in terms of back-up singers and eventual replacements. Young Rosa Ponselle had enchanted New York audiences from the moment she first set foot on the stage—but she was still learning; she had a long way to go yet. Not so with Maria Jeritza, the Viennese soprano Gatti was bringing to the Metropolitan the following year. Jeritza was an established star, and a glamour girl in the tradition of Farrar. New York would love her. Geraldine Farrar would not.
But that wasn’t all. Sad as the thought was, Gatti mused, Caruso couldn’t go on forever; eventually he, too, would have to give way to a younger singer. No one could ever replace Caruso, of course, but the world was full of young tenors eager to try. Gatti had taken a chance on one of them, and on November 26, 1920, newcomer Beniamino Gigli had made his Metropolitan Opera début. The audience had responded warmly to the bright-voiced new tenor; if their enthusiasm continued unabated through the rest of the season, the transition to the next generation of singers might go a little easier when the time came.
Gatti’s assistant, a man named Edward Ziegler, walked briskly into the office, the very picture of no-nonsense efficiency. With his silver hair parted in the middle and wearing rimless pince-nez, Ziegler looked more like an investment banker than an opera impresario’s assistant. His presence had its usual effect of making Gatti straighten his shoulders. “Quaglia and Setti have agreed on the new chorus tenor,” Ziegler said. “I’ll make out a pay sheet.”
The general manager grunted. “They agree? Unusual.”
“Actually, the man is Quaglia’s choice,” Ziegler said. “Setti gave in just to keep the peace. He doesn’t have the appetite for controversy the Maestro does.”
Alessandro Quaglia was a conductor now in his second season at the Metropolitan. An imperious and inflexible man, Quaglia was not the one to yield when differences of opinion arose. Giulio Setti, on the other hand, was usually tactful and persuasive enough to get what he wanted without having the matter come to a confrontation. Something must have gone wrong this time. Setti was the Met’s chorus master; he’d come to New York from Milan with Gatti-Casazza … and with Toscanini. When that temperamental conductor had eventually departed the Metropolitan in a huff, Setti had stayed. Gatti trusted him and valued his opinion.
“Eh, it is good to have this unpleasant business done with,” Gatti murmured, more to himself than to Ziegler. The singer just hired was the replacement for the unfortunate man who’d hanged himself. The Metropolitan had a pool of available singers to draw upon when the need arose, both choristers and soloists alike. The replacement of the dead man should have been a simple matter; but Quaglia, it sometimes seemed to Gatti, enjoyed complicating things. Probably it was only a way of asserting his authority; any conductor living in the shadow of the great Toscanini was bound to feel diminished by comparison now and then.
Ziegler interrupted his thoughts. “We may have a problem, Mr. Gatti. Emmy Destinn is now saying she doesn’t want to sing on Christmas Day.”
Gatti-Casazza muttered one word: “Contract.”
“Oh, she’s read her contract. She’s saying she may wake up ill Christmas morning. We have a Tristan scheduled for the Wednesday after Christmas—I suppose we could switch.” His tone of voice made it clear he thought little of his own suggestion. A rather frosty man by nature, Ziegler had scant patience with singers’ whims. “Shall I make the change?”
“No.” Gatti got up from his desk. “Aïda is scheduled for Christmas Day and Aïda it will be. I talk to Emmy.”
“Do you think it will do any good?” Ziegler asked. “Nothing seems to please her anymore.”
Gatti shrugged and changed the subject. “The new man—Setti coaches him now?” At Ziegler’s nod he walked out of the office; he wanted to make sure the chorus master was satisfied with Quaglia’s choice.
As Gatti cut through the foyer, he had to detour around a woman down on her knees wringing water out of a rag over a scrub bucket. He looked again and saw it was the woman who’d led him to the dead man in the chorus dressing room.
“Excuse me,” he said to her, “I do not have chance to thank you for …” Gatti trailed off when he realized she didn’t understand what he was saying. He tried Italian. “Le sono molto tenuto.…” But she just gazed at him uncomprehendingly. Gatti raised his voice and tried again. “What is your name?”
At the word name the woman’s face lit up. “Mee-zhus Bukaitis. Bukaitis.” She jabbed a forefinger against her chest three or four times to make sure he understood.
Gatti smiled. “Mrs. Bukaitis, I want to thank you for your help. I know it is upsetting for you.…” She was scowling. Gatti ended up doing a pantomime of a hanging man.
Mrs. Bukaitis slapped both hands over her eyes and let loose a stream of words in a language the general manager didn’t know. The scrubwoman shook her head vigorously and went back to her job of cleaning the lobby floor, apparently not knowing she’d just been thanked.
Gatti sighed and continued on his search for Setti and the new chorus tenor. He found them in a small rehearsal room; the chorus master was seated at a piano, playing with his left hand and conducting with his right. Setti was a small man and getting on in years; he looked like a gnome hunched over the keyboard. The new tenor had a good voice, one with an unusual quality to it. Gatti stood in the doorway until the chorus master noticed him. Setti told the singer to wait and stepped out into the hall.
“You are satisfied?” Gatti asked. “You do not take someone you do not want?”
“No, no—a good singer, this one,” Setti reassured him, his head tilted back to gaze up at the much taller man. “My only concern is—his voice, does it blend with the others in the chorus? You notice the distinctive sound?”
“Sì, I notice.”
“Well, we find out tomorrow night. In Pagliacci.”
“You start him so soon?”
“He knows the music. Pagliacci tomorrow night, and Carmen Thursday. Parsifal he does not know—in English, that is. So he does not sing Friday. But by then we know if he blends with the other choristers or not.”
Gatti nodded. “Eh, that is all right, then.”
“Perhaps.” Setti scowled. “The other choristers—they may make trouble for him.”
“Cielo—why?”
The chorus master shrugged, a gesture involving arms, shoulders, and back. “Who knows why? Always they fight—they look for things to fight about. The Italian sin
gers hate the Austrians, the Austrians hate the French, the French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Americans, and the Americans hate everybody. Squabble, squabble, squabble! And when they fight among themselves, they do not listen to me.” His eyes twinkled. “Sometimes I think I fire them all and start over from scratch.”
“Oh, you cannot do that!” Gatti was aghast, taking him literally. “To train an entirely new chorus … in midseason? Unthinkable!”
Setti grinned. “Eh, perhaps I fire only part of them. The German part, yes?”
Gatti understood he was joking and gave him a weak smile. “In time, the squabbling stops. The war is over. They cannot go on fighting forever. It is against human nature.”
The chorus master grimaced. “I wish I share your view of human nature.” He nodded to Gatti and went back into the rehearsal room, to give the new tenor as much instruction as he could before Wednesday night’s Pagliacci.
Emmy Destinn stared coldly at Gatti-Casazza’s assistant, who was trying to persuade her to come speak to the conductor.
“Bitte, kommen Sie mit,” Edward Ziegler entreated from the doorway of her dressing room. “Herr Quaglia erwartet …”
“I do not speak that language,” Emmy said with enough ice in her voice to freeze over the sun. “Furthermore, I do not permit it to be spoken to me.”
“La prego di dispensarmene,” Ziegler switched immediately. “Signor Quaglia—”
“If Quaglia wishes to speak to me, he knows where the star dressing room is.” She dismissed Ziegler with a wave of her hand. The nerve of the man—speaking German to her!
Emmy had known the language most of her life and had sung it hundreds of times. But that was before the war; now she refused to let one word of German pass her lips, and everyone at the Metropolitan knew it. In spite of his last name, Ziegler was American-born; German was not his native tongue. His addressing her in the language he knew she loathed had to be a calculated insult.
Emmy was singing Nedda in Pagliacci, a role she normally enjoyed even though the tenor invariably stole the show—especially when that tenor was Enrico Caruso. But tonight she wasn’t looking forward to it much, nor to the upcoming Aïda. Somehow, the joy was gone.
