Born to Sing, no. 1

by Donna Del Oro

  It was not a happy thought but one that I knew was as true as day. I felt it in my bones.

  Because it turned out she did.

  She ruined all other women for me.

  * * * *

  “Wow,” Emily breathed. Then she frowned. “Other women for him? Then he went on to other women after you. It’s true what they say about him, that he’s a player.”

  “Many people thought so, still think so,” Eva said softly, gazing down at her hands clutched together tightly. It was still extremely difficult for her to even imagine him with other women. Like a tiny, deep stab in her heart each time the thought arose. “The time we were together, that spring and summer, he was completely devoted to me, as I was to him. No other man existed for me. I think he felt the same. Of course, after the first time, things changed. We struggled to concentrate on our work, our singing. Our need for each other just…exploded in our faces. We made love whenever we could, wherever we could. One time in one of the soundproof booths in the music building. We started out practicing our roles for Cosi Fan Tutti and ended up on the floor behind the piano.”

  She shook her head and gave a short laugh of amazement. Her cheeks felt hot, just thinking about those lust-filled days and nights. Sometimes, she thought it a miracle that they’d made it to graduation.

  Eva looked squarely into the girl reporter’s face.

  Why was she revealing such intimate things to this young stranger? Well, why not? Maybe the girl would learn something valuable from her experiences. Long ago, she’d lost all semblance of false modesty or pride. Those were hollow luxuries that she had no time or use for anymore. Luxuries of the young.

  “When you’re young and madly in love…” Eva sighed deeply, tearing her thoughts away from that magical time. “Anyway, we struggled all spring and summer with it. We just couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Even Prof Nits noticed the decline in our singing. Our distraction was interfering with our breathing, our timing, our phrasing. The memorizing of the Italian lyrics in Cosi Fan Tutti was challenging— never had trouble with our pitch, though. We were always note-perfect. And our acting was always good, especially for THAT romantic comedy. I used to fancy that Mozart wrote that comedy especially for us. Or young lovers like us. Eventually, though, before Prof Nits had heart failure, we did pull it together and I must say we performed splendidly—the entire cast and orchestra did wonderfully. D.J. and I played a very sexy Ferrando and Dorabella. More so than Amadeus ever intended, I’m sure.” Ever the composed diva, she tried to stifle a giggle but gave up and let it bubble out.

  “Is there more…about you in his memoirs?” Emily inquired, her curiosity spilling over. The girl reporter was staring at her, as if trying to imagine what she’d been like as a madly-in-love college senior.

  “Oh yes. Much more.”

  “What did he mean, he was a fool? Did he break up with you? Did he marry someone else?”

  “No, he didn’t marry—not right away.”

  “The Big C? Cancer? I don’t remember if my mother said something about that or not, frankly.” The girl clamped her mouth shut, all of a sudden aware of Eva’s change in countenance.

  “Yes. He liked it,” Eva said somberly, letting her East Texas expression slip out. “I think he was still happy he’d written this all down, though. When I read it for the first time, I was—well, let’s go back to it. Let him speak for himself.”

  Miss V and I managed that spring to control ourselves enough to complete our performance tapes. If memory serves me, Miss V did “Addio del passato” from La Traviata, “Bimba dagli occhi” from Madame Butterfly, “Che gelida manina” from La Boheme and “Adieu, notre petite table” from Massenet’s Manon. It was a wonderful collection she’d gathered and she sang them beautifully.

  Thanks to her Italian and French coaching, I was able to perform “E lucevan le stelle”, “Nessun dorma”, my alltime favorite aria from Turandot, “Largo al factotum” from The Barber of Seville, also one of my favorites. I think also “Serenade” in English from The Student Prince and “Elegie” in French. By the time I’d finished my tape, I felt like a multi-linguist. Ha! I’d never been to Europe, couldn’t speak those languages to save my life. But I faked it in song. Thanks to Miss V.

  We included one duet from Cosi Fan Tutti, which we sang together on our performance tapes, and a duet from Pagliacci, where the two lovers can’t contain their passion and they plan their elopement— “E allor perche”. The best duet on our tape, I thought. She actually chose the pieces for me, for I could count on my hand then the operas I knew. My mother had dragged me to La Traviata and Cavalleria Rusticana when I was in high school. Those and the ones we studied in Classical Opera class and Mozart’s Cosi were the only operas in my repertoire. For a prospective tenor, I was appallingly lacking in repertoire.

  Miss V took the time to summarize each opera’s story and characters and then explained the significance and place in the story of each aria I learned. Of course, she helped me translate the lyrics as well. It was damn time consuming but worth every minute. She was amazing.

  I owe my career to her. She had the patience of a saint!

  It’s unbelievable how far I’ve come in my musical education since then. My education about love, too. I’ve learned that love is total selflessness. Miss V taught me a lot that spring and summer about selflessness. She was so giving of herself, her time—when she had so little extra of it herself.

  We had eight-by-ten glossies of ourselves, sitting, standing like models, several together in full “Cosi” costume. These were all for the agent in New York and the one in London we sent our performance tapes to. I’m happy to say I paid for those tapes and the photos. And I say this with no false pride, for the money I could afford to spend preparing for our future careers was the very least I could do to repay her for her time and patience. She was a wonderful teacher. I’ll always be grateful to her for those months of tutelage.

  Anyway, Professor Woronicz encouraged us, the six best singers in his Voice class, to send our tapes and photos to a talent agent he knew in New York and, at the baritone’s insistence, we also sent them to his father’s agent in London.

  That summer, we got offers from the Aspen Music Festival, two American touring companies and an offer to tour the U.K. with a British company doing Puccini’s La Boheme. We ended up taking the British offer, mainly because Miss V wanted to perform Boheme and I wanted to travel abroad. They wanted us together to play two of the six principals in that opera, the Musetta and Marcel roles.

  Lucky for us. We couldn’t believe our good fortune. We just happened to have the right looks and voices at the right time.

  Lucky for us, too, the damned baritone took an offer with a touring company connected with the Chicago Grand Opera, so he was out of my way. His father’s agent had gotten him a two-year contract, so it was a deal he couldn’t pass up. Miss V and I would still have to get something at summer’s end but then, those concerns seemed eons away.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. I had obstacles to overcome first. One big one was performance anxiety—and I don’t mean the sexual kind.

  I remember the night before the opening of Cosi Fan Tutti. To calm my attack of nerves, I went to Mack’s, a watering hole near campus. There was a San Antonio Spurs exhibition game playing on the big screen in the bar area and two pool tables in an adjacent pine-panelled room were jammed with players. I sat at the bar and ordered a whiskey from Mack, who pragmatically displayed photographs of U.T. athletes on every wall. He even put up promo posters from the Music and Drama departments.

  In the vast mirror I could see a large, colored poster featuring the four principals of Cosi Fan Tutti, posed to show the two pairs of lovers who test each other in ridiculous ways. Miss V and I were paired in costume and full makeup with the baritone (the SOB I alluded to earlier) and another soprano. I have to confess, that damn poster embarassed me. I prayed my father would never see it. I had to wear the uniform of a Napoleonic-era soldier a
nd that meant white, form-fitting trousers that looked like ballet tights.

  The only food offered in that bar were bowls of peanuts and a trail mix jokingly called “California fruits ‘n nuts.” I was starving but couldn’t eat all day, my stomach was in such knots.

  When Mack brought me my shot of Jack Daniels, he pointed to the poster and asked about the story. I summarized the libretto for him as briefly as I could. Clearly, he thought the story was off-the-wall absurd. He looked at me like, what the hell? How could I explain Mozart’s idea of romantic comedy? It was like a French farce set to classical music.

  Feeling the fiery burn scorch my throat, I nonetheless tossed down the entire shot glass of booze. My eyes smarting, I choked out something like, “Well, it’s a romantic comedy set by our stage director in early nineteenth century Europe during the Napoleonic Wars but it was written in 1789. Even then, it was a flop when it was first performed. Nowadays, people still think the story is stupid but the music is nice and light. What can you do? The professor thinks it’s good experience for our voices.”

  Mack, a middle-aged, ex-football player whose high point in life was quarterbacking for the A and M Aggies, propped his elbows on the bar. His handlebar mustache twitched with humor.

  “Well, I’ve seen a fair number of stupid stories on film lately. Hey, D.J., isn’t this whiskey bad for your voice?”

  “Too much of it, yeah. Caruso—y’know, the great Italian tenor of the late nineteenth century—used to have a shot of whiskey before every performance, to relax the vocal chords.”

  “No shit,” Mack mused, “want a chaser?”

  I declined but ordered another shot.

  “Well, D.J., I might could put myself out there in the audience tomorra night. Sing good, ya hear.” Mack began to move down the bar.

  “Do my best,” I tossed off.

  Prof Nits called us his “darlin’ duo”, Miss V and me. He said if movie studios still made operettas, we’d be the modern-day Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald. Whoever they were.

  Actually, my mother knew and she had one of their films in her video library, something from the thirties or forties. The family all watched it one weekend when Eva came home with me again. Miss V and I couldn’t decide whether the professor was being complimentary or critical. After that, anyway, I never heard the end of it from my older brothers. They called me the singing mountie but my brother, Matt, was clever enough to point out that the Eddy-McDonald duo were probably the first crossover opera artists of their generation.

  In the bar, I was stewing in my juices and getting myself sick. I was full-out dreading the next night’s performance.

  Lord, all of a sudden, I felt nauseated. What if I blew my lyrics, missed my cues, forgot my blocking, was off tempo, off key—a total failure and humiliation to my parents? They’d be in the audience along with about thirty relatives. My father would see me in those tights and stage makeup, acting like a complete moron. My brothers would fall on the floor, holding their bellies with laughter.

  What if everyone finally realized I was a complete fraud, disguised as an opera singer? What if Miss V finally saw through my facade of swaggering, strutting cock-of-the-walk? What if she opened her eyes and finally realized how she’d wasted her time on such a no-talent, worthless piece of shit? What if—

  I bolted to the men’s room and threw my guts up. My heart was heaving so hard in my chest, I thought I was having a heart attack. I leaned against the wall and dangled my head between my legs. After a moment, my head was pounding along with my chest. My esophagus felt raw and burned. My vocal chords felt fried.

  Great! Now my larynx was shot to hell!

  I closed my eyes and prayed. Please let me die, dear God, right here, right now. Let the floor open up and swallow me. Let some homicidal maniac come in and plunge a knife through my heart. Let my family grieve for me, but not suffer abject humiliation over tomorrow night’s public failure.

  Damn! I was going to bomb…big time!

  In full panic-mode, I began to hyperventilate. There I was, bending over, panting, trying to swallow but couldn’t. I’d never felt more miserable in my life. I was in full anxiety attack.

  Then I thought of Miss V. How she was depending on me.

  Somehow, I regained some control, splashed my face with water, staggered back to the bar and flopped down on the stool. Mack was at my side instantly, pouring another shot of Jack Daniels.

  “Take it easy, boy, you’ll do us proud.”

  He urged me to take another and another—on the house—until I was so smashed, I didn’t care whether I lived and made a total ass of myself playing fuckin’ Ferrando or died a horrible, flaming death wrapping my new pickup around a tree.

  I ran my fingers through my hair, massaged the back of my stiff neck, absently fingering the scruffy, short hairs. A sweep of cool air rushed in, a burst of guffaws filled the bar and my peripheral vision, even blurred as it was, picked up a smudge of white and a familiar female voice. A voice from my randy past.

  Grimacing, I hunched over the bar in a futile but comical attempt to become invisible. Too soon I felt a hand caressing my back and whiffed a female scent. I spied in the mirror the blonde, who’d been my Friday night lay for about five months during my junior year.

  “You don’t look TOO bad in those FAGGOTY tights, D.J,” she purred derisively, referring to the poster.

  When I basically ignored her by just nodding, she sashayed in her tight jeans and white-top outfit into the pool room, her date following her like a whipped pup. He looked like an urban cowboy, all hat and no cattle, but definitely her type: tall, slim, dark-haired. I tried to remember what I’d seen in her—oh yeah, always hot to trot, willing and wanting. She liked heavy booze and light sex. For me, at that time, she’d been the perfect date.

  So what had changed in me? Why did I dump her?

  I turned my head and focused on that poster. The two of us, Miss V and me, holding each other in mock vamp-and-rake fashion as Dorabella and Ferrando.

  That beautiful songbird had unknowingly helped me forget all those mindless flings of my callow, womanizing youth. Without really intending to, Miss V got me to answer the hardest questions I’d ever faced up to that point:

  What was I going to do with my life? And why?

  I managed to call Brian, one of my housemates, and got him to come pick me up at Mack’s. For a moment, I was tempted to call the songbird but I really didn’t want her to see me so wasted and out-of-control. Somehow I knew I’d be facing the same anxiety attack the next night and I’d have to get through it. I couldn’t afford to vomit all the time before a performance or the acid reflux’d destroy my voice. I’d have to overcome it, somehow, without getting piss-drunk every time.

  I thought again of Enrico Caruso, the great tenor. He limited himself to one shot of whiskey before a performance. Enough to loosen him up and relax the ol’ larynx. The muscles in the jaw, neck, chest, diaphragm. By sheer will and resolve, I knew I had to conquer this demon. Suddenly, the lyrics and haunting strains of Nessun Dorma, one of the arias on my performance tape, came to mind.

  “Vin-ce-RO, vin-ce-RO…vin-CE-Roooo!”

  I’ll win! I’ll conquer this! I think I sang the aria, my head hanging out the window of Brian’s car, later that evening. Not my best rendition, I betcha, but the most determined.

  Over the years, I did conquer that demon. That overwhelming, suffocating, heart-stopping fear of failure. Though I still have to swallow that one shot of whiskey before a performance.

  Hell, if it was good enough for Caruso, it was good enough for me.

  * * * *

  Eva found herself laughing softly as she read the last sentence. Oh yes, she recalled his chronic fear of failure—disappointing Daddy, he called it—-vividly.

  “Miss Villa, do you have that kind of performance anxiety?”

  “Please, call me Eva. A little, especially before the premiere of a new opera that I’ve never performed before. I certainly had my share of
nerves before my professional debut that summer, doing La Boheme for the first time. But, good lord, never the extent that poor D.J. suffered. He tried everything, yoga, even hypnosis. Nothing seemed to work as well as ‘Caruso’s shot’, as he called it.” She smiled and closed Darren McKay’s memoirs.

  “Nowadays,” she went on, “I get my butterflies and I can’t eat a big meal beforehand but that’s about it. There’s so much of a burden riding upon a solo artist. It’s a huge responsibility. You’re on for three hours, sometimes more. If you’re playing a lead, the responsibility’s even greater. But I’ve had good vocal coaches over the years and I’ve learned how to relax my singing muscles—”

  Eva touched her rib cage, her abdomen, her chest, her throat. “—even my tongue and the back of my neck. All of these play a part in your sound quality. Even when a singer’s nervous or stressed out, he or she can still consciously, voluntarily relax those muscles. It takes discipline and practice…” She trailed off, realizing Serena was no more interested in the technicalities of her opera training that most people outside of the field.

  The reporter was scanning her notes. “Who’s this baritone that Darren McKay seems to dislike so much? He calls him the SOB baritone. Sounds like he was a rival.”

  Eva blinked and adjusted her seat. How could she answer that without giving so much away, she thought, although David Fogel very definitely was part of her story, too. As it turned out. He would always be part of her story.

  “He was a rival, alright. I didn’t realize at the time, I was so blindly in love with D.J. I couldn’t see any other man, certainly not anyone’s hidden motives, but he could. D.J. saw right through him. Looking back, I wish I’d been wiser in love. And more knowledgeable about men and their motives.”