The Voice of Christ
The Catholic Online Magazine
“ Opera can be very funny !
“ I had a vanderful foizzzz, but also zat incrrrredifle intelligenzzz
to know how to use it ! ”
( This is the heavily accented phrase that a great German
teacher told me - a few
minutes before my first lesson - when I was studying Voice
Technique with him: I couldn’t mumble a
word, so amazed - and also amused I was by his extrovert
egomania )
As this great artist was my teacher
and I appreciate him very much ( and he is a charming man, too ) I
will not mention his name, but the quote above shows clearly the
uncontrollable vanity of some singers of a bygone era. I
do not think that anybody , except Our Lord, can judge an opera
singer’s pride,
because much of this behaviour is proportioned to the enormous
pressure that an artist of this style of music must resist
before, during and after performances.
Opera Singing has been placed
as the second or third profession in STRESS LEVEL, following
those of Heart Surgeon and Airline Jet Pilot !
I am in no way surprised. I
know how tough it is to do this
job.
Singers of the Golden Era as compared to modern singers :
Mankind has forgotten the
star system of Hollywood,
which was somehow a mirror of the opera realm and the temperamental
divas, irascible conductors and vain tenors that came a few decades
before the movie industry . Opera was built for singers and their
vocal abilities many centuries ago. And there was a final
period of what we may call the Singers era, and that period
ends about the same time in which sound is added to movies and the
great, slightly ridiculous and
extravagant movie actors of the mute or silent movies are put aside by
movie audiences.
Actors who had been cherished by millions of people are not liked any
more because their voices are too high in pitch or nasal. Only a few,
like Garbo, can make the switch succesfully. Anyhow the era of the
movie director is born, yet there is still a lot to admire in great
personalities.
There are still Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and many other movie stars, yet the names of John Houston, Georges Cukor, Joe Mankiewickz and many other temperamental and talented directors become stronger and they are taken almost as co-stars. Years pass and the movie director’s supremacy becomes almost absolute. It is a gradual process and part of the price for it is the also gradual ‘ death’ of the concept of ‘star’. If Gloria Swanson was the epitome of extravagant diva behaviour ( she had a limousine at her disposition to take her from movie set Nº 1 to Nº 2, no matter there was a distance of less than a block between them ) and Greta Garbo liked to build the now legendary aura of mystery that enhanced her attraction, Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn stressed much more their condition of United States citizens and of movie ‘ pros ‘. Still in Davis’ and Hepburn’s heyday the PERSONALITY was still an important ingredient.
TEBALDI & CORELLI
About the sixties and seventies stars became less and less, and there were a few survivors of the Golden Era like the still young Elizabeth Taylor ( she had started at 14 in the forties ) or the ‘popping’ few cases of Rock Hudson, Elvis Presley or Doris Day, Sophia Loren or the great last movie icon ( perhaps the swan song of movie divism ) who was the charming and tragic Marilyn Monroe. The concept of star was dying. The image builders had every year less and less space and/or work and actors and actresses were beginning to be seen as everyday men and women with a ‘fancy’ job, yet they were now seen in the streets, going on errands, without make up and in normal situations. And the school of acting which had been a bit exaggerated and capricious in order to stress the individual qualities of the stars, now became more and more refined, yet markedly less interesting. Movie Directors became the real stars, and people no longer went to see a Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor or Bette Davis movie, but a movie BY Ingmar Bergman, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, the old John Houston already mentioned, Ettore Scola etc.
Much the same happened in
the opera world. There was a still gleaming period in which the ‘
prima-donnas’ and the tenors killed each other for the limelight
that they worshipped and acted as capricious gods and whose name alone
was more important than the opera they were singing
At a given moment. In the first thirty five years of the 20th century we
had a Caruso, a Gigli, a
Claudia Muzio, a Gina Cigna, a Martinelli and dozens of other great
‘divi’ who traveled in sophisticated ocean liners
from one continent to the other, were almost always dressed up,
elegant and exotic and were denied nothing, however senseless or
irritating their requests could have been. They were the mirror of
Swanson, Pola Negri, Valentino or John Gilbert.
LAURI VOLPI AS FAUST, TEATRO PRINCIPAL, ZARAGOZA 1921
Then the conductor era
began, yet there were still some great personalities, like Maria Callas,
Renata Tebaldi, Birgit Nilsson, Leontyne Price, a bit later Dame Joan
Sutherland, Richard Tucker, Mario del Monaco Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito
Gobbi or Leonard Warren THOUGH they were not, in spite of occasional
outbursts, so extravagant as those of the 20’s or 30’s. They
mirror the Davis Hepburn, Tracy, Clark Gable era : great personalities
but now more faithful to the score, less exotic, more
down to earth human
beings. Maria Callas had a good share of publicity and scandals, she
was know the world over and her popularity exceeded the limits
of the opera world. Some of her scandals had
a hint of the prewar ‘divi’, yet she was a tough worker and
her personality was more the result of a traumatic childhood than of a
conscious search of ‘prima-donna -ism’
OPERA CONDUCTORS are an indispensable
element, of course, of an opera performance, and the era which
followed the Singers’ one, was the conductor’s era. Herbert von
Karajan, Sir Georg Solti,
Leonard Bernstein and many others with their symphonic approach to
this art, became for a few decades the real new ‘ divi’ and the
singers had to have very strong personalities in
order not to accept the most capricious ‘tempi’ (or musical dynamics),
or to impose their conditions and not be manipulated by these
great musicians. Arturo Toscanini was a precursor of this era, and he
was feared when he appeared with
much anticipation, decades ago of the Conductors’ era, and
started a crusade in order to force them to sing the notes and
the tempi indicated by the composers.
Herbert von Karajan
YET, there was worse to
come. OPERA PRODUCERS Era was to follow the Conductors’ and now the
singers, already weaker because of their lost preeminence, had to give
up their personalities , who were ‘ ironed-out’ by talented and
less talented ( to put it mildly), ‘ theatre men’. Many
producers shared their opera activities with productions of straight
theatre plays or of movies, like the great Luchino Visconti , Franco
Zefirelli. Wieland Wagner was an exception, for he concentrated on the
operas of his famous Grandfather, and he was definitely a star producer.
All kind of experiments was done during many years in order to scandalize and make people go to the opera house to see Mr. ‘X’ or Mr ‘ Y ‘ productions. To the above mentioned one may add the great Ken Russell, Jean Vilar, Jean Pierre Ponelle, Jorge Lavelli and a few others, but below those heights there are hundreds of second rate imitators, who have done many senseless and ridiculous alterations of the period in which the plot takes place, the action, and the personalities of the roles, even their race ! Absurd, sometimes they even altered the text. I can mention one of this absurd modifications made by the great Ponnelle. In “ Rigoletto ‘ he chose to change the scene of Gilda’s rape. The Duke of Mantova abuses her not in a palace room, but in a heavily curtained bed ! Rigoletto, who suspects something very serious has happened to his daughter, when he discovers that very probably her daughter is being forced into sex in a nearby room shouts : “ Aprite le porte, le porte m’aprite “ Open the doors to me ! ”
Geraldine Farrar
Late Ponnelle had to alter the poet’s words and put instead :“ Open
those curtains !” ( “Aprite la tenda, la tenda m’aprite !” )
The DIVO behaviour of the great and less great and horribly
bad producers seems to last forever, and it seems that they
hate individuality.
On one hand there is still the ongoing custom of being absolutely accurate in musical terms. The ‘fashionable’ thing has been to make a ‘ftiche’, a bureaucratic impediment, of the written score. While Galli - Curci, Luisa Tetrazzini, Giacomo Lauri Volpi , Nellie Melba or Givanni Martinelli added many interpolated and unwritten notes to their arias, or indulged in all kind of unasked sobs, non-existent spoken words and many excesses the new tendency for many years now is to sing what is written, which is OK with Verdi, but not with the belcanto scores, which are (or rather, were ) a ‘base for all kind of vocal pyrotechnics and improvisations. Improvisations ARE legalism for operas of that period ( Like “ I Puritani” or “ La Sonambula by Bellini , or “ Lucia di Lamermoor” by Donizzetti ) No one could make an edition of those improvisations, for there were unwritten laws in that era. Once the great Beverly Sills ( a younger exponent of the Nilsson, Callas, Del Monaco era. In the sense that she was that type of singer though 15-20 years yonger ) was severely criticized in Buenos Aires. She had many embellishments written by Roland Gagnon, a famous specialist in that kind of additions. They said that “That was not what was written in the score! “ Yet the Mad scene to be found in Ricordi’s edition, is not original from Donizzetti, but was written by Estelle Liebling, Sills’ Voice Teacher ! It WAS an embellishment ! The score mentions the famous Liebling with whom Miss Sills worked since she was … 7 years old ( a prodigy) to her early forties.
Yet some conductors still insist with that
bureaucratic, legalist corset. In a schizophrenic way,
audiences are forced to that musical legalism and respect for the
composer in terms of music, and on the other
hand to a total lack of respect towards the composer’s very
well defined action environment . You can go to an opera performance
where there are no embellishments ( or to post-belcanto operas, with no extra long notes which help
the singer to achieve greater impact at the end of some acts ), just
what is written in the score, but the roles have different personalities, different ages and live in
different countries to those indicated by the composer. A
“Butterfly” not in Japan but in Sweden (!), A “Rigoletto” not
in Mantova but in Chicago (!! ) and a “Cosi fan tutte”
not in Naples but in… Japan !!!
The sad effect is that opera has become much duller, less exciting, less
accurate in historic value, too, and DIVOS are almost non-existent.
Everybody is afraid of being rejected so they all sing alike, they
seem as if made in a factory, like cups or TV sets . The same breath
support, the same diction , the same manias. It has happened much the
same with… cars. Decades ago
it was easy to distinguish one car from
the other. There was also the big difference in size between
European and American cars, which were much bigger and spectacular
(though often ‘kitsch’).
Yet each car had its shape, its personality. It was very easy to say :
“ That is a Cadillac, that other
is a Volkswagen, a Citroën, a Rolls Royce or a Mercedes” In
recent years the United States have
adopted smaller car sizes with ‘japanese’ shapes , or they
copied European designs. The European also copied the Japanese and the
American industry so finally we find that we cannot distinguish a car
from the other. They all look so much alike ! “
LAURI VOLPI
That is the same with movie stars : Glenn Close is a great actress ,
perhaps greater than those of the Golden Era, and Meryl Streep
is also a genius, but… aren’t they too much alike
? Do you find between Robert de Niro and Al Pacino so many
differences as between John Garfield and Spencer Tracy or Gary
Cooper ?
Is this SERIALIZATION a ‘ casual ‘ phenomena or is it a liberal trick
in order to make us forget that there are hierarchies and artistic
heights?
Bishop Fulton Sheen affirms that in all
movie actors or monarchy worship there is a sort of reflection
of a higher level, that it is somehow healthier to worship a movie
star than to completely ignore her/ him because it shows that the
worshipper , in a wrong way, in an underdeveloped way, is admitting
the existence of a higher level. Is it casual this syndrome of “ all
things are the same “ ? Has it not a ‘red touch’ ? I wonder…
But I am getting too serious and I love the earlier opera paraphernalia
of jealousies, anecdotes, verbal attacks and childish behaviour of the
divas and divos.
WE ARE ALL KIDS !
The late Vittorio Gasmann said that we performers remain kids all our
lives.
There is a period that a mature personality closes very early in which one never knows what personality to follow. Kids imitate their elders and want to be different things like acrobats, firemen, actors, lawyers. That is natural. Though ‘ normal’ people finally choose a path while the artist keeps it open all his life. Unsure of himself, the artist dos not close many childish doors and plays all his/her life. Precisely THAT is what allows him to imitate and to act. Yet that makes him unsuitable for plain , everyday realities and reinforces their childish egos, extremely sensitive to all kind of criticism and approval. Kids live for themselves and try to affirm themselves. They are selfish and capricious. They say dirty words in order to ‘test’ how far they can go in their untidy search of a more mature power and affirmation of the personality. One day they are charming , the next they are unbearable and demanding, a third day they feel miserable and unloved.
A STAGE
PERFORMER IS MORE OR LESS THAT WAY. In the case of Opera Singers the
exposure during a performance is nerve-wrecking for he not only acts
but must follow the beat of a conductor, sing beautifully and project
good diction in many languages. In his ‘naïvetè’ he never knows
how to act, because the music world is so elusive and so many things
and career - changes depend on so many subjective approaches. A
conductor can say: “ I do not like him ! “ no matter how excellent
the artist he is listening to. And that’s it. The artist has no
objective patterns, for even a tape recording can favour a voice so if
he complains and says : “
He says he doesn’t like me, listen to this tape recording and see
how good I sang ! “ nobody will pay more than a few minutes
attention for we all know that a tape recording can make some voices
sound smaller and less beautiful, but also more beautiful and bigger.
So in his lack of support the one who makes his own marketing is…
the singer himself, thus sounding proud and vain. And when he finds
that there is a dangerous rival he/she attacks him in order to get rid
of the threatening new ‘subjectivity’.
Zinka Milanov
The great German teacher told me one day, after a
particularly well done series of sounds I made : “ But you
hafff a vanderrrrrful foiz like
MINE ! ”
I felt very proud but at the same time in danger of bursting out in
laughter!
With the years I
found out what that ‘vain’ phrase meant : “ I must
believe that my great career had objective foundations. The objective
foundation is that I had a wonderful voice (God’s gift, I thank Him)
but I must also make YOU believe, Mr Ortale , that YOU have ALSO a
wonderful voice, so that with this
‘objective push’ you can go on and believe in yourself and
never doubt of your capabilities ! ” Outside his ‘vanity fair’
extravagances, this teacher was quite simple and
humble.
THERE IS ALSO … :
… and in some cases, the ‘handicap’ of a less than cultivated
childhood. Opera singing is in some ways an athletic activity and it
asks for strong bodies and also a strong desire to succeed. You will
find that not in members of the monarchy ( who are already
‘successful’ in a way ) but in members of poorer social
environments. Many singers have come from the lower layers of society,
and their sudden exposure with luxuries and sophistication sometimes
makes them dizzy. From marginality they jump to stardom, and their
education is not enough to control their impulses…
Jealousies, verbal ( and physical !! ) attacks, moral ‘sabotages’,
paranoia, fatness ( due to the anxiety many singers are overweight
though the tendency is to have more slender, even athletic looking
artists now ), hysteria, gossips and many other spicy ingredients take
part in building the…
FUNNY OPERA ANECDOTES AND FAMOUS QUOTES :
Maria Callas
“ I must not pay taxes, I am an angel ! ”
( is Maria Callas ridiculous reaction when in the United States and after
a performance of Madame Butterfly she is met by a IRS service who
presents her with the list of unpaid taxes. The photo of her furious
stare has got round the world many times over. Yet the reaction is not
SO ridiculous for she had been singing a very tough opera and the IRS
could have waited till later at her hotel or the following day to
confront her with that ugly, concrete reality )
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“ I did not know that this hotel accepted CATS ! ”
( Was Luisa Tetrazzini’s malignant comment when she heard Amelita Galli
Curci vocalizing in a Hall of the Ansonia Hotel in New
York where most divos and divas lived, including the above
mentioned prima-donnas)
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Renata Tebaldi in Tosca
“ I am champagne, Miss Tebaldi is Coca-Cola ! ”
(THIS was Callas famous comparison between her art and Renata Tebaldi’s
)
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“ Are you nervous dear ?
“ was the question made by superdiva Zinka Milanov to a young and
nervous ‘debutante’ Mignon Dunn, a great mezzo from USA . They
were both singing in “ La Gioconda “ at the Metropolitan Opera
House. Miss Dunn, pleased by that warm concern from the well
established Yugoslavian prima-donna answered : “ Oh yes, Miss
Milanov, quite nervous , I feel butterflies in my stomach ! “
Milanov’s advice was as unexpected as original. “ Oh, do
not worry my dear, everybody in the audience will be distracted
by the glory of my top notes ! ”
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“ You sang very well !!!!!!…
Beethoven’s Ninth last week !”
( Was Lotte Lehmann’s acid remark to Christa Ludwig just after the
mezzo had finished singing her debut as the Marschallin, one of
Lehmann’s best roles )
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“ What a wonderful voice
that girl has!!! - shouted Zinka Milanov after a dress rehearsal in
which she had been present as a member of the reduced audience- and
added, briefly looking for suitable words : “ She sounds… she
sounds… like the young ME !!! ”
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MARIA CALLAS - FRANCO CORELLI IN " NORMA"
“ Miss Callas has an ‘almost’ excellent voice, for she sounds like
a broken Stradivarius ! ” Mario del Monaco very cruel phrase in
which he took revenge for some hostilities and extrapolated high notes
when he and Callas sang together in Mexico .( He aimed at Callas ‘
Achilles heel ‘ for Callas marvelous instrument experienced many
problems at an early stage, due to a Mother who had forced her
to sing heavy roles at too young an age )
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“ Miss Nilsson, you look gorgeous . Sun - tanned and much slimmer ! “
told a man from the Met when Miss Nilsson appeared for her first
performances after her Summer
Holidays. “ Thank you! “ was Nilsson’s reply.
“ Did you go on a diet ? “ asked the man. “ Oh, no! “ answered the Swedish diva. The man insisted “ Gymnastics perhaps ? “ Nilsson said again : “ No “ “ Then, what did you do ? “ Nilsson’s famous answer
“ Oh, every morning I run twenty times around Montserrat Caballé ! “
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“ When I sang the Queen of the night my top F naturals were so big that
you could build a house on them! Those F’s were like cannon
shots ! ”
(Was Blanca Rosa Baigorri’s incredibly extrovert self-appraisal. She is Argentine soprano famous in the late forties and the fifties. Very probably she was right. The ovation after that aria lasted 9 minutes, which is the longest ovation ever hear at Teatro Colón. Alfredo Kraus, Leontyne Price and Cornell McNeil came close with 6 minutes to 6.30 minutes ovations, and with this I always mean AFTER the aria, because ovations after the performance can be longer because audiences applaud all the performance. Teatro Colón levels of intensity are tremendous. All the audience roaring and shouting. For instance German audiences can stay longer after a performance but they applaud and shout less strongly. Teatro Colón audiences end up hoarse and with pain in their backs after all that mad, passionate screaming )
“ Mr Corelli… why do you hold on to that note for so long ? Are you
willing to build a house on it ? ” ( German conductor Karl Böhm’s
frank condemnation of tenor
Franco Corelli’s famous tendency to linger on the highest notes. We
can find here again - as in Baigorri’s case - the ‘image’ of
house-building )
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Monserrat Caballé
“ Maestro Mehta, can’t you play this music a little faster ? This
tempo is difficult for me ! ” (was Montserrat Caballé’s complaint
to Zubin Mehta during the dress rehearsal of “Turandot”at La Scala
di Milano. The dress rehearsals at la Scala
are always broadcasted
live ) “ Miss Caballé, I always beat the same ‘tempos’ that other sopranos who can sing the part can resist !!( was Mehta’s angry reply ) From the stage a dry word from Caballé was aired to all Europe :
“ Imbecile ! ” - (needs
no translation from Italian… )
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The door of Marina Arroyo’s camerino was brusquely opened after the end
of a Verdi opera at the huge, outdoors, and ultra-famous Arena di
Verona. Mezzo Fiorenza Cossotto asked her in a commanding way : “
Who is the best ? Tell me: Who is the best ? !!! ” ( “Chi e la
migliore ? Dimmi..Chi e la migliore ?”) Arroyo said in a serene way
: “ You are the best, Fiorenza.” ( Tu sei la migliore, Fiorenza )
Miss Cossotto , a bit confused and speechless, left the place.
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Herbert von Karajan
“ Now let’s take the
whole thing one more time, but this time with heart . The heart, Miss
Nilsson, is located in here ( Said Maestro von Karajan sarcastically.
while pointing with his finger on Nilsson’s chest
) where you have your cashbox
!”
Whereupon Miss Nilsson replied
:
“ Why, then we have
something in common, Mr. Von Karajan ! ”
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A few funny and not so funny
anecdotes :
During performances all kind of situations can emerge. Nervousness,
rivalry, unexpected technical problems, a wall that falls, a missing
element, a slippery
floor. It happened to me during one of my “ Rigoletto’s” : The
ramps for the fourth and last act were very slippery and when I said
the phrase, half way down the ramp : “ Questo e un buffone, ed un
potente e questo ! “ ( Here before
you there is a jester, and a very powerful one ! ) I slipped as if
ice-skating . Fortunately the ramp was not too far upstage so that I
didn’t fall into the orchestra pit ! Later in the same act I was
holding the agonizing Gilda in one of my arms and then I saw a rock -
a prop - which was new to me. In order to sing the last duet I leaned
on that rock, not knowing that it was made of ‘ rubber foam ‘ ! My
arm sank easily on ‘the rock’ and a few giggles could be heard
coming from the audience.
" During one performance of " Medea" by Cherubini at the Teatro Alla Scala di Milano in the very early sixties Callas was not in good shape vocally speaking, and some people in the audience started to complain, shout and hiss. Callas used the dramatic moment to her advantage and in the moment in which Medea accuses Jason of cruelty because he wants to kill their children and sings the word 'Crudele ! ' ( " You cruel ! ") the great artist faced the audience and sang the phrase imperiously to them . The hissing and all the fuss stopped, and she amazed everybody with her guts and artistry, turning an almost failure in a success ! "
DRUNK GOD:
Mignon Dunn recalls a very funny anecdote during a performance of “ Die
Walküre “ ( The Valkirie ) at the Metropolitan opera house. Miss
Dunn was one of the Valkiries. She appears in the last act. Wotan,
king of all German Gods ( German version of Odin, the Scandinavian god
of gods ) appears in the second act. The singer who played that role,
Otto Edelmann, was feeling quite sick. After ending the second act he
announced to the management that he could not go on. The management
rang the understudy. He- the ‘cover’- had thought that everything
was OK, that all was going on perfectly as he had not received any
warning about Edelmann’s illness. So when he received the phone call
from the opera house, he was laughing, playing cards… and had drunk
like a fish !!
The third act started, the valkiries onstage, everything in order, till
this poor man entered the stage. He could hardly walk and when he did
it was in a ‘zig-zag’ direction. Then he sung : “ Wo isssshhht
Brünhilde ? ” with the heavy ‘ssshhh’ of a drunk man. One “
Sister- Valkirie” whispered to Miss Dunn : “ Herrrr Vaterrr is
loaded ! ”
The poor man was followed by many people unseen by the audience all of
them, specially his desperate wife, holding a score and whispering the
lines of his role, prompting him as good as they could. But there was
the ‘official’ prompter of the Met, who was crazy trying to be
heard by a confused Bass baritone who was forgetting and misplacing
everything. The singer then went directly to the prompter’s box, and
with a defiant attitude he shouted, in English: “ What ? ”
Curtain was urgently lowered and Otto Edelmann who was already at his
hotel and about to sleep had to made the effort and helped the Met
Opera House to end the performance….
BIRGIT NILSSON & FRANCO CORELLI
BIRGIT NILSSON AND FRANCO CORELLI IN " TURANDOT "
LOVE & HATE AFFAIR
Birgit Nillson and Franco Corelli
have shared the stage many times, especially in “ Turandot ” by
Puccini where the combination of the icy and penetrating, steely voice
of the Swedish soprano and the warm, Italianate and heroic sound of
Corelli’s made a perfect combination that fascinated the audiences
around the world. Both voices
were huge, although it is
famous the complaint of a lady who heard them at the Met : “ Nice
voices, but not big enough ! ” People begun to suspect that this
woman ‘s ear loss was something serious !
Nilsson and Corelli admire each other very much. The problem was quite
‘ operatic’ : they fought onstage for their audiences approval
tooth and nail ! They sung
many “ Toscas” and “ Aidas” together but THEIR opera( as much
as Tosca ‘belonged’ to Callas , Di Stefano and Gobbi or
“Otello” to Tebaldi and del Monaco) was “ Turandot “. All their performances were sold out
weeks in advance
And tickets were sold at astronomical prices at the black market.
TURANDOT most famous
anecdote:
Turandot tells Prince Calaf : “ Gli enigmi sono tre, la morte e una !
(“ There are three riddles, and one death ¡”) warns the icy Princess.
Calaf who is young and decided to win her over, claims , : “ No, ,No, gli enigmi sono tre, una e la vita ! “
( There are three riddles and one life ! “ he proudly and defiantly
sings )
Then BOTH sing the same notes up to a high C, same length and same last
vowel (A) but with those little changes in text. The high C goes in
sono then they say ‘tre’ and then each one says “la morte e una”
AND “una e la vita ! ”
Nilsson and Corelli not only stretched
their C ‘s but also the end with the vowel A. Usually the conductor
tells us where to cut in order to be tidy and do it at the same time,
but some shrewd ‘ divi ‘ seem distracted and go on, and on.
Conductor Zubin Mehta from the pit made a sign indicating both singers
to end that note. Birgit Nilsson cut but Corelli went on. Nilsson
waited...till next performance. Before
that brief vocal encounter she sang as usual but when the moment of
the combined phrases came, Miss Nilsson took a very deep breath. She
had coldly calculated the revenge and now she also ignored Mehta’s
gesture and went on eternally with her note, forcing Corelli to
abandon his own because he had not caught enough breath.
The following scene was real life hysteria, Corelli was furious with
Nilsson, called the General Director of the Metropolitan Opera House (
The great Sir Rudolph Bing ) and announced that he wanted to stop his
performance . His wife yelled, a small and unbearable poodle barked,
and Corelli hit the make up table of his dressing room , hurting
himself a bit in one finger, from which a miniature drop of blood
emerged . In typically Italian exaggerated way, Corelli’s wife
screamed : “ An ambulance, please, an ambulance ! ” Mr. Corelli
told Sir Rudolph : “ I do not want to sing with THAT woman anymore !
”
Bing advised him to bite her during the scene in which Prince Calaf
kisses Turandot. Some people say he did, Sir Rudolph wrote in his
autobiography that Corelli just threatened her. It is most unlikely
unless he spoke in English, for Nilsson would not have understood the
word in Italian.
Many people say that he really gave her a slight bite in her neck ! The
fact is that the performance was saved.
After two days there was a new performance. Birgit Nilsson called Sir
Rudolph in the morning and told
him : “ I cannot sing tonight !”
“Why ? ” asked Mr. Bing anxiously. “ Because I got the
rabies (hydrophobia) !!! ” Mr. Bing laughed heartily.
Ricardo Ortale in Tosca
A PERSONAL ANECDOTE :
I was singing “Tzar Saltan “ a delicious fairy tale opera by Rimsky
Korsakoff. There are three witches, a young Tsar and a Tsarina and it
is ideal for children. It was given on Sundays at 10 AM which made us
get up at 6 AM in order to have the muscles in good shape and
‘awoken’. There were three different casts, just in case, and it
went on for two full years ( 1985 and 1986 ). I played two different
roles on different performances, because they appear in the same
scene. One was a sort of buffoon or harlequin, with a central
register, the other a messenger who must sing many top notes in just
about a minute. The management at that time did not want me to shine,
and I was soon confined to the role of the buffoon, although I had
already won many prices. This was the jealousy of an opera conductor .
Boycotts in opera are sometimes very well hidden behind people who do
not compete with you personally, but who do
not like your success. Cruel but true.
One day there was an addition to the cast, a young soprano who everybody
hated because she was always the best ( she was definitely not )
according to her own criteria and everybody else was a nothing and had
a bad technique. She had many vocal problems. The voice was pretty but
not very powerful. Her range was limited, yet when they gave here the
role of the Tsarina, she felt she had touched Heaven and had become a
diva like Leontyne Price. Of course that was sheer madness, but she
started to act the role of the ‘ artistically concentrated’ , ‘
nose up ’ and exclusive soprano. She walked like Garbo, had to be
forced to say good bye or hello and locked her dressing room in order
to avoid being distracted. During the scene in which I try to amuse
the Tsarina, there is lightning
that represents a sort of ugly prediction for her future, and
especially for her beloved Tsar. Then the Tsarina faints . Her buffoon
( me ) goes to her rescue and tries to lift her head a bit and hold
her in his arms. When I was singing with this “new prima donna “
during the dress rehearsal it seems I pressed too hard with my arms
just when she is coming back from her faint and sings : “ ¡ Ah, no
puedo respirar ! “ ( we sang in a Spanish translation. It means :
OH, I CANNOT BREATHE ! ) This lady told me in a very unpleasant, nose
up and commanding way: “ Don’t press so hard, leave me alone,
don’t press !!! “ I swore revenge.
When the actual performance came the Tsarina fainted and I got hold of
her very strongly and tightly, taking special care of surrounding
her rib cage with my arms. She desperately whispered: “ Get
out, get out, take you arms off me ! “ But I kept them mercilessly
on her ribs. She could breathe, of course, but in a difficult way for
singing. When she said : “ Oh, I cannot breathe ! “ I still had my
arms round her and, I can tell you, it was a very realistic and
dramatically successful phrase !
FORGIVE ME MY LORD !
Sometimes I ask myself where is THAT Ricardo? The anecdote is funny,
sure, but it also shows a Spirit of Revenge, Jealousy and Pride that
are alarming. It takes many years of prayers to get rid of ALL those
sins.
Yet the pressure we singers receive is sometimes responsible for many of
these problems, funny and not so much. I have better friends now, like
Margaret Halsey, Armand Croteau or Nadine Mansour, and a better
approach to life, but I am also merciful with the Ricardo I was. I did
not know what I did…. As the Lord says you know when…
Saint Therese
SAINT THERESE OF LISIEUX
THE OPERA ON HER LIFE, AND THE ANALYSIS OF A PSYCHOANALIST.
British Composer John
Taverner a Protestant who converted to Greek Orthodox Church, composed
an opera on Saint Therèse de Lisieux . He was told that Therèse had
been analysed by a disciple of Jung during one of her tremendous
crises and that he was amazed by the combination of emotional
anomalies she had shown him from paranoia to schizophrenia passing
through hysteria.
He warned everybody that those symptoms were defensive and normal in a
person who, like Therèse, was sometimes in
direct contact with supra-realities. If he had found those
symptoms in a less mystical person, he would have diagnosed that
person as a psychotic.
In like manner we singers also have unusual realities. Of course that has
nothing to do with Therèse ‘s sainthood, but, tell me: How many
people sing in front of a ‘ black hole full of tigers ‘ ?( the
audience whom we ‘ feel ‘ though we hardly ‘see’ ) How many
people have to stand the stress we must resist, the risks of a broken
note, of being publicly ridiculed ? Not many.
And I am definitely NOT
saying that we are better people, only that our sins must be seen and
approached in relation to the challenge and the tensions we face.
Or… is it all this paragraph an overindulgent array of phrases ?
Maybe… I hope I have at least amused you a bit.
Ricardo Ortale
© 2002 The Voice of Christ
