Prima Donna at Large

by Barbara Paul

  Oh, the poor man! No wonder he was so unforgiving toward anything German. Who wouldn’t be, after that? I thought of saying something about soldiers in wartime turning into beasts or that to forgive was divine, but it was so embarrassingly inadequate that I ended up saying nothing.

  “And now they’re doing it again,” he continued bitterly. “Only this time they will be content with nothing less than all of France. It is happening again, but on an even bigger scale than before.”

  “But this time the rest of the world isn’t just standing by and watching. The English—”

  “The English are helping, yes. But they are not enough. Only the Americans are strong enough to tip the scales. But you shilly-shally, you hold back! Does the war have to be fought on your own soil before it means anything to you?”

  I was slightly taken aback. “Well, everyone is saying it’s only a matter of time—”

  “Time, time! There is no time! How many Frenchmen must die while you take the time to make up your minds?” Suddenly he recollected himself and made a visible effort to calm down. He sat in silence for a few moments and then said, “Ma chère Gerry—again I beg your forgiveness. I know you still have ties to Germany and must feel torn by what is happening. But you must understand that where the Germans are concerned, I am incapable of objectivity. I beg your indulgence.”

  I reassured him the best I could. It occurred to me that a lot of Europeans must see us the way Duchon did—fat, rich Americans unwilling to exert themselves to help people in trouble. On impulse I said, “Your fund-raising tour—would a joint concert help, do you think? You and I together?”

  His eyes gleamed. “You volunteer to help? The Alsatian war relief?”

  “Certainly. I’d be glad to help. What do you think?”

  He laughed in relief. “I did not quite dare to ask … I was hoping … ah, yes, yes! I think a joint concert will be most helpful, and an exquisite experience for me as well. I thank you from the bottom of my heart, lovely Gerry. You are a very generous lady.”

  Yes I was, wasn’t I? “I’ll have Morris come see you, then. Morris Gest, my manager. He can arrange matters for us, if that’s satisfactory with you.” There, I’d come up with a legitimate reason for Morris to meet with Duchon; he should love me for that.

  “I am certain that will be most satisfactory.” For the last few minutes Duchon had kept glancing over my right shoulder at someone or something behind be. “Excuse me, Gerry, but do you know that young man over there?”

  I turned and looked. And there was Jimmy Freeman, sitting at a table by the wall and looking like an earthquake about to happen. He was tensed up and sitting sideways to his table with his fists pressing against his knees. He glowered openly at our table. I told Duchon he was a member of the opera company.

  “Ah.” Duchon looked amused. “And a young admirer, no doubt? He is coming over.”

  Then Jimmy was standing by our table, and before I could make any introductions he said to Duchon, “So, it’s not enough that you steal my role! Now you steal my girl as well!”

  Duchon’s eyebrows shot up. “Your girl?”

  “Your girl!” I echoed. Don’t laugh, I told myself. Don’t laugh at him.

  “That’s right, my girl,” Jimmy persisted with slightly shaky bravado. “You come here and you take whatever you want—first Escamillo and now Gerry. You have your nerve!” I was astonished; Jimmy never called me by my first name.

  “Just a minute, young man.” Duchon stood up. “In the first place, I do not even know who you are. Your name is …?”

  “Freeman,” the younger man said loudly. “James Freeman. Remember it, old man!”

  Oh dear. This was my shy, stammering, insecure young Jimmy Freeman? Duchon was in his late fifties; I wondered how he liked being called old man.

  He didn’t like it at all. “You forget yourself, sir,” he bristled. “We are in a public place, and you are embarrassing the lady.”

  “She doesn’t look embarrassed to me. Go home, Duchon. It’s time you stepped aside and made room for younger men.”

  Duchon’s face darkened. “How dare you talk to me like that, you impudent young wh, wh, wh …?”

  “Whippersnapper?” I suggested.

  “Whippersnapper, oui, thank you. I suggest you leave, young man, before I forget I am a gentleman. Or shall I summon the maître d’hôtel and have you escorted out?”

  The two of them stood there glaring at each other. In addition to the authority of his years, Duchon towered over Jimmy, his big head and body dwarfing his adversary. Jimmy was of normal size, but he’d never looked younger or more insubstantial. It occurred to me that everyone in Delmonico’s could tell what was going on just by looking at our little tableau. I placed my hand at the base of my throat and raised my head; thank God for a good profile.

  By then the maître d’ was there, and he quickly hustled Jimmy out of the restaurant. Actually Jimmy let himself be hustled out; I suspect he didn’t know how to resolve the little drama he’d started. Before Duchon could sit back down, I said, “We might as well leave too. It’s almost time for rehearsal.”

  He nodded agreement, still miffed. “What did he mean, I stole his role from him? It was my understanding I was replacing Pasquale Amato.”

  “I’ll explain when we get out of here. Shall we go?” I led the way, being careful not to hurry. We were the injured party; why should we beat a hasty retreat? Poor Jimmy, whatever could have gotten into him? Every eye in the place was on Duchon and me as we left; I couldn’t see Duchon because he was behind me, but I know I was the very picture of dignified innocence.

  Nothing like a lively little scene to brighten up the day.

  About an hour later, I was seriously thinking of murder.

  “The tempo is wrong, wrong, wrong!” I screamed for about the hundredth time.

  “The tempo is right, right, right!” Toscanini screamed back. “It is you who are wrong, Miss all-American prima donna!”

  I took a deep breath. “Now you listen to me, you musical Napoleon. It’s. Too. Fast. Do you understand? It’s too fast!”

  “Oh, I see.” The Maestro put down his baton and folded his arms. “Bizet does not know what he is doing when he writes a tempo animato in the score? I do not know what I do when I conduct animato? All these fine gentlemen in the orchestra, they do not know what animato means? Only her highness Geraldine Farrar knows the correct tempo?”

  “The orchestra does what you tell them to do,” I snapped. “And if Bizet were here he would weep when he heard what you’re doing to his music!”

  “Ah, yes, the orchestra does what I tell them to do! An example certain sopranos would be well-advised to follow!” He picked up his baton. “We try again.”

  “Coraggio,” Caruso whispered to me from the wings.

  I muttered under my breath and went back to my place on the stage. We were rehearsing Act II and it was Carmen’s Gypsy Song that was the bone of contention between Toscanini and me. The aria starts off fast and then gets faster. But it wasn’t the music that was causing trouble; it was the words. The Gypsy Song has some real tongue-twisters in it; if I could just go la-la-la I could sing it as fast as the Maestro wanted. But lines like Les Bohémiens à tour de bras de leurs instruments faisaient rage simply cannot be sung at the tempo Toscanini was setting. I’d explained this to him a dozen times, but all he ever did was shrug and say something like “Ah yes, French—it is not a reasonable language.”

  We tried again. I got through it somehow, but neither Toscanini nor I was satisfied with the result. But that epitome of Italian ego in the orchestra pit decided we couldn’t spend any more time on Gypsy Song and should go on to the next part. Gatti-Casazza was in the auditorium watching, listening; but he never interfered in rehearsal, never. That’s probably why he and Toscanini had made such a good team for so long.

  Almost immediately it was time for the toreador to do his turn. Act II takes place in an inn, but we were rehearsing without sets. Onstage we
re a number of singers playing army officers and gypsies; offstage left a men’s chorus waited to follow the baritone on when he made his entrance. But Philippe Duchon was standing upstage center; and when the orchestra played his cue, he simply walked straight downstage and started to sing. Two or three of the men’s chorus hurried on from the left and looked at Toscanini uncertainly.

  The Maestro rapped his baton; the orchestra trailed off. “Monsieur Duchon, you see our stage set only once and you forget. Escamillo enters from the left—you see the chorus waiting offstage to the left?”

  “I see, and I do not forget,” Duchon replied stiffly. “I am accustomed to making my entrance from upstage center. I do not like coming in from a corner.”

  “But Monsieur,” Toscanini said patiently, “the set has no door there. It is impossible to enter from upstage center. You come in from the left.”

  “No, I come in from upstage center,” the baritone answered just as patiently. “You will have a door put in the set.”

  Everyone on stage stared at him. I’ve had my own say about the Metropolitan’s stage sets on occasion, but to demand that a set be rebuilt two-thirds of the way through the season—well, I’d never heard the like before.

  “It cannot be done,” Toscanini said waspishly.

  “It must be done,” Duchon thundered. “You will have a door put in the set, and you will do so before the next performance!”

  You could almost see the steam coming out of Toscanini’s ears; nobody spoke to him like that, absolutely nobody. He let loose a stream of Italian invective that would have withered a lesser man than Duchon.

  Then Duchon did an unforgivable thing: He went over Toscanini’s head. “Mr. Gatti?” he called to the general manager, who’d been sitting quietly through all the uproar. “You will see that a door is installed in the back flat of the set, please?” That was doubly insulting to the conductor, for Toscanini saw himself as the man who truly ran the Metropolitan Opera while Gatti-Casazza just tended to money matters and mundane things like that.

  Then all three of them were jabbering at once, and before long Gatti and Toscanini were shouting at each other—which made no sense, because as far as I could tell they were in agreement: no new door. Caruso wandered out on to the stage from the wings and announced, “I have a suggestion.”

  “No!” everybody roared.

  He shrugged and went back to the wings.

  While Toscanini and Gatti were still arguing, Duchon came over to where I was sitting at a table downstage right. “The Gypsy Song, it is not easy to sing. But if you took fewer breaths you could manage it better. After rehearsal I will give you a breathing exercise you can practice.” He gave me a quick smile and walked away.

  I was so astounded I couldn’t say a word at first. Emmy Destinn was right; the man wanted to run everything. I jumped to my feet and shrieked, “There’s nothing wrong with my breath control!”

  Toscanini broke off his argument with Gatti to stare at me, puzzled. “I do not say anything is wrong with your breath control.”

  “Not you. Him!” I pointed accusingly at the offending baritone.

  “So!” Toscanini fumed at Duchon. “Now you are directing my singers for me as well?”

  “I merely make a helpful suggestion,” Duchon replied calmly.

  “No suggestions permitted!” a tenor voice sang out from offstage.

  Duchon lifted his upper lip in a soundless sneer as he turned to walk away—and fell over a chair. A dozen hands reached out to help him up, but he waved them off. “Who put that chair there?” he shouted. “It was not there a minute ago!” He got back to his feet. “I asked a question and I expect an answer. Who put that chair there?”

  “There are chairs all over the stage,” I snapped. “Watch where you’re going.”

  “That chair was not in that place before,” Duchon said icily. “Someone just now put it there. To trip me.”

  “Oh, Monsieur!” Gatti sighed. “No one wants to trip you. You mistake.”

  “Did you hope I’d fall and crack my head open?” Duchon demanded of the stage at large. “Is that what you had in mind?”

  “Ridicolo,” Toscanini muttered.

  “You would not find it ridiculous if it happened to you, Maestro! And Mr. Gatti-Casazza—you will have a new door put into the set! I insist!”

  “Monsieur Duchon,” Gatti said worriedly, “the budget, it has no money for building new sets, you understand?”

  “Then you must find the money somewhere,” Duchon replied implacably.

  Toscanini got a wicked gleam in his eye. “Monsieur,” he said in the sweetest manner imaginable, “if you persuade Mr. Gatti to spend the money for a new door, I have no objection.”

  Oh, that was naughty. Gatti was a notorious penny-pincher; he would lose an arm rather than spend money on a singer’s whim, even when that singer was Philippe Duchon. Toscanini had just made it Gatti’s battle instead of his own. Duchon didn’t know it, but he didn’t have a chance of winning this one.

  Gatti stared at Toscanini with murderous dislike, and the conductor returned the look glare for glare. There really was bad feeling growing between the two men, and ultimately that could cause more trouble than anything Duchon might do. “Can we get on with the rehearsal?” I asked.

  “Not until we settle the matter of the door.” Duchon dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

  He dismissed me. With a wave of his hand! “Maestro,” I said angrily, “who is in charge here?”

  Before Toscanini could answer, Gatti said, “Gerry, please, do not be angry. I am sure Monsieur Duchon is simply trying to achieve the best production possible—”

  “Why are you siding with him?” I demanded. “Don’t you understand it’s your job he’s after?”

  And then I realized what I’d said. Gatti turned white, Toscanini snickered, and Duchon shot me a look that told me our previously friendly entente was now at an undeniable end. There was no way to unsay what I’d said, so I just sat back down at my table and waited. Gatti recovered quickly enough and informed our imperious baritone that there would be no door installed in the set for him, and that he would have to make do with a stage-left entrance.

  “In that case,” Duchon said, “I do not rehearse.” He turned to go.

  “Monsieur!” Gatti cried. “You sign a contract!”

  “And I intend to honor it,” Duchon nodded. “I will sing every performance I am contracted for. But I do not rehearse.” And with that, he walked off the stage and out of the opera house.

  An absolutely dead silence fell. Everyone avoided looking at everyone else. Then Caruso said from his place in the wings, “I think he means it.”

  Nothing like stating the obvious to relieve the tension a little. Toscanini became all business, deciding what we would rehearse next, issuing orders, snapping at people, being Toscanini. Gatti resumed his seat in the auditorium, but he looked a little shaken and kept pulling at his beard in distress. I wished I had kept my mouth shut. Duchon had indeed lost the management of his own opera house because of the war and undoubtedly was looking for a replacement, but I shouldn’t have said anything about it. Not here, not under these circumstances.

  Caruso finally got to come out of the wings. Once on stage, he started acting the clown, trying to lighten the mood. While I was doing my dance with the castanets, he made all sorts of improper remarks that normally would have had me in stitches. And when he knelt at my feet to sing the Flower Song he kept tickling my ankle. But the Caruso magic just wasn’t working; when rehearsal finally ended, everyone left in a sour mood.

  I was stopped on my way out by a shabby figure that materialized out of the shadows backstage. “The Duchon wrong,” he said earnestly. “You not listen.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, Uncle Hummy, I have no intention of listening. You were here the whole time?”

  He nodded vigorously. “Here since last night.”

  That stopped me. “You spent the night in the opera house?”
<
br />   A look of alarm grew on his face. “Tell Mr. Gatti?”

  “No, I’m not going to tell anybody. But I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Uncle Hummy. Maybe you’d better not do it again.” He looked so distressed I added, “Well, maybe you’d better not tell anybody, I mean.”

  He understood; his thin lips stretched back in a big grin. He bobbed his head and mumbled something I didn’t understand and shuffled off to whatever niche he’d staked out for himself.

  When I got home I telephoned Emmy Destinn. “You’re right,” I said. “He’s a monster.”

  She knew right off whom I meant. “What did he do?”

  So I told her everything that had happened at rehearsal—Duchon’s demand that a door be installed upstage center, his insulting suggestion about my breath control, his walking out of rehearsal. I even told her my own imprudent remark about Duchon’s wanting Gatti-Casazza’s job.

  “You know, I was wondering about that,” Emmy said. “Duchon is so overbearing—he just has to run things. He is not a man to take the loss of his own opera house lying down.”

  “You think I’m right, then?”

  “Probably.” She giggled. “You may have sabotaged him a little, though, bringing it out into the open like that. He truly did just walk out of rehearsal?”

  “He truly did.”

  “Sure of himself, isn’t he? One performance in this country, and already he is dictating terms.”

  “Well, he thinks he has Gatti over a barrel. As long as Pasquale Amato is out, Duchon can pretty much do as he pleases.”

  “He must not know about Jimmy Freeman, then.”

  “Ah, but he does!” I told her about our encounter with Jimmy in Delmonico’s.

  “You’ve had a busy day,” Emmy remarked.

  When I’d hung up, I sat and thought about Philippe Duchon. At the time we left the restaurant, we’d been friendly if not actual friends. But that was over now, little as it was. Now we were all going to have to go into our next performance with a baritone who refused to rehearse and with all the ill-will such presumptuousness generated. The man’s behavior was unpardonable. Duchon seemed to have forgotten that Carmen was the woman’s opera; he should have taken his cue from me.