Prima Donna at Large

by Barbara Paul

  At that moment I decided to break my promise to Osgood Springer. I’d told him I’d speak to Gatti about a major role for Jimmy Freeman next season, and that I’d do it right after the performance. But the moment wasn’t right; Gatti was so full of Philippe Duchon’s successful début that broaching the subject of Jimmy’s future right then would have been a tactical error. I’d wait until Gatti had come down from his cloud, say another day or two.

  “Bella divina, incantatrice!” a familiar voice sang out, and Scotti was there, smothering me with hugs and compliments. “Your best Carmen yet!” he cried. “A perfect Carmen, Gerry—you must stop this immediately, I cannot tolerate perfection in others! What say you, Maestro? Is she not perfect this evening?”

  Toscanini oozed his way through the crowd and lifted my hand to his lips. “Perfect,” he said, his eyes glittering. “I can no longer imagine any other singer in the role.” Oh, he can be a charmer when he wants to.

  Scotti went over to pound Caruso on the back. I asked Toscanini, “What do you think of Duchon?”

  “Magnificent resonance,” he said. “Like a church bell. And his precision is exquisite. A most interesting Escamillo.”

  I nodded. “Gatti pulled off a real coup, signing him so quickly like that.”

  Toscanini sniffed. “A matter of luck. Duchon falls into his hands.”

  Belatedly I remembered how he and Gatti had avoided speaking to each other that afternoon and was about to ask if something was wrong when High Society descended upon us. The crème of New York’s social world, Mrs. This and Mr. That, half of them tone deaf and all of them wearing enough diamonds and rubies and emeralds to finance several seasons of Met productions. But I was polite and charming to everybody, de rigueur for opera singers.

  Caruso entertained the crowd by coming over and giving me a big wet kiss. “Is she not glorious tonight?” he asked the world at large. Back to me: “I and you and Scotti, we go eat supper, yes? Del Pezzo’s.”

  Oh dear. Pasta. “Supper, yes,” I said, “Del Pezzo’s, no.”

  Toscanini spoke up. “What is wrong with Del Pezzo’s?” He turned to Caruso. “I invite myself to accompany you.”

  Caruso was delighted (he almost always is). Scotti was informed of our plans; I wondered if he’d spoken to Duchon but didn’t want to ask him in front of the others. The crowd backstage showed no sign of thinning out, so Caruso made the first move by going upstairs to his dressing room. I left Scotti and Toscanini talking together and was about to start up the stairs myself when I saw Emmy Destinn striding purposefully toward me. Emmy! What was she doing here tonight?

  “Gerry, I have something I want to say to you,” she announced in that alarmingly direct way of speaking she had. “You are the best Carmen I have ever heard. I have heard a lot of Carmens, and you are the best one. There, I’ve said it.”

  Oh, how I hate it when she does things like that! I have never, never gone backstage after one of her performances and told her she was the best Aïda or whatever that I have ever heard. Prima donnas just don’t say things like that to each other! And she meant it—she truly meant it, I didn’t doubt that for one moment. I was used to handling a barrage of excited and exaggerated compliments, but all this truthful earnestness was another matter altogether. Someone should teach that woman the value of a little well-timed insincerity.

  I thanked her; what else could I do? We chatted about the performance a few minutes, but Emmy’s eyes kept straying over to Philippe Duchon. Finally she said, “He is good, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is,” I answered. “And Emmy, he didn’t even try to upstage me. Not once.”

  She nodded. “On his good behavior. But now that he’s proved himself, he’ll start showing his true colors. Watch out for him, Gerry. He’s trouble.”

  I appreciated the warning and took it to heart. On impulse, I invited Emmy to join us for supper. “The men want to go to Del Pezzo’s,” I added, hoping for an ally.

  “Oh good,” she smiled. “I like Del Pezzo’s.”

  Grrr. I tried to convince her Sherry’s would be a better place to go; there was nothing wrong with Del Pezzo’s, but it wasn’t very elegant. Besides, Italian food is so fattening. Emmy was wavering—but then an enormous thud sounded and at almost the same time someone screamed. We both jumped.

  I looked over to see where one end of a roller curtain had come crashing down to the stage. Sprawled out on the stage floor not more than a couple of feet away was Philippe Duchon, a look of absolute terror on his face. We all stood thunderstruck for a moment; then everyone dashed over to Duchon. He was all right, just scared out of his wits. “Someone … someone tried to kill me!” he cried.

  “Oh no, Monsieur Duchon!” Gatti-Casazza gasped, helping the baritone to his feet. “It is merely accident! You are not hurt?”

  Outrage was quickly replacing Duchon’s fear. “I could have been killed! Look at that curtain!”

  The roller curtain was a sight: one end still hoisted up high over the stage, the other end resting on the stage floor. We all fussed over Duchon, trying to calm him down. “I am devastated that such a thing happens,” Gatti apologized. “Are you certain you are not hurt?”

  “I tell you someone tried to kill me!” Duchon shouted. “That was no accident! Someone does not want me here!”

  I couldn’t see any stagehands in the immediate vicinity. The roller curtain was painted blue and was used as a backdrop to represent the sky. The curtain was operated by two ropes that ran from the floor through two overhead pulleys, then down to the points where they were attached at either end of the roller. Stagehands would pull on the free ends of the ropes to raise and turn the roller at the same time, thus winding the curtain material around the roller.

  The operating lines were tied off to cleats in the stage floor, and I looked around until I found the one used for the fallen end of the roller. The rope was there, one end firmly lashed about the cleat—but the rest of it lay limply on the stage floor. I picked up the end of the rope and examined it, while Duchon went on insisting that the roller curtain had been dropped deliberately.

  “Monsieur Duchon!” I called. “Will you come here, please? There’s something here you should see.” He came, reluctantly. I showed him the end of the rope. “See, it’s old and frayed. The rope should have been replaced long ago. But it has not been cut. It simply broke. It was an accident, Monsieur—no one has tried to harm you.”

  He took the rope from me and examined the end, looking for signs of a knife blade. He found none. He whirled toward Gatti and started lambasting him for allowing unsafe equipment to be used backstage. Gatti apologized.

  Duchon’s close call had put an end to the festive air backstage. I hurried upstairs and changed, and by the time I got back down the stagehands had attached a new rope to the roller curtain and pulled it back up to its place in the flies.

  The others were all ready to go. Caruso, who was a walking advertisement for good eating, announced he was in imminent danger of starving to death. Toscanini, who was thin to the point of emaciation, declared he really wasn’t all that hungry and would be satisfied with something to drink. Emmy backed up Caruso but suggested Sherry’s instead of Del Pezzo’s. Scotti draped a friendly arm about her shoulders and started explaining to her the superior merits of Italian cuisine. We still hadn’t reached an agreement when we went out the stage door, where a mob of fans greeted us—most of whom were screeching “Geree! Geree!”

  Scotti and Caruso got almost as much enjoyment out of the gerryflappers as I did. For one thing, they were all girls in their late teens or early twenties, and that alone was enough to hold the interest of those two Italian lovers. The girls pushed up against me—not looking for autographs, just wanting to talk, to be a part of what was going on. In the vanguard, as usual, were Mildredandphoebe. Since you never saw one without the other, it was hard not to think of them as one person, Mildredandphoebe. Phoebe was a sort of lower-case personality anyway; it was Mildred who was the leader.
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br />   Those two were my most ardent fans (well, my most ardent female fans). They came to every performance I gave, kept scrap-books about my career, wrote a newsletter about me that they circulated to other fans, collected souvenirs, and were always, always there. They wanted to know everything about me. Occasionally I left tickets for them at the box office, but tonight they’d stood at the back of the auditorium during the entire performance.

  “You were just wonderful, Miss Farrar!” Mildred cried. “I could hardly breathe, you were so wonderful!”

  “Just wonderful!” Phoebe echoed.

  “I never heard anything like it,” Mildred rushed on, “I’ve got to tell you, it was, oh, it was an experience for me tonight!”

  “An experience,” Phoebe nodded.

  I really liked this part of it; Mildredandphoebe could always be counted on to provide me the opportunity to play Queen Geraldine, graciously acknowledging the adulation of a grateful public. It was fun. I assumed my most regal manner and chatted with them a while (Scotti says I put on a British accent for such occasions). One of the other gerryflappers had cornered Toscanini, who was looking around desperately for an escape route. He was not very good at small talk.

  “Howja like the Frenchman?” Mildred wanted to know.

  “Monsieur Duchon?” I said. “I think he made a most auspicious Metropolitan début and I look forward to singing with him again.” Mildredandphoebe scribbled in the notebooks they carried with them everywhere, an item for the next newsletter.

  “I die!” Caruso cried.

  I laughed and told the gerryflappers we had to go. “Thank you all for coming, all of you, thank you. But we’re tired and we’re hungry, and we want to get something to eat.”

  “Where are you going?” Mildredandphoebe asked. They wanted to know everything about me.

  That traitorous Emmy Destinn ended up siding with the men and I was overwhelmingly outvoted. We went to Del Pezzo’s.

  4

  It was my manager, Morris Gest, who brought me the bad news about Pasquale Amato.

  “Doc Curtis says bronchitis,” Morris told me. “But I think it’s pneumonia.”

  That was Morris, all right—a know-everything. “What makes you think that?” I asked.

  “The way the doc talked. He seemed more worried than you’d think he’d be, over just a case of bronchitis.”

  “There’s no such thing as ‘just’ a case of bronchitis for a singer,” I said sharply. But pneumonia or bronchitis, it was still bad news. Amato would be out longer than anyone had counted on. Poor Pasquale. Poor us.

  “Gatti-Casazza doesn’t have all the schedule worked out yet,” Morris went on, “but I think you’d better get used to the idea of singing Madame Sans-Gêne with a house baritone. Duchon won’t learn the role. Gatti said so himself.”

  I can’t say I was surprised. Madame Sans-Gêne is the soprano’s opera, with all the other parts more or less orbiting around her role. Amato was amiable enough and secure enough to sing the baritone part without fearing loss of stature, but I didn’t think Duchon was cut from the same cloth. He was too used to being center stage; even Escamillo in Carmen was a lesser effort for him.

  “Sorry I missed your Carmen the other night,” Morris said sheepishly. “Everybody’s saying it was great. But the Old Man had scheduled a family gathering that night and, well, you know how it is.”

  I knew. Morris was a little intimidated by his father-in-law—whom he never referred to by name, only as the Old Man. Morris Gest had been my manager for some years now; he was an aggressive man who’d started out as a ticket scalper and then gone on to bigger and better things. Morris had one of those rubbery faces that can be absolutely trustworthy one minute and downright conniving the next. But as long as his conniving face was put on in the service of my career, I didn’t mind. He took a little getting used to, but he was a good manager. I think he was afraid of nothing at all in the world except possibly the aforementioned father-in-law, a soft-spoken man who loved controlling other people, including Morris Gest. Interesting relationship there.

  Morris had come to my apartment to work out some details of a Friday morning musicale at the Biltmore he’d scheduled me into, but the mention of Duchon had set him thinking. “What do you know about that tour the Frenchman’s come for? Where does he go from here?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I believe Gatti mentioned it was a last-minute thing. Duchon probably doesn’t have the details worked out yet.”

  Morris started grinning, and I could almost see the dollar signs in his eyes. “You mean he doesn’t have a manager?”

  “Morris, it’s a fund-raising tour. For Alsatian war relief. There’s no profit to be made.”

  “Sure, sure. But there’s such a thing as good will, you know. I help him a little now, he helps me a lot later. Besides, he’ll have to sing a few times for himself, won’t he? To cover expenses?”

  If there was any way to make some money out of Duchon’s fund-raising tour, Morris was the one to find it. “Well, good luck,” I said, meaning it; Philippe Duchon and Morris Gest should make an interesting combination. “But remember he’s committed to stay in New York until Amato is back on his feet.”

  He shrugged. “It’ll take a while to get things set up.” He got up to go. “Say, is there a back way out of this building? I had to work my way through a bunch of gerryflappers to get in here.”

  “Where—out front?”

  “Yep. What do they do, just hang around hoping you’ll come out?”

  I shook my head in amazement; those girls had some sort of sixth sense about these things. “As a matter of fact, I’m going to be leaving for a luncheon engagement in a few minutes. But I don’t know how they knew about it.”

  “Yeah? Who you having lunch with?” Morris was never shy.

  “No one you know,” I lied. I told him how to find the tradesmen’s entrance and ushered him out. I didn’t want him to know I was meeting Philippe Duchon; Morris would pester me to put in a good word for him, or—even worse—invite himself along.

  The invitation from Duchon had been a complete surprise; it arrived in the form of a note carried by a handsome young valet who spoke no English. I wondered what the baritone wanted. We had a rehearsal scheduled that afternoon, and Duchon had timed the luncheon so we’d have about half an hour to talk after eating. So whatever it was couldn’t be too important; nothing of significance ever gets said in thirty minutes.

  I wrapped up warm against the cold. Out front were a dozen or so girls shivering in the winter weather. Mildredandphoebe were not among them; these girls turned out to be neophyte gerryflappers because they asked for autographs, something the old-timers no longer did. These new girls had a tendency to hang back, too unsure of themselves to start a conversation with an opera star. So I started the conversation, chatting a few minutes before I got into the limousine. Never neglect your public. Never.

  Duchon had selected Delmonico’s, on East Forty-fourth Street, probably the most famous restaurant in New York City. (Right across the street was Sherry’s, which I would have preferred.) My host was already there, rising quickly from the table when he saw me come in. Duchon was a new celebrity in town and I was a well-established one, and between the two of us we captured every eye in the place. I followed the smiling maître d’ across the room (not too fast), and this time Duchon did take my hand. When he gave a low Gallic bow, a most satisfying murmur ran through the restaurant.

  We ordered, both of us eating light because we had several hours of hard singing ahead of us. Toscanini had called a brush-up rehearsal of the middle two acts of Carmen with full orchestra. The Maestro had made it clear that the rehearsal was not solely for the benefit of Duchon; the rest of us, he said, were getting a bit ragged. Hmph.

  When we’d finished eating and were lingering over coffee, Duchon finally got to the point. “I want to apologize,” he said, “for my boorish behavior when first we met. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, Miss Far
rar.”

  “Call me Gerry.”

  “And you must call me Philippe. I can only plead ignorance as an excuse. I did not understand how distinguished a colleague I was speaking to. I hope you will forgive me.”

  Meaning that if I were a nobody, rudeness was permissible? “Of course I forgive you, Philippe. Think no more about it.” There, wasn’t that gracious of me?

  “Ah, merci, Gerry,” he smiled. He had a nice smile. “Nevertheless, I feel I owe you some explanation.”

  “You don’t have to explain anything.”

  “But I wish to explain. I can’t have the beautiful and gifted Geraldine Farrar telling everyone what a boor Philippe Duchon is.”

  Protecting himself. “Very well, I’m listening.”

  “You must understand that I have had experiences you have never been through—experience with the Germans, I mean to say. Americans are wonderfully innocent people. Your country has never been invaded, for instance. Your childhood was not destroyed by soldiers killing and burning and destroying everything in their path, is this not true? You cannot understand the suffering of those who lost everything because of Germans.”

  He made the word sound obscene. I also got the impression that he was sneering at me, because I had not been subjected to the same abuses he had. Tactless he might be, but his anguish was real so I merely said, “Tell me what happened.”

  “You may know that Alsace is my homeland. That is, it was my homeland, when I was a boy. The Germans came when I was fourteen, during something the politicians dignified by calling it the Franco-Prussian War. It was a rape. They killed my father and took our land. They violated my mother and my sister, and the only reason I was allowed to live was that they wanted someone to take care of their horses for them. My mother and I eventually escaped to Paris, but to this day I do not know what happened to my sister. The Germans simply stole Alsace from France. And the rest of the world stood by and let it happen.”