Confessions of an Opera Addict, Part XII

The School of Barbie, Part Two

As my friendship/fanship with Barbara Divis grew, I inevitably began to draw comparisons with my first soprano-pal, Jennifer der Torossian. The main thing is, Barbara is much more instinctual. Not that she's some kind of "natural" who doesn't have to work at it - she works tirelessly - but she doesn't analyze things as deeply as Jennifer. Both approaches have their pluses and minuses.

Comparisons came to an uncomfortable head as I approached the book release for my opera novel, Gabriella's Voice. As a natural-born ham, I have never approved of the basic bookstore-reading format (author stands at podium, reads from book zzzzzzzz), and Gabriella cried out for some live performance. When I approached Jennifer about this, she was stumped as to how to go about this. The idea of pulling in a keyboard player was too cumbersome, and she was a little nervous about performing in such an odd space. I completely understood, but I realized that I had to think about my own career now, and so I went to Barbara. Barbara had just the thing. She had found some wonderful orchestra-only CDs of famous arias, and made plentiful use of them in the past. "All we need is a good stereo," she said. I set up a reading at Borders Books in Los Gatos (located in a lovely former theater), and did a few rehearsals with Barbara. (In addition to the arias, she proved to be excellent at the "half-acting" style of reading dialogues from the page.) The reading drew 200 people - a ridiculous number for a relatively unknown author. The evening was astounding; we performed scenes from the novel, and then Barbara sang arias - "Mi chiamano Mimi," "Un bel di" - that related to the scenes.

(I once tried out the karaoke-opera thing myself. A mezzo friend had a collection at her home, and I learned, of all things, "Stride la vampa" from Il Trovatore - an octave down, natch. When I tried it out at my local karaoke bar, my singer friends were astounded - largely by this vastly different choirboy voice I was using, a far cry from the one I use for Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra tunes.)

One would think that I had already gotten all I deserved from my friendship with Barbara, but a few years later she did something that pretty much saved my soul. In 2002, I went to New York to propose to my long-time girlfriend, Ginevra. Barbie had left Opera San Jose and moved to Long Island, mere miles from Ginevra's house, to pursue her career. Ginevra decided to arrange some readings for Gabriella's Voice, and Barbara agreed to perform them with me. The first two readings on Long Island were disastrous. The stores had done no publicity, and had recently changed their policy on in-store CD sales. Barbara had a collection - absolutely the most amazing self-published aria collection I've ever heard - and depended on their sales for both publicity and a little help with the rent money. She showed up, regardless, and one night sang her heart out for five people (three of them me, Ginevra and the store publicist). I have never seen such an act of "troupership" and generosity in my life, and this act of fulfilling one's promises, no matter what, will always color my thoughts when people ask about Barbara's character.

I managed to repay her a little bit a week later, when we appeared at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble, a mere stone's throw from The Met. We had a decent gathering there, and I took some time, as Barbara filled up the joint with "Un bel di," to wander to the window and gaze down on New York. I imprinted the moment with this thought: "You are looking down on Broadway as Barbara sings Butterfly - remember this." It was quite an evening.

The proposal was a bit of a disaster, also (and later a novel, Rhyming Pittsburgh). As for the CD, you can get that at Barbaradivis.com.

Since that time, Barbara has assembled a fruitful career singing at regional companies - Austin, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Hawaii - but has never quite cracked that glass ceiling into the Houstons, Seattles and New Yorks. She does, however, get glowing reviews on a regular basis (last year, a lovely review of her Butterfly in Arizona), and regular calls from me reminding her that she is making a living singing opera, which is pretty darned impressive, and that she should never do anything to deprive the world of that fabulous voice.

Photo: Barbara Divis as Nedda in Opera Santa Barbara's 2008 Pagliacci. Photo by David Bazemore.

Next: Barbara makes her debut in the world of fiction.

Confessions of an Opera Addict, Part X

The Opera Wars

When my soprano pal Jennifer der Torossian and her family founded Bay Shore Lyric Opera in Capitola, they were savvy enough to know that an essential element for building an opera audience in a region that previously had none was to encourage coverage and critique from the local press. But the local editors all told them, "We don't have someone who knows enough about opera to actually critique you." So, they got proactive. They introduced me to an editor at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and, after a perusal of my clips, he took me on.

In the oft-discussed ethical problem known as conflict of interest, there are many, many shades of gray, especially in a community arts scene. Veteran arts writers tend to befriend local directors and performers - especially the good ones. There's really no avoiding it. That said, reviewing would seem to be rife with potential conflict.

Not so with me. I am absolutely incapable of writing a good review of a bad performance - even if the star were my grandmother, on her birthday. But I am well aware of impressions, so here's what I told my new editor: I was friends with Jenny, but the friendship originated with her exceptional talent and taste. However, if she had a bad night, I forewarned her that I would write it up exactly as I saw it. Jenny, in fact, often told me that I scared the hell out of her mother-producer Claire, because I was the one writer in town who really knew what good opera was.

Things went swimmingly for a couple of years. Not much need to criticize Jenny, who was superb as always, but I did find a few needed improvements in production quality and tenor vocals. Then another company sprouted up in town, led by a lyric soprano and her tenor husband. They were doing Carmen, and pestered my editor until he agreed to send a reviewer. It was a memorable performance. Basically because it was the most godawful thing I've ever seen on a stage, an unintentional farce in which the Carmen could neither sing (this being a mezzo role, after all), dance or approximate any level of onstage sexuality. The so-called seductive dancing scene between Carmen and Don Jose was downright painful, and the orchestra was more like a polka band, with the conductor trying to fill in missing parts on an organ. The chorus wore that deer-in-the-headlights look of first-graders playing pieces of fruit in a skit on nutrition.

In critical circles, in small communities, there's an unwritten policy about shows like this. We simply don't print the review. It would be too harsh on the performers, and anything less than an honest review would be too harsh on those who might purchase tickets for it. Given a choice between a vicious review and an inaccurate one, you print nothing. So I called up my editor, assuming that we would be taking this option.

"Are you kidding me?" he asked. "If I don't at least run a review, I'll never hear the end of it."

I wrote a review full of charitable euphemisms, attesting to the difficulties of putting on opera as a form, and suggesting that this group was not yet up for the job. The Sentinel printed it, and the following week I got a call from my editor.

He said he had to take me off the opera beat. Our lovely Carmen said that I was friends with the other opera company in town, and that this bias clearly showd in the horrible review I wrote about her company. I reminded my editor that he knew about this conflict ahead of time, that he knew I was right about the performance, and that a viewing of said production would remove all doubt. But he was having none of it. Clearly, he was going to be a wuss. Clearly, he just wanted to get this annoying woman out of his hair.

"I really like your writing, though. Would you be interested in covering theater for us?"

"I don't think so," I said. I hope that my tone carried the proper connotation of Fuck you.

A month later, that same editor saw a production at Jennifer's theater, fell in love, and wrote up a three-page feature on them to erase any misgivings from The Opera Wars. A lot of good it did me, but at least he was admitting, in a sideways fashion, that he was wrong.

Amazingly, a few years later, I got a gig reviewing Bay Shore Lyric Opera for another paper in town, the Santa Cruz branch of San Jose's Metro, for whom I'd written theater and opera stories for some 15 years. The moment my first review hit the stands, however, my editor got a call from the same Godawful Carmen, and I was once again summarily dismissed from the assignment. This time I didn't make too much complaint (desiring to keep my assignments in San Jose), but I certainly enjoyed myself a few years later when I got a better offer from a rival paper and told Editor Chickenshit Number Two that I was no longer writing for him.

Photo: A Much Preferable Alternative, Liliane Cromer, Jorge Gomez in Bay Shore's 2000 Carmen.

Confessions of an Opera Addict, Part IX

The Birth of Gabriella's Voice

The result of all my research and backstage spywork (along with two years of writing) was Gabriella's Voice, which takes place in one of my favorite places on Earth: Bainbridge Island, across the Sound from Seattle. I transplanted the entire Bay Shore Lyric Opera there, under the name of the State Ferry Opera Company. Interestingly, although Gabriella Compton has the voice, training and opinions of Jennifer der Torossian, my muse, she is very much not Jenny. I was after someone with a more blue-collar background, someone who works as a barista in Seattle just so she can take the ferry across the water and sing.

Into the State Ferry's Barber of Seville wanders Bill Harness, a mysterious middle-aged man who watches the show, astounded at Gabriella's talent, and then leaves a thousand-dollar check in the raffle jar. He intends to leave it at that, but he is in love with that voice, and eventually, breaking through much skepticism, wins the friendship of its owner. The pivotal theme of the novel is that, while Bill loves Gabriella's voice, Gabriella loves Bill's tragedy, the three dark stories of his musical family that have driven him to this strange cross-country quest.

For me, it was easy to connect with the tragic, because my mother passed away from cancer in 1993. This always-present sense of grief propelled the book, and gave Gabriella and Bill's relationship a beautiful depth that I may never duplicate. Interestingly, the novel was rejected as "too plot-driven" by an academic press, and then as "too intellectual" by a commercial press, before finding its home with John Rutledge's Dead End Street Press, based in Hoquiam, Washington, a mere hour's drive from the novel's locale. The book was released in March 2001.

Following, an excerpt from the novel. See http://www.deadendstreet.com/v2.asp for more.

There was only one appropriate response to this larceny of memory, and that was caffeine. I showered and headed east for Cafe Trademark. Along the way I spotted a hair salon, reminding me of other recent profound events, and found myself whistling bits of the “Barber” overture as I entered the cafe. A tall girl at the counter gave me the side of her eyes, then faced front with a full customer-service smile.

“Buongiorno, signore. What’ll ya have?”

“Un espresso con panna,” I half-sang, raising a handful of backward fingers to get just the right inflection.

“Little cioccolata on top?”

“Mille grazie.” I clinked my change into the tip jar and retired to a far corner, then realized immediately that the heat produced by the coffee machines had settled there like an inversion layer. I moved to a spot near the front windows instead and opened a copy of The Stranger to the personals, amusing myself with the many exotic variations and acronyms, feeling all the while like I was forgetting something. Or something was forgetting me. Or that the strips of pockmarked hardwood at my feet were sending me coded signals and I had left my decryption device in the car. A couple of gloriously gay Broadway Avenue boys came in just then, attacking the girl at the counter with a ballet of hightoned repartee and loose-limbed gestures. She laughed, shaking the ring of shoulder-length red hair that framed her face. I realized I was staring and shook myself out of it, checking the astrology page under Capricorn. “I don’t know about you, Cap….”

V-shaped chin, slightly upturned nose…

“You’ve been getting signals as big as the Goodyear….”

Large, expressive mouth, high cheekbones…

“Blimp and yet you keep cruising down the interstate like
a….”

Wide, ripe lips, a slight crease in the top…

“trucker on intravenous No-Doz. You’d better.…”

Cat-like face... and...

“Pull into the next station for some nachos before you….”

I checked the whipped cream on my espresso and found a sprinkling of chocolate like... freckles! Then looked to the counter and found my final confirmation. The tall girl glanced at
something in my direction with eyes the color of walnut shells, then one of the Broadway boys told her a joke and she rolled them upward in the universal expression of teenage girldom. With my eyes I played a little game of dress-up, taking away her shock of red and replacing it with a mane of long, thick umber, and there she was, my diva. The mere sight of her brought back
entire passages of music.

The grasp of her identity made me suddenly wary of looking her way at all. I forced my eyes out the window and found myself staring at a zaftig woman in a blue plaid shirt reading an Isaac
Asimov novel. When she, in turn, found me looking at her and smiled back, I locked my gaze instead on the paper I was no longer reading. My innocent instruments of sight had suddenly become politically charged projectiles, and after two minutes and a few fully comprehended words, I decided that this was getting really ridiculous. Clearly, I would have to face the idea that keeping my sweet little Italian ward a non-speaking, ever-singing fantasy stage figure was something no longer in the realm of possibilities. I gave myself a mental slap on the cheek and headed toward the counter, where she stood fully prepared to continue our previous conversation.

“Buongiorno, signore! You’ve come back.”

“Si, signorina. I wish to...”

“You want seconds?”

“Er, no, I...”

“You want a muffin, perhaps. Or a peanut butter cookie.”

“Please, no, really, I...”

I found myself completely abandoned by the English language, and as my stammering silence drew itself out I could see a fringe of suspicion working its way over Gabriella’s shoulder like a shadow. I picked up a napkin from the counter, folded it in half and said, “Una voce poco fa, qui nel cor mi risuonò.”

Gabriella looked at me with all the glowing affection of an IRS auditor. “Uh-huh,” she said.

“You are... Rosina?”

“Sometimes.”

“Of course,” I said. “Gabriella. I’m Bill, Bill Harness.” I extended a hand over the counter; she shook it insincerely.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I saw you perform the other night, and you have an incredible voice.”

“Mille grazie,” she said, then squinted her eyes as if she were developing a headache. “Look. Bill. I’m sorry if I seem less than delighted at the recognition, but I have sort of a Clark Kent complex around here. Otherwise I tend to attract middle-aged men with diva fantasies.”

“Could I talk to you later? I want to talk about your voice.” Her squint got narrower. “You didn’t hear me, did you, Bill?”

“Hmm?”

“What I said before. Just now.”

We were interrupted by a young Indian couple who ordered a couple of iced cappuccinos. I slipped a dollar in the express refill bucket and poured myself a house decaf as I decided whether to be offended by Gabriella’s last comment. I came to the conclusion that Gabriella Compton could be the meanest, evilest she-bitch in the Northern Hemisphere and I couldn’t care less. As long as she was the gatekeeper to that glorious instrument of hers, I would tear my way through any abuse she could dish out. She handed the Indian couple their drinks and turned to the back sink, pretending to wash something as she avoided my gaze. Finally she turned back around and looked me over with folded arms and pursed lips.

“Still here, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Need anything? Carrot juice? Double mocha? Almond biscotti?”

I saluted her with my decaf and smiled. “Nope. I’m fine.”

She leaned over the counter and clicked her nails across the surface like horse’s hooves. “So. You want to talk. What about?”

“Your voice, as I said. Your acting. And opera. About the second ‘ma’ you threw into ‘Io sono docile.’ About those bell-like staccatos you throw around like ping-pong balls, and the way your
mezzo voce reminds me of Montserrat Caballe with its clean, easy grace, and that three-pulse trill you stole from Tebaldi.” Gabriella was working hard to maintain her untrusting squint, but I could tell I had at least caught her attention. She waved a dismissing hand in front of her face.

“I’m sure you could have picked all that up from books, or album sleeves, or maybe one of the regulars at the opera.”

“Maybe.”

Her eyes went to the door. “Oh. Hold on a minute.” She walked to the end of the counter and motioned the dairy delivery guy to the swinging doors of the kitchen. He pulled in a crateful of
Half ‘n’ Half and set it down next to the cooler. Then she came back to me. Her eyes were a little more open now, but she was still running up the numbers in her head. She took a sourdough
bagel from a pile on the counter and loaded it into a small steel cylinder. Then she took a smaller cylinder, this one armed at one end with a sharp triangular blade, and positioned it inside the larger cylinder. And then she looked at me.

“Name a French opera that takes place in Seville.”

“Carmen,” I said. Gabriella slammed down on the cylinder, and out the other end popped the bagel, neatly sliced in two. She loaded up another.

“Name the tenor smuggler from that opera.”

“Le Remendado.”

Again she slammed the cylinder. Again the bagel came out the other end, neatly bisected. She loaded in another.

“A singer’s primary range is known as a...”

“Tessitura.”

Slam! This time, a poppyseed.

“The original name of Rigoletto was...”

“Triboletto.”

Slam! Oat bran.

“Cast me in a major role.”

“Lucia di Lammermoor.”

“Or?”

“Susanna in ‘Figaro.’ Maybe Gilda.”

“How about Cio-cio-san?”

“You’re not ready.”

Slam! French onion.

“The trouser role in ‘Der Rosenkavalier.’”

“Octavian.”

Slam!

“You’re writing a new opera. Where do you take it?”

“Houston.”

Slam!

“Pronounce ‘Eugene Onegin’ in Russian.”

“Yev-GHEN-nee Oh-NYAY-ghin.”

Slam!

Gabriella paused, a bit winded, to study her remaining bagels.

“God, you’re tough,” she mumbled, then loaded in a cinnamon raisin. “Okay, how about this. ‘Die Zauberflöte’ and ‘Fidelio’ are both examples of...”

“Singspiels.”

“Which are?”

“Austro-German operas in which musical scenes are divided by passages of spoken dialogue.”

Slam!

“Okay. You’re casting for a studio recording of ‘Tosca.’ Callas or Tebaldi?”

“Tebaldi.”

Slam!

By now it was clear that I had already passed Gabriella’s test. Down to one last blueberry bagel, however, she was determined to stump me at least once. She flipped her final victim ring-toss-style onto her index finger, slid it into the cylinder, leveled her eyes at me like she had me for sure and said, “The name... of Tebaldi’s... poodle!”

I took the last sip from my decaf and set it on the counter.

“New First,” I answered.

Gabriella meant to welcome her blueberry bagel to the guillotine with a frustrated sotto voce gasp of “Shit!” but instead the word took on concert wings and flew from her larynx on a bright A-sharp, fluttering around the room and alarming the customers before it escaped out the front door. Its owner flashed me an embarrassed grin.

“Whuh-oops! Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

“Never happens to me.”

“Didn’t think so. Look. I’m convinced. You are really into this shit. Tell you what. I’ve got a meeting with the music director this afternoon on Bainbridge. There’s a coffeehouse called
Pegasus, on the waterfront, two blocks down from the theater. Meet me there at six, and we’ll talk about my voice.” She aimed a finger at my nose. “Just don’t turn into a creep, okay?”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

“Good. Now get outta here, wouldja? I’m liable to let out another note and scare all these fine folks away.”

I was already on my heels, turning for the door. “Addio, Gabriella,” I said, and made my way to Broadway for a sandwich.

Confessions of an Opera Addict, Part V

The Academy of Jennifer, Part Two

My real opera education began when I invited Jennifer der Torossian to a Mexican restaurant, parked a tape recorder in front of her, and peppered her with questions as we ate. Jennifer is anything but a shrinking violet, so my part of the job was easy. She began by telling me about her childhood, how she was so fond of recreational screaming that the neighbors reported her parents to the police, assuming that somebody must be abusing that poor child. (And there was the opening of my novel.)

I also learned that her voice teacher, Maestro Salvatore d'Aura, used to work for Puccini. Maestro was a teenage tenor, singing "Che gelida manina" at the Santa Cecilia Festival in Rome, when the composer himself came up, tears in his eyes, and asked, "How did you learn to sing my music so beautifully?" Puccini was dying of throat cancer - a result of his fondness for cigars - and could no longer demonstrate his vocal lines to singers, so he hired the young tenor to do it for him.

Jenny gave me that big-eyed stare, the one that I would learn as one of her trademarks - a signal that she was about to say something impressive. "I have scores," she said, "with Puccini's handwritten notes in the margins!"

Maestro thus became my novel's most implausible character: Maestro Giuseppe Umbra, 93-year-old voice teacher and raconteur. I didn't realize until much later that I had offered up an Italian pun: "aura" meaning light, "umbra" meaning dark.

Jennifer's father, Papken, was a big-time Silicon Valley developer who owned a seaside filmhouse in Capitola. The family decided to turn the theater into an opera house, with mother Claire acting as producer and Jennifer as prima donna. I attended the first production, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, and was simply astounded at the voice that emanated from the balcony at Jenny's first entrance. I soon came to understand that this was the result of bel canto training, a Jedi-like discipline with breathing techniques and phrasing that produced an effervescent tone seemingly freed from the physical body of its owner. This became the central theme of my novel, Gabriella's Voice - the idea that someone could fall in love with a voice separate from its creator.

I also took great delight in the quirks of the Bay Shore Lyric Opera - the way the water in the Seville fountain would rise and fall depending on the flushing of toilets in the restrooms, the way the cafe wall in a production of La Boheme collapsed one night, nearly taking out Rodolfo. With Jennifer's permission, I set up an unofficial residency and began taking mental notes.

The company's breakout production was The Marriage of Figaro. The opera is much too challenging for most companies, but with Maestro's ear, BSLO managed to assemble a divinely inspired combination of voices, including a Susanna and Cherubino flown in from New York (with Jenny playing the Contessa). Through my spywork at auditions, rehearsals, performances and cast parties, I learned more about that opera than any I had seen, and assembled a richly complex and humorous supporting cast for my novel.

One day, Jenny mentioned someone named Tebaldi. My plea of ignorance inspired another of her wide-eyed stares. "You haven't heard Tebaldi?" She immediately put on a CD, and my ears were met with the most perfect soprano voice I would ever hear: a broad tone, smooth as butter but alarmingly agile, like an aircraft carrier that navigates like a speedboat. My adoration of Tebaldi would grow so much over the years that I became an evangelist, and upon her death in 2004 received more than a half-dozen notes of condolence. You would have thought that I had lost a close relative.

Next: SF Opera and the big picture

Photo: Maestro Salvatore d'Aura with Met great Licia Albanese. Photo by Robert Sheaffer.