A Cadenza for Caruso

by Barbara Paul

  Jimmy’s face lit up when he caught sight of me (a nice way to start an encounter). “Miss Farrar!” he called out, unfortunately cutting off his coach in mid-sentence. Then he suddenly became shy. “I, uh, I didn’t expect to see you here this evening.”

  “Why, Jimmy, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world! Your big opportunity? Of course I’m here. Good evening, Mr. Springer.” The vocal coach smiled quickly and returned my greeting. “How do you feel, Jimmy?”

  “Nervous, frankly.”

  “Good. A little nervousness always sharpens one’s performance. Don’t you think so, Mr. Springer?”

  “Exactly what I was telling him, Miss Farrar. Control your nervousness, James, make it work for you. Look at Caruso—he panics every time he has to go out on the stage. But would you know it to listen to him sing? Never. He uses his nervousness. As you must use yours.”

  “Yes, Mr. Springer,” Jimmy said, as he did to everything his coach told him. “I just hope I don’t make a fool of myself.”

  I laughed my favorite laugh, descending thirds. “No chance of that. You’ll sing well. I’m not even going to worry about you.”

  “And remember,” Springer added, “you’re the only one they asked to come in tonight.”

  I shot him a startled glance before I could stop myself; was it possible they knew nothing of Philippe Duchon’s imminent arrival? Quite possible, I decided. Gatti-Casazza never gave much away. I turned back to Jimmy. “Don’t forget, now—I’ll be out front cheering for you!”

  “Oh, thank you, Miss Farrar!” Jimmy gave me a look of such undying gratitude that I began to think I’d overdone it.

  A few minutes later Springer and I went out to the dimly lighted auditorium, leaving Jimmy Freeman to face his fate. We took seats close enough to the front that the light from the stage would let the nervous young baritone see us there. “Do you think he’s ready?” I asked my companion.

  “I do, absolutely,” Springer answered without hesitation. “These past six months James has shown enormous improvement. He’s begun to understand instinctively the little tricks of phrasing and breath control that earlier he had to learn laboriously. He’s ready for a major role. And Carmen is a good place for him to start.”

  It probably was, at that. The role of Escamillo is a flashy one but not particularly demanding. Escamillo doesn’t even enter until the second act—when he comes in and sings his one aria, the Toreador Song, and exits immediately. He comes on again in the third act, but only long enough to get into a short-lived scuffle with the tenor over the love of Carmen. And then he shows up once more—very briefly, only a few measures—in the fourth and final act. A good role for a nervous young baritone.

  Something belatedly occurred to me. “Why aren’t you accompanying him, Mr. Springer?”

  “Maestro Toscanini’s choice,” he answered tightly. “He wanted to see how well James performed with a stranger. A test of flexibility, he called it.”

  I should have known; nothing happened in that house without Toscanini’s putting in his two cents’ worth. But it was a reasonable interference this time, as the Maestro was conducting tomorrow night. “Perhaps it’s just as well,” I said. “Jimmy will end up looking all the better because of it.”

  “He shouldn’t have to audition at all,” Springer muttered angrily. “They need a baritone and James is ready and that should be the end of it.”

  He was making me uneasy. It didn’t seem fair to let Jimmy go ahead and sing without knowing he was in competition with the great Philippe Duchon. But telling him at the last minute would destroy his confidence, and he was nervous enough already. I slid a glance sideways at the vocal coach; Springer had a big investment in Jimmy Freeman, and he was assuming tonight would be the beginning of a long-awaited payoff.

  Osgood Springer was a striking-looking man, in spite of the long scar that ran along his right jawbone. He’d once been a promising young baritone himself, but an accident had put a premature end to his career. Years ago Springer had fallen in the street in front of a carriage, and the startled horse had put one of its feet down right on Springer’s face. All the bones in his face had been broken, and he no longer had the resonance one needed to sing opera. A dreadful accident.

  Springer had turned to teaching, and he quickly earned the reputation of being a martinet—or so they said; that was all before my time. He certainly had Jimmy Freeman under his thumb, no doubt about that. But Springer knew what he was doing; he’d brought Jimmy along fast, but not too fast. And if he said Jimmy was ready, then Jimmy was ready.

  We heard voices behind us and turned to see Arturo Toscanini and Gatti-Casazza taking seats toward the rear of the auditorium. When Toscanini spotted me, he stood up and gave a low, courtly bow in my direction, almost banging his nose on the seat in front of him in the process. I smiled and blew him a kiss. Toscanini and I got along beautifully—whenever we were not in rehearsal.

  Jimmy Freeman came out on the stage, followed by his new accompanist. I smiled up at him as encouragingly as I could. Jimmy looked a little jittery but not out of control. He nodded to the accompanist; the accompanist played the introduction; Jimmy opened his mouth and sang.

  I don’t think there’s a schoolchild in the Western civilized world who doesn’t know the melody of the Toreador Song, thump-thump-de-thump-thump. One of the most difficult things a singer has to do is reinterpret a tune so familiar that every listener already hears it in his head the way he thinks it should be sung. It’s very difficult for a singer to take such a tune and make it distinctly his own. Well, Jimmy did it. He sang that old chestnut as if it had never been sung before, his fresh young voice giving it a vigor and excitement I hadn’t heard in years. When he finished, I stood up and cried “Bravo!”

  Toscanini and Gatti-Casazza were pleased too, I was delighted to see. We all joined Jimmy on the stage, Springer looking understandably proud in the midst of all the congratulations. Jimmy was flushed and happy; he knew he’d sung well.

  Then Gatti dropped the bomb. “I’ll let you know before noon tomorrow,” he told Jimmy.

  Jimmy just stared at him, but Springer spoke up. “Excuse me, Mr. Gatti—did you say you would let him know? Surely there’s no question of James’s ability to sing the role?”

  “No, no, none at all,” Gatti said uncomfortably. “It is just that, ah, you see, the Maestro and I always talk over the casting together, yes?”

  Toscanini tried to look innocent.

  Springer persisted. “What is there to talk over? Do we use the morning hours to prepare or not?”

  “I will let you know before noon,” Gatti repeated vaguely.

  Jimmy was inclined to accept the delay, but his coach was having none of it. Springer went on pressing for an answer until I couldn’t stand it any longer. “If you don’t tell them,” I said to Gatti, “I will.”

  Gatti looked daggers at me, but then he told Jimmy and Springer about Philippe Duchon.

  They both looked as if they’d been slapped in the face. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that if Duchon said yes, Jimmy’s début as Escamillo would not be taking place the next evening. Jimmy was already slumping in defeat.

  I drew Toscanini aside. “Is there any way to divide Amato’s roles between them? Dr. Curtis doesn’t know how long Amato will be out.”

  Toscanini took one of my hands in his. “Cara Gerry,” he said gently, “you prefer to sing with the young man instead of Duchon?”

  Ah. Well. Ah.

  He nodded. “I think not. We try to persuade Duchon to sing all of Amato’s roles. He is here for perhaps the only time in his life, yes? The young James has much time left. His turn will come.”

  That was true. I went back to the forlorn-looking young baritone and tried to offer some consolation. “Even if you don’t sing tomorrow, Jimmy, you made your mark here tonight. The next time there’s an opening, you’ll be the one Gatti calls on. You’ll see.”

  His face took on that moony look I knew so well. “Whatever
happens tomorrow,” Jimmy said, “I will always remember tonight. Tonight the beautiful Geraldine Farrar rose to her feet and cried Bravo to me!”

  Oh dear.

  It was getting close to nine o’clock, and I always liked to be in bed by ten the night before a performance. I told everyone goodbye and went home.

  Things certainly had changed in a hurry. Only that morning Gatti-Casazza had been worrying about not having a baritone for Carmen and now it seemed he had a choice of two, assuming Duchon would be willing to take over the role on such short notice. Poor Jimmy—his big chance had finally come and then he found himself thoroughly upstaged. But Toscanini was right; Jimmy’s turn would come. I looked forward to singing with him … someday soon, if not the very next night. I truly did like Jimmy Freeman.

  One reason I liked him was that he reminded me so much of Willi—dear, sweet Willi whom I had not seen for years. The two were alike in so many ways: the same shyness, the same respectful adoration from afar, the same suffering air of romantic longing. There was one enormous difference between them, though; Willi was, after all, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, son of the Kaiser, and everything he did was a matter of public interest. By the time I’d made my début at the Royal Opéra of Berlin, I was already the object of considerable public attention myself. So when the Crown Prince, who’d never displayed any noticeable interest in opera before, suddenly began showing up in the royal box every time the new American soprano sang, tongues were bound to wag.

  Willi and I were both nineteen then, but he always seemed so much younger—a nice boy, someone you could trust. The Prince and the Opéra Singer. Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? Well, for a lot of people it was; operagoers liked to talk about us, and the gossip in Berlin even attributed my success on the opera stage to palace intrigue, thank you very much! But I earned my international reputation legitimately—in Europe I was known as “Die Farrar aus Berlin” (except by jealous rivals; one overripe native prima donna kept calling me “The American Peril”). I didn’t sleep my way to the top, I sang my way there. At the same time, I was not unaware of the publicity value of having a royal admirer.

  Although I do have to admit that sometimes it got out of hand. I remember receiving letters from total strangers offering to adopt any or all illegitimate semi-royal children I might have! And journalists kept pestering me about our plans to marry. We never did plan to marry. Well, Willi may have had a plan or two, but I didn’t. Willi would one day be Kaiser, or so we thought then. When the war is over, who knows? But if I’d married Willi, I’d have had to give up singing and devote my life to helping rule the country. Give up singing? Ha, that didn’t require any hard decision-making. I was an opera star and I liked being an opera star. I still like it.

  Eventually Willi realized we would never marry and accepted his parents’ choice of a wife for him, a pleasant young woman who turned out to be exactly right for Willi. I stayed friends with both of them. And as for la grande passion Willi and I were supposed to have had, it was really nothing more than a sweet romance. As far as I was concerned, Willi went into his marriage as virginal as the day he was born.

  It was that innocent quality of Willi’s that Jimmy Freeman reflected so exactly. Jimmy’s shy and respectful courtship took me back to those happy times in Berlin, before life turned ugly and my European friends started slaughtering one another. But before that happened—oh, those were grand and glittering days! Americans were popular in Imperial Germany at the turn of the century; commercial relations were good, Teddy Roosevelt and the Kaiser were friends, alles was in Ordnung. As a young American opera star, I was sought after and courted and fussed over. I remember some young lieutenants who would break champagne glasses once my lips had touched them—imagine! And now every time I looked at Jimmy Freeman’s unspoiled young face, I thought of those innocent days. Jimmy reminded me of my youth, I suppose. Thirty-three is not old, but it’s not nineteen.

  It was glorious while it lasted. I sang in other houses, at the Paris Opéra and the Opéra Comique and at Monte Carlo—a gay place, pure froth and frivolity. I sang in Salzburg and Munich and Stockholm, where I made a fan of King Oscar, dear man; he actually presented me with the Order of Merit. I sang in Warsaw, then under Russian supervision and bitterly resentful of it; I saw more than one bloody clash in the streets. I had to cancel singing engagements in Moscow and St. Petersburg because one of their many revolutions was going on at the time. Once I even had trouble getting back to Berlin, there were so many soldiers stopping people everywhere. By the time I left for the Metropolitan Opera in 1906, it was clear that the good times in Europe were over.

  But I was back there last year when it started. When the war broke out in August, I was in a Munich sanitarium recovering from a stomach disorder. I wasn’t particularly worried at the time; I felt at home in Germany and America didn’t seem likely to join in. But by the time I was well enough to travel, Antwerp had fallen and the border was closed. I couldn’t arrange passage to America. Everything I tried failed.

  I was just beginning to panic when a message arrived from Gatti-Casazza; he was holding a ship at Naples for all the Metropolitan’s artists who were having trouble getting out of Europe. With the help of an attentive young officer, I bribed my way through Switzerland, smiling and chatting gaily and pretending that was the way I always traveled. Then I hastened down the length of Italy to the harbor at Naples, where I found a ship full of musicians every bit as frightened as I was. Caruso spent the entire crossing on deck watching out for U-boats.

  It’s impossible to express the anguish this war has caused me. I have friends and professional associates all over Europe, but Germany has always been a special place to me. My vocal coach who saw me through my early years is still there; I don’t even know if she is safe. I don’t know if anybody is safe. But from the moment the first German soldier set foot on Belgian soil on the march to invade France, Germany placed itself squarely and irredeemably in the wrong.

  How could the Kaiser even consider such a thing? I find it hard to reconcile this bloody warmonger with the friendly, laughing man I knew in Berlin. Now every time I think of Germany I get a burning sensation inside. It’s a horrible feeling. The way you’d feel if you suddenly found out your father was a murderer. What happens then? Do you stop loving him? Can you ever again love him in quite the same way?

  But that wasn’t the half of it. The anti-German feeling in this country was so strong that I found I was actually suspect because of my long association with Germany and the royal family. My patriotism was being questioned, of all things! Why, I was born practically at the foot of Bunker Hill—there’s never been the slightest question in my own mind as to where my true allegiance lay! I’ve sung at war relief benefits, I’ve sold Liberty bonds, I’ve done my bit to help. I am American; and if America joins the Allies in the war against Germany, then it’s the Allied side I’ll be on.

  Yet numerous unpleasant things kept happening. I was once cut dead by some society women because I did not rise for the few bars of the national anthem that appear in Madame Butterfly. A little book I’d written about my early career in Germany was withdrawn from public libraries. When I invited Fritz Kreisler to a party I gave last Christmas, I received a rash of scurrilous letters (all anonymous, of course) reviling me for giving succor to the enemy. Sometimes I actually have to remind people that the United States of America is not at war with anyone.

  Not yet, at any rate.

  Antonio Scotti kissed the fingers of my right hand one by one. “Gerry, cara mia—tell me when we marry. How long do you keep me suffering? Say you marry me.”

  I laughed. “Now, Toto, I thought we’d settled all that.”

  He picked up a fork from the table and waved it in the air. “We settle nothing. All you do is keep saying no.”

  And that, from his point of view, was no answer at all. I never met a man who enjoyed being in love so much as Antonio Scotti. He was in love all the time—if not with me, then with someone
else. But he was an attentive lover and fun to be with, and I didn’t mind the attention.

  “You must practice saying maybe,” he admonished me gently. “You do not know what joys can be found in marriage.”

  “And you do?” I smiled. Scotti was a tall, easygoing bachelor whose eyes even now followed an attractive woman as she crossed the room. Scotti was fastidious in his dress and had the natural bearing of an aristocrat. He had a mop of lustrous black hair and a good physique; only a rather long nose kept him from being unbearably handsome. He and Caruso and Pasquale Amato were all from Naples and had been friends for years. I liked all three of them; I liked them a lot.

  We were in the dining room of the Hotel Knickerbocker. Caruso was holding court across the room at his usual corner table, surrounded by friends and a few freeloaders. Both Scotti and Caruso lived in the Knickerbocker, and the place had become a sort of gathering place for the opera world. But neither Caruso nor I should have been there right then; the day of an evening performance ought to be spent resting.

  Scotti looked over to Caruso’s table. “I suppose we should join them.”

  “I suppose.”

  I had awakened that morning not knowing which baritone I’d be singing with that night. But now it was settled; Philippe Duchon had said yes. Jimmy Freeman would just have to wait a little longer, poor boy. Caruso and I were to go to the Metropolitan that afternoon to rehearse the stage movements with Duchon. That alone told you in what high regard Gatti-Casazza held the French baritone; normally a substitute singer was taught his stage movements in fifteen minutes by an assistant stage manager and then tossed in to sink or swim. But not Philippe Duchon. For Duchon, the Met’s two biggest stars would give up their afternoon of rest and preparation to help the newcomer learn where he was supposed to be on the stage at what time. Some baritones like to leap up on a table to sing the Toreador Song; I hoped Philippe Duchon was not one of them.