Prima Donna at Large

by Barbara Paul

  For the first time since he sat down, Springer’s expression lightened a little. Having another baritone plead Jimmy’s cause would undoubtedly carry weight with Gatti-Casazza, especially a baritone as renowned as Antonio Scotti. “I thank you,” Springer said quietly.

  “I’m sure Gatti will give him a role next season,” I said encouragingly. “Duchon’s showing up right at this moment was just a fluke. No one could have anticipated it. All you have to do is wait a little longer.”

  Scotti made that funny little throat-clearing sound he always makes when he is about to disagree with something I’ve said. “Perhaps waiting is not enough,” he said apologetically. “Perhaps an active campaign is better? Gerry and I speak for Jimmy, but you might want to ask others to speak up too. Caruso, for one. And talk to Toscanini.”

  A shadow passed over Springer’s face. “Do you know something? Is there something going on I don’t know about?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Scotti reassured him. “It is just … well, it is the war, you see. So far, most of the major singers in the European houses, they simply wait it out. We all think the war is over by the end of the year—last year, yes? But the war goes on. Already a few singers flee to America, and now here is Duchon.”

  “What are you saying, Toto?” I asked him.

  “I am saying that right now the European singers who come to America—they make up only a trickle. But if the war goes on, that trickle becomes a steady stream, you see? Then Mr. Gatti has more singers than he can use. He can pick and choose, yes?”

  Oh dear, I hadn’t thought of that. With that kind of competition, Jimmy might not get his chance after all.

  The scar along Springer’s jaw stood out whitely against his skin. “You mean if James doesn’t get a new contract right away, he might never get one.”

  Scotti spread his hands, said nothing.

  “I’ll speak to Gatti tonight,” I said hurriedly. “Right after the performance.”

  Scotti consulted his pocket watch. “Gerry, you are almost late. Rehearsal awaits.”

  We both got up. “I must go, Mr. Springer. But don’t lose heart. We’ll all help.”

  Scotti and I left him sitting there at Caruso’s table alone. Very much alone.

  3

  I was excited about finally meeting Philippe Duchon, and wondering at the same time whether his voice had changed any since I’d last heard him; it had been several years. Scotti and I went into the Metropolitan by the Thirty-ninth Street entrance, but Scotti wanted to stay at the back of the auditorium, where he could observe his new rival without being observed himself.

  But I couldn’t see the great man anywhere. Out on the stage were Caruso and Toscanini, an accompanist waiting patiently by his piano, and four or five chorus members—just enough to give Duchon a sense of where people would be positioned on the stage. I waited in the wings, preferring to make an entrance rather than stand there as part of the welcoming chorus.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a shadow move among the other shadows backstage. “Who’s there?” I said sharply.

  A smiling old man shuffled out into the light. “Only me, Miz Zherry,” he said in a thick accent. “Me.”

  “Oh, Uncle Hummy, you gave me a start. What are you doing here?”

  “Come for the Duchon.”

  It couldn’t have been more than a few hours since Gatti-Casazza and Duchon had reached agreement. “How did you know he’d be here?”

  “I hear,” Uncle Hummy grinned broadly, “I hear.” Uncle Hummy was one of those characters who are always hanging around opera houses, but with a difference. To say he loved opera would be an understatement; this one lived for opera. The stage-door-keeper would sometimes let him in, and other times he’d sneak in. When I’d given him a copy of the new Madame Sans-Gêne score, he’d cried. He was a harmless old man who asked nothing more of life than to be allowed to listen.

  “Did someone let you in?” I asked him.

  He grinned sheepishly, showing lots of teeth. “No, Miz Zherry. Just self I come.”

  He’d sneaked in. “Well, don’t let Mr. Gatti see you.”

  He shuffled back into the shadow. Uncle Hummy was an elderly Italian who’d lived in this country since his young manhood without ever mastering English; some people simply can’t learn languages. He was a nice old fellow who lived mostly on hand-outs, and mostly from Caruso; the rest of us gave him a few dollars now and then.

  I forgot all about Uncle Hummy when I heard a new voice talking and laughing. Philippe Duchon had arrived, ta-ta, making his entrance from the other side of the stage and ushered in by a beaming Gatti-Casazza. Duchon was a huge man—big head, big body, big hands. He’d always been a dominating presence on the stage, but up close he was downright intimidating. Gatti was trying to introduce him to Toscanini (oddly, the two had never met) when the French baritone spotted Caruso. “Rico!” he boomed.

  “Philippe!” the tenor sang back, and the two men embraced. Everybody liked Caruso.

  Gatti finally got his introductions made, and I was delighted to hear Duchon spoke English perfectly (with a good, British accent). Gatti was looking around worriedly. “I suppose we could start … but I think it is better if we wait for our prima donna.”

  Now there, was an entrance cue if ever I heard one. “Hello, hello, hello!” I trilled, sweeping onto the stage, flashing my second most dazzling smile (save the good stuff for more important occasions). “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting?”

  It was Toscanini who stepped forward and bowed gallantly over my hand, playing the courtier to the hilt. “Cara Gerry—waiting for you is always a pleasure.”

  I made some appropriate reply, and Toscanini led me over to Duchon and introduced us. I held out my other hand. “Monsieur Duchon,” I smiled. “A great honor.”

  He did not take my hand. “Ah yes,” he said with an icy smile I did not immediately understand, “Miss Geraldine Farrar. The German-lover.” He turned his back on me.

  You know what that kind of rebuff feels like? As if someone has just slapped you about the head four or five times. I stood there with my hand foolishly extended and felt the shock wave run through the others on the stage.

  “Monsieur!” Toscanini said reprovingly.

  I withdrew my hand. “I have friends in both Germany and France,” I said as evenly as I could. “Am I to be treated rudely for that?”

  Caruso and Gatti both jumped in, babbling alternately in Italian and English. Everyone was embarrassed to death, everyone except me; I was mad.

  Duchon quickly realized that the general sympathy did not lie with him, so he turned to me and in a voice that fooled no one begged my pardon. For the sake of amity, I granted it. But if we’d not had a performance that night, I wouldn’t have been quite so obliging, you can be sure. This one was going to require close watching.

  A few of the props from Act II had been brought on stage, and we began the scene in which Escamillo makes his first appearance and plunges right into the Toreador Song. Toscanini interrupted every few seconds, but both he and Duchon were going out of their way to accommodate the other and no major problems emerged. Duchon did not, I was happy to see, jump up on the table at any time.

  After the first walk-through, Duchon started singing. He sang half-voice for most of the aria, but then he opened up and finished full voice, testing the acoustics of the auditorium. It was what we’d all been waiting for, and my resentment of the man’s ill-mannered behavior evaporated as if it had never been. When you can sing like that, you can get away with a lot.

  And he could sing! The voice was undimmed by the years, deep and lustrous and rich. And he sang with a panache that made you forget that the tune was as familiar as your own face. With Duchon’s sophisticated singing on one side of me and Caruso’s golden tenor on the other, we would make musical history that night! Ha!

  Carmen sings one word toward the end of Escamillo’s aria—L’amour—and without any warm-up I gave it my sultriest reading. Du
chon raised an eyebrow at me and finished the aria. Everyone on stage broke into applause.

  Now, you’d think a man whose first bit of singing in a new house had been greeted with enthusiasm would at least say thank you, wouldn’t you? Not Duchon. Instead, he said a very peculiar thing: “Is there someone here who does not wish me to sing?”

  We all stared at him. “Monsieur?” Toscanini asked.

  “A door is open backstage,” the baritone barked. “Someone wants me to catch a chill and lose my voice!”

  The Met’s backstage was a drafty place; at one time or another we’d all complained about it to Gatti, who invariably responded with a what-can-I-do shrug. But for Duchon to claim the drafts were created specifically to get rid of him—oh dear. I hoped Duchon wasn’t going to be one of those people who think someone is out to get them all the time.

  Gatti tried to apologize for the drafts, but Duchon wouldn’t listen. So we all had to stand there and wait while Gatti sent a stagehand around to check the doors. When the man came back with the news that a door had indeed been left open, Duchon trumpeted, “You see? Someone does not wish me to sing!”

  Of all the conceit! As if he were the only one on the stage! But I held my tongue, and Toscanini called for the rehearsal to resume.

  Duchon and Caruso rehearsed the brief fight from the next act, with Toscanini marking the tempo for the piano accompanist. Finally, Duchon and I rehearsed the very brief duet we have in the last act. He sang twelve measures to me, I sang eight and a half measures back to him, and we sang the last three and a half measures together. Those three and a half measures are the only time in the entire opera when soprano and baritone sing simultaneously, so if our voices did not blend that didn’t mean the production would be ruined. But it was a nice moment in the opera and Toscanini was such a perfectionist and … well, I wanted us to sound good. Duchon and I finished our last je t’ aime and looked at our conductor.

  Toscanini smiled.

  It was all right, then; everything was all right. Toscanini was satisfied, Gatti-Casazza was satisfied, and Duchon declared himself satisfied. What he actually said was, “It will do for now.”

  Toscanini started to bristle but then checked himself. “If you get into trouble,” he told Duchon, “do not worry. I follow you.”

  “Now why don’t you ever say that to me?” I teased him.

  “Because I never know what you are going to do,” he replied humorlessly.

  The whole rehearsal had taken less than an hour, so there would still be time for a little rest and some vocalizing before the performance began. Duchon and I parted amicably enough; but when Toscanini and Gatti came face to face, they both averted their eyes and passed without speaking.

  Oh-oh. Trouble at the top?

  I heard a whisper in my ear. “Is good, the Duchon—yes?” I turned to see Uncle Hummy scuttling away.

  Scotti was waiting for me by the exit. “Well?” I asked him. “What do you think?”

  “I think he is an excellent French baritone,” the Italian said indifferently, thus consigning Duchon forever to the ranks of the also-ran.

  Back to normal.

  Carmen was the work that had originally convinced me I was destined to be an opera singer. It was the first opera I ever saw; my parents had taken me to hear the great Emma Calvé sing the role in Boston when I was still a schoolgirl. I left that theatre knowing what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

  And now Carmen was my opera, exclusively—at least, it was going to be. I hadn’t been singing it very long; some things have to be worked up to. The role of Carmen has been sung by sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, and contraltos; and all three voice ranges have had their problems with it. The role really is too high for the lusher-voiced contraltos; half of them end up shouting their top notes. I have the range, and fortunately my soprano has an almost mezzo quality to it (even the know-everything critics say so). So it truly is a good opera for me.

  It is one humdinger of a role. The tenor and the baritone have only one aria each, but Carmen has four. She also sings in the second-act quintet, in the third-act ensemble, and in the tense and violent duet that ends the opera. In addition, Carmen dances, plays the castanets, gets into a fight with one of the chorus women, gets arrested, escapes, joins a gang of smugglers, flirts with every man in sight, and dies dramatically on stage. Oh, it is a glorious role!

  The house was sold out. It always is, whenever Caruso and I sing—or did I mention that? Near curtain time Dr. Curtis came into my dressing room to examine my throat.

  “Hm,” he said, and waited. He liked to be asked.

  “Well?” I obliged. “How am I?”

  “Color is normal,” he said in that raspy voice that always made him sound hoarse, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re back to full health yet. Hold back tonight, Gerry. Don’t strain.”

  I laughed. “How in the world can I possibly hold back in Carmen? I’m on stage more than all the other principals put together, and everything I sing is of such high intensity that—”

  “Nevertheless, you must restrain yourself,” Dr. Curtis interrupted impatiently. “Gerry, I’ve known you ever since you were a young girl ready to set the opera world on fire, and even then you pushed too hard. It’s understandable in a girl of seventeen, but you don’t need to prove yourself now. Hold back. Show some restraint.”

  I made one of those sounds that can mean anything and started putting on my make-up.

  “Besides,” he rasped mischievously, “it’s Duchon they’re coming to hear tonight anyway.”

  When I threw a powder puff at him he left, chuckling, pleased with himself. While I was warming up I finished my make-up. I made a convincing-looking gypsy, I thought. At least, I looked good.

  It never fails to excite me, that moment of waiting offstage for the cue to make the first entrance. Caruso goes to pieces from nervousness, Amato always taps one foot impatiently, and Scotti, blasé creature that he is, lounges about casually as if stepping out on to an opera stage were no more extraordinary than mailing a letter. But as for me, I’m always raring to go. I heard my cue … and then the chorus was singing La voilà! There she is!

  And there I was, vamping my way around the stage, singing the Habanera, flirting outrageously with Don José (Caruso) while keeping one eye on Toscanini’s baton. I didn’t hold back a bit; I gave it everything I had. Two of Carmen’s four arias come in Act I, so by the first intermission I should know whether my voice would hold out for the rest of the performance or not. The applause at the end of the Habanera was thunderous; a nice way to start. I tossed a rose to Caruso and made my exit.

  By the time we were into the second act, I knew I was going to make it. My voice was strong and my energy high. I might pay for it tomorrow, but tonight would be glorious. Toscanini was pleased; he kept smiling and nodding to me from the podium. This was the act where the baritone made his first appearance, and the audience’s anticipation was running high; we could all feel it. American audiences had never heard Philippe Duchon, but they’d heard of him. I suppose they were wondering whether he would live up to his reputation or not.

  He did. He didn’t go for the youthful vigor most middle-aged baritones try to infuse into the role of the athletic toreador; instead he was suave and worldly and smooth as silk, and he brought the house down. After Duchon had finished knocking them dead, Caruso got his turn. I don’t know why Bizet put both the men’s arias into the same act instead of spacing them out, but he did. I was wondering how Caruso could possibly top Duchon, but I needn’t have worried.

  The way Caruso sang the Flower Song that night, it was enough to break your heart. The plaintiveness of his tone, the throb in his voice—they were perfect, neither overdone nor underplayed. When he’d finished I wanted to throw both arms around his neck and give him a big kiss, but of course I couldn’t. The action called for me to give him a lot of trouble instead, so I did. The applause at the end of the act was deafening; the audience was actually on its fe
et cheering at the end of the second act. Oh, we had a good one going that night!

  Riding high on that wave of audience enthusiasm, I took my courage in hand and went over to the men’s side to Duchon’s dressing room. I told him his Escamillo was magnificent and I considered it a privilege to sing with him.

  He hesitated, and then decided graciousness was the order of the evening. He thanked me and added, “I must say I was impressed by the fieriness of your performance. A strong Carmen, a very strong Carmen.”

  I’ve always found that mutual admiration enhances the performance of any opera enormously. So that was all right.

  Duchon and Caruso survived their third-act fight without mishap, the opening pageantry of the fourth act played itself out, and suddenly it was time for the final duet. I’d never been completely satisfied with the way Caruso and I did that duet. Oh, the singing was fine; we were both in control of the music. It was the acting that bothered me; I tried, but I didn’t get a whole lot of cooperation from my partner. (I dearly love Rico, but he is not the world’s greatest actor.) It just seemed to me that in a duologue sung at fever pitch, in which emotions run so high that one of the singers ends up killing the other, we ought to do more than stand there and wave our arms at each other. But the audience liked it; that night we could do no wrong.

  We all stood on stage grasping hands for our final curtain call, Caruso and I still sweating buckets from the exertions of the final duet, Duchon cool and immaculate. The bravas outnumbered the bravos (they always do for Carmen), and from the back of the auditorium I could hear “Geree, Geree” chanted in unison.

  “The gerryflappers are here,” Caruso said out of the side of his mouth.

  “I know.” Oh, you can be sure I knew! If Duchon noticed my unpaid claque at work, he gave no sign. Tonight was his American début, and he was making the most of it.

  Afterward we all wallowed in the good-natured pandemonium that reigns backstage after every successful performance. My maid Bella was waiting in the wings with my robe, protection against drafts and quickly drying perspiration. Duchon was laughing and talking easily with all the strangers who kept coming up to him; it’s amazing how quickly instant acceptance can bring a man out of himself. Gatti-Casazza was everywhere, talking a mile a minute. Even after years of both triumph and disaster in the opera world, Gatti could still get as excited as a child with a new toy when things went right.