OPERALAND Read online

  Musico Press

  New York

  © 2020 Ian Strasfogel All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  ISBN 978-1-09832-308-0 eBook 978-1-09832-309-7

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Roderick

  PART ONE: LEAVING GRAYSTONE

  Chapter One: Richie

  Chapter Two: Elizabeth

  Chapter Three: Richie

  Chapter Four: Kit

  Chapter Five: Richie

  Chapter Six: Rigby

  Chapter Seven: Richie

  Chapter Eight: Rigby

  Chapter Nine: Richie

  PART TWO: A PROFESSIONAL OPERA SINGER?

  Chapter One: Richie

  Chapter Two: Kit

  Chapter Three: Richie

  Chapter Four: Kit

  Chapter Five: Richie

  Chapter Six: Sami Tomi

  Chapter Seven: Richie

  Chapter Eight: Sami Tomi

  Chapter Nine: Richie

  Chapter Ten: Frau Rebecca Richartz

  Chapter Eleven: Richie

  Chapter Twelve: TJ

  Chapter Thirteen: Richie

  Chapter Fourteen: Toni

  Chapter Fifteen: Richie

  Chapter Sixteen: Kit

  Chapter Seventeen: Richie

  Prologue

  Roderick

  Naturally, I detested being in Calgary, and for Madame Butterfly, of all things, but Covent Garden had canceled my next production, I needed the money, and it was only three weeks of my time.

  Only. The production landed me squarely in the frozen core of the Canadian winter. Mind-numbing blizzards howled down the blank Calgary sidewalks, forcing everyone to take cover in the heated walkways that linked the downtown office buildings in a stiff embrace of steel and glass.

  If you’re an opera director like myself and merely doing a show to shore up shaky finances, then all you’re really looking for is ease of execution. You’re not planning to make history; you’re not challenging the sainted legacies of Stanislavsky or Giorgio Strehler; all you want is to fatten your bank account and catch up on your sleep. I barely slept a wink in Calgary.

  It began harmlessly enough. I was changing planes in Toronto when I saw a telltale blue score clutched under the arm of an overweight gentleman lining up for my flight. Lord, don’t let him be my leading man, that seductive devil Pinkerton. Needless to say, that’s precisely who he was.

  Despite my misgivings, I waved my score at the unsexy little man, and disguised my forebodings with some well-worn politesse. “Do we have a match?” I asked.

  He took one look at my score and exclaimed, “Whaddya know, Joe!”

  Naturally, I was startled. “And who, may I ask, is Joe?”

  “It’s just an expression, no big deal.” He extended his pudgy hand. “Hi, Richie Verdun, pleased to meet you. What part are you singing?”

  I explained I was his director, Roderick Cranbrook.

  “Oops, sorry, guess I should have known, but I’m pretty new at this game.”

  An understatement, if ever there was one. When the company had warned me that my Pinkerton would be a newcomer, I assumed they meant some smart young lad fresh out of Juilliard. In point of fact, the man flying with me to Calgary had never been to Juilliard, indeed, he’d barely heard of it. He evidently had been selling cars in the vast wasteland of the American Midwest and somehow or other convinced the good people of Calgary that he was the Pinkerton of their dreams. How or why, I’ll never understand. Singers normally start working professionally in their twenties, mid-thirties at the very latest. Here was Richard, well into middle age, coming straight out of nowhere to make his operatic debut as nothing less than the leading tenor in Madame Butterfly. I’d never heard of anything remotely comparable.

  His chances weren’t good. Opera is a special culture. Mastering it takes time, a great deal of time, especially for tenors, who usually are slower to develop than the others. It didn’t help that Richard looked impossibly out of place, traveling to his first engagement as a leading tenor clad in strip-mall attire, baggy chino pants, ill-fitting lumberjack shirt, a floppy brown parka that clashed with his jaunty blue baseball cap. True, it was 1983, and men’s fashion back then was often timid or stodgy. But the poor fellow seemed blissfully unaware that opera’s all about magic, elegance, eloquence. It’s the antithesis of ordinary, the polar opposite of drab.

  Not that he was vulgar, mind you. He was actually quite agreeable, charming even, in that hapless, harmless American manner that seems to beg incessantly for your affection. I’m British and normally cannot abide such fraudulent nonsense. We all know Americans are just as cutthroat and self-serving as anyone else, possibly even more so, but Richard seemed decent enough underneath all that cultural camouflage, genuinely modest and unthreatening. Almost absurdly eager to please.

  When we met at the airport, he was quite anxious about rehearsals. Atypically for me, I felt touched by his insecurity and resolved to feed him an oversized helping of mush: he shouldn’t worry; he’d have a wonderful time; it was just a gathering of friends; Puccini was our god, we all strove to serve him.

  After hearing my little sales pitch, Richard moved in so close that his round, balding head very nearly touched mine. “Roderick, are you shitting me?” He looked like a crazed court jester, Rigoletto’s wayward younger brother.

  “Richard, I assure you I’m not shitting you, as you so charmingly put it. I am just trying in my no doubt inadequate way to put you at your ease. We’re all in this together.”

  “Well, good, I’ll give it all I got.”

  He’d have to give plenty. His Butterfly, Polyna Ostrovsky, was an unrelenting trial. Her husband, Egon Kleinhaus, was hardly less so and he would be in the pit, molding, or, more likely, distorting the performance. Big houses wouldn’t hire him – he had none of his wife’s considerable ability – but provincial theaters had no choice. If they wanted La Polyna, Egon came mit. All in all, a less charming, more difficult couple would be hard to find, even in the contentious little world of opera.

  I’ll never forget the look on Polyna’s face when Richard ambled into that first rehearsal, smiling his weak little smile. She turned to me and asked, sotto voce, “Is that the janitor? Just kidding, mon cher.” I had explained in advance that Richard was sui generis. His voice was exceptional – everyone was excited about his future – but those of us who had the benefit of experience would have to be patient and help him along a bit. She professed the greatest willingness to be of service. “Caro Roderick, when have I ever refused anyone help?” I smiled politely and changed the subject.

  As Richard plodded towards us, Polyna’s voice glittered through the gloom of the rehearsal room. “Eccolo, il grande amore della mia vita.”

  “Sorry?” This produced considerable tittering at the outer edges of the room. Our leading tenor clearly had no Italian at all.

  That was the least of his problems. As the long day wore on, it soon became clear that Richard was an absolute, abject beginner, greener than grass, greener than limes, greener than broccoli. The simple instructions “stage right” and “stage left” confused him utterly. I would constantly remind him that stage right referred to the audience’s left, regardless of where he might be. He would nod eagerly and then troop off in the wrong direction. He had no concept of natural, relaxed acting. Indeed, his crude posturing hardly qualified as acting at all. As for his basic stage deportment, he slouched about like a browbeaten family retainer or a hapless bystander who had stumbled onto the scene, except for sudden bursts of oddly robotic strutting, as if some mechanical being had taken command of his tubby little body.

  His singing, on the other hand, was healthy and in tune. It didn’t have a trace of the Italianate warmth and beauty Puccini’s music really requires, but it certainly was hearty, so hearty that it sometimes obliterated Polyna’s lovely but febrile sound. She didn’t find this amusing, so in no time her husband, he of the long baton and short temper, was barking at Richard to sing more softly. This Richard couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do, which greatly increased the exasperation of the Ostrovsky-Kleinhaus axis. For my part, I felt that while Richard may have been inartistic at times – almost cloddish – he had a clear vocal presence and in opera that certainly counts for something.

  Clear voiced or not, Richard was profoundly unready for an important debut. Everyone at that dismal first rehearsal was painfully aware of it, except for dear dim Richard himself. He ignored or didn’t catch the increasingly exasperated grimaces people kept flashing in my direction. Instead, he played the earnest schoolboy, eager to learn, willing to change, grateful for any chance to repeat a difficult passage, amazed by our kind indulgence of his many deficiencies.

  As the rehearsal finally shuddered to its end, Egon took me aside and said, “This tenor is utterly impossible.”

  “He’s raw. He’s untrained. I’ll give him some private coaching.”

  “This will not help.”

  “I’m rather clever, you know. I think I can reduce some of his more grievous excesses.”

  “And the missed entrances, the lack of subtlety? What can you do about th
at?”

  “I rather thought that was your department, Egon.”

  “Na ja, but this man is so unmusical he doesn’t even keep the tempo.” Neither did Egon, but I chose not to mention it.

  “Come, come, it’s just a first rehearsal. Give him a chance; he’ll improve.”

  “Never in a million years, never in all eternity.”

  “Lieber Egon, where’s your native optimism?”

  “I don’t have any. I’m Viennese.” I may not have liked his awkward conducting, but I did rather enjoy his curdled sense of humor. I repeated that we really had to give the poor man a proper chance. Egon looked skeptical and Polyna, who had been hanging on our every word, started to wax poetic about her last Butterfly in Brussels where she was partnered by a gorgeous young Mexican, Jorge Alvarado, six feet tall, not yet thirty, with a voice as warm as the Neapolitan sun. “That’s all well and good, cara,” I said. “But it’s only our first rehearsal.”

  “Another one like this and we’re going,” she replied.

  “Going, as in canceling, leaving the show? What about your contracts?”

  “We didn’t sign on for amateur night. I can’t be expected to rehearse myself to death just to humor some shoe salesman.”

  “Cars, actually. He sells cars.”

  “That’s even worse. He pollutes that way the atmosphere,” said Egon. “He has absolutely no place in opera.”

  “Egon, we really have got to be patient.”

  “Warum?”

  “Signed contracts for one thing. Besides, Richard did seem to get a bit better near the end of rehearsal.”

  “Better doesn’t always mean good,” replied Polyna.

  “If you really feel that way, you should speak to management now, while there’s still time to find a replacement.”

  “Ach, that idiot Jennings, he doesn’t understand anything.” Egon had a point. Roger Jennings was hired as director of the Calgary Opera because he had helped a local grain storage company turn a profit. The board of trustees in their infinite wisdom thought he might do the same for the opera. They were soon disabused of that notion and stuck with a mediocre manager. “I worry that we bring this up with Jennings,” said Egon. “He finds us someone worse.”

  “That’s a real possibility, alas.”

  “So, what do we do?” asked Polyna.

  “How about this? We’ll focus on act two for the next few days, which doesn’t require the tenor, while I give Richard some intensive private coaching. Who knows? Maybe magic will strike.”

  “Or maybe not,” said Polyna.

  The prospect of private sessions with Richard filled me with dread. How on earth was I going to turn a bumbling middle-aged man into even a faint approximation of Puccini’s young lover?

  Richard resisted me every step of the way, not because he was arrogant or bloody minded, but because he was totally untrained. He had taken only singing and music lessons, not acting, not stage movement. And acting, easy as it might appear to the uninitiated, is a complex, evanescent discipline. It can’t be mastered overnight. I tried to convince Richard that acting was basically reacting, that all an actor really had to do was lose himself in the given situation and respond naturally to it, but that was beyond him. He kept reverting to posing and posturing. I longed – ached – for a brief instant of credible, lifelike behavior. In vain, alas, utterly in vain.

  Into my slough of despond, there did flicker a few feeble beams of light. Richard took rather well to practical tips. He could follow clear and simple instructions, as long as they stayed far away from such intangibles as “credible, lifelike behavior.” I got him to stop singing into the wings. He learned to angle himself so he seemed to be addressing his partner while projecting out to the public. He even abandoned those bewildering outbursts of robotic activity. After three days of hard work, he seemed a bit less raw and out of place. Was he an ardent young lover? Was he a convincing Pinkerton? Far from it.

  I had arranged to stage Richard’s third act aria on his return to regular rehearsals so as to keep Richard and Polyna apart a bit longer. While my cunning little plan avoided direct interaction with the dreaded diva herself, her husband was on hand and in excellent form. Within a short time, Richard’s musical insecurities brought everything to a standstill.

  “Nein, nein, nein. You are always coming in late.”

  “Maestro, sorry, but I couldn’t see my cue.”

  “Just count and come in automatic.”

  “I did.”

  “Then you count wrong. Come, we try again.”

  Yet once more Richard struggled to master his (very simple) entrance. Once more he failed. Once more Egon did what he does best.

  “Nein, nein, nein! I have of this enough.” With that, he slammed down his score and shot me a dark look. “I wait for you outside.” The air in the rehearsal room grew noticeably thicker as he stamped out and slammed the door.

  I put the company on break and followed Egon into the hallway. He was quite literally shaking with rage. “I tell you this man is impossible.”

  “Maybe it would help if you gave him clearer cues.”

  “I give him the cues. He does not look.”

  “The last few times you didn’t give him anything.”

  “What is the use? He looks but does not see. I go now to this Roger fellow. I have of the tenor enough. You come with me?”

  “I have no alternative.” Despite my earnest instructions, Richard remained raw and unfocused. I wasn’t running an opera training program; I was staging Madame Butterfly. Enough! Basta con questa pasta!

  Roger Jennings nervously greeted us at his door and ushered us into an unpretentious little office, as plain and bleak as the prairies. There was nothing on the walls to indicate he ran an opera company, no pictures of singers or composers, just some snapshots of the broad rolling farmlands of central Canada.

  “I gather you’ve been having some problems with the tenor.”

  “That’s rather an understatement,” I said.

  “I don’t get it. He gave me a great audition. He sang the hell outta his aria.”

  “Just now we rehearse it. He comes in wrong every time. He is total impossible.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Not as sorry as we are,” I said. Roger looked away and started toying with some pencils on his desk.

  “There is here really a problem,” said Egon.

  “A very serious one,” I added.

  “But we have already the solution.”

  “We do?” I asked. Evidently Egon and La Polyna had not been idle these past few days.

  “Jawohl. This wonderful Mexican tenor Jorge Alvarado has sung Pinkerton many times already in Spain and Italy. He is free for the performances.”

  “What about rehearsals?” I asked. I had been down that dark road before. A lead is indisposed and a replacement rushes in to save the show, thereby destroying the director’s conception, since there isn’t time for adequate rehearsal.

  “Nein, nein, I think of you, Roderick, very carefully. He can be here the beginning of next week.” That would give us two full weeks together – more than time enough. I’d heard nice things about Signor Alvarado and not just from the Ostrovsky-Kleinhaus mafia. It seemed our problem was solved.

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Roger. “It sounds like a pretty expensive proposition.” What else do managers ever say?

  “This you decide for yourself,” said Egon, “But Madame Ostrovsky and I will not work with this nincompoop. If you do not replace him, we pack our bags and go home.”

  “But you signed your contracts.”

  “Sorry, we do not come to Calgary to make a joke.”

  I must say I was rather impressed. It’s true they had signed contracts, but opera isn’t a business. It’s art, or something rather like it.

  Trapped in his seat of power, Roger struggled with Egon’s threat. A new Butterfly, especially one of Polyna’s stature, would be extremely difficult to find at this late date.

  Egon kept admirably calm as Roger squirmed. “Here are the contacts for Alvarado’s agent,” he said. “This Verdun is a nice fellow, but Puccini comes first.”

  Roger still said nothing. Clearly, he’d never faced this sort of crisis before. Another beginner. Lord, would we ever get this show on stage?