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NINE
Hi Dad –
I’m back here at the Pegasus
Coffeehouse, my roosting spot. All of my
cycling trips end here, and the denizens have come to know me like the
eccentric uncle that I am. On a Sunday,
like today, I arrive early, before the matinee opera, and Rose is here to greet
me with her narrow limbs, her nose ring and her trigger-happy smile. During the week, she lives in a dorm at U of
W, but on the weekends she comes here to stay with her parents and work a few
hours at her old job at the Pegasus (or just “The Peg,” as the singers like to
call it; they are constantly trundling down here for medicinal teas).
At my urging, the Peg has more or
less adopted the State Ferry Opera Company as its own, donating coffee and
cookies for the shows, selling tickets right here at the counter, and erecting
a bulletin board above the condiment table for State Ferry clippings, photos
and programs. In appreciation for their
efforts (and their sumptuous caffe breves), I found an old poster for “Aida,”
Covent Garden, sometime in the thirties, and purchased it for the shop. They placed it right next to my favorite
corner table, and now I often find myself lost in its bold Egyptian borders. The model is Rosa Ponselle, I think, and
she’s drawn so that Aida’s long dark tresses twist away like vines into the
lines of the border. Very nice.
Obviously, I have done some settling
here on Bainbridge, and I apologize, because I know that was not part of our
original plan. Still, it is nice to feel
a part of something.
Today is the last day of “Figaro,”
and I must admit I’m a little depressed about it. I have stretched my limbs and senses into
every little corner of Count Almaviva’s four-hour household, and have found
untold perfections there, under the kitchen sink, inside the linen closet. Certainly I am not the first to say these
kinds of things, but I think that before this month I always took that
musicologist label of “the perfect opera” as so much hyperbole.
I always took the final garden
scene, for instance, as being a little silly and superfluous, a Marx Brothers
movie with singing. Now, however, I can
see how it puts such a nice cap on things, how it takes the edge off all that
serious conflict in Act III, all that satire of class warfare and feudal
rights. (How the hell did he get this
stuff past the censors, anyway? Gabriella tells me that Beaumarchais’ play had,
in fact, been banned from the Viennese stage, but that Mozart’s operatic
version was somehow seen as less incendiary and allowed to pass. Amazing what you can do with a little music.)
Plot-wise, of course, the garden scene also serves to remove any doubt from
Susanna and Figaro’s recent nuptials, and to create some new sparks for the
Count and Countess, besides.
And speaking of the Count, my own
devotions seem to be just as fickle as his.
My initial glory lay in Jersey’s comic agility, and then, as I started
paying attention, in her mezzo, which is as rich and creamy as buttermilk, and
so thoughtfully deployed. Then, at the
end of the second weekend, a week ago today, Alex took me quite off-guard with
the final few phrases of her “Deh vieni, non tardar.” Such control! I think I
had been mentally writing Alex off as a light (read: insubstantial) lyric, but since then have
begun to notice the mastery of her phrasing, the way she makes such effective
use of Susanna’s traditionally saucy, snappy voice in the recitatives, and her
talents as a straight-woman to the antics of Cherubino and Figaro. And, of course, the first thing I noticed at
her audition last month, that wonderfully beatific look on her face when she
sings.
Personally, Alex is wound a bit
tightly – plus she’s single, so I suppose she looks upon me as something of a
weird and possibly dirty old man (judging only from the externals, I can’t say
as I blame her). Still, I hope I can
overcome these obstacles at the cast party this evening, at least enough to let
her know the impression her performances have made on me, the various species
of chills she has sent down my spine.
(A brief intermezzo, O mio babbino
caro: Jersey’s husband has arrived in town for the last weekend, so we have
made a point of pretending to know much less about each other than we actually
do. Not that we have anything to hide, but
the diplomatic approach is always best.)
As for the baritones, I’m starting
to really enjoy this guy playing the Count – Joe, big, affable black guy – and
have had some pleasantly provocative discussions with him post-show at the
Madrona. Friday night, he was talking
about the shortage of big-time black tenors in opera. In opera, dad, the tenor is often the love
interest, and it’s Joe’s theory that our beloved country is still too hung up
on black men interacting in that fashion with white women. He’s probably right. Not that our talks are all that heavy. I once observed how conflicted the Count
really is, and Joe said, “Damn right I’m conflicted! I’m the Count, and I ain’t gettin’ any!”
Ah, and then to Gabriella. Poor girl, she caught a bad case of
bronchitis before opening night and had to take more drugs than Jim Morrison
just to get through the weekend. The
house manager, Kevin, keeps mentioning Gabi’s sickness during his stage
speeches, requesting a bit of patience on the part of the audience, but I think
he’s doing her a big disservice. That
girl’s eighty percent is still better than most sopranos’ hundred, and beyond a
few extra trips to her handkerchief her affliction is not that noticeable.
Her behavior off-stage is another
subject entirely. God, it’s like being
around some crusty old ballplayer. Every
three minutes she’s hawking up another delivery, and she has even taken to
spitting in public. She also seems to
enjoy discussing the amazing variety of color and texture inherent in her... products.
So much glee you’d think she was discussing refrigerator drawings
created by her favorite grandchildren.
Even with the vocal strain produced
by Gabriella’s illness, however, the timbral blend of the three sopranos is a
concoction the likes of which I may never drink from again. As Maestro explained it to me, “When you
CAST... Mozart... you must cast for the CHORAL... feeling...
as well as the operatic. The
voices are written TIGHTLY... together,
and that is they way they must be sung.
With a GREAT... feeling of
ensemble.”
That’s really the way he talks! My ears can only take me so far into this,
but I tend to think this has something to do with the vibratos. The big, loud singers favored by most major
houses these days have huge, wide-ass vibratos (sorry – that’s Gabriella’s
term). There’s a natural reason for the
appeal of vibrato, by the way: thanks to our hunter-gatherer past, we humans
and our auditory systems are geared not so much to sound as to changes in
sound, and that’s why we find the constantly wavering pitch of a vibrato so
strangely stimulating. Be that as it
may, you take two of these wide-ass vibratos and rub them against one another
in one of these delicate little Mozart duets and you’ve got a real chicken
fight on your hands. And although
Jersey’s and Alex’s training is not quite so traditional as Gabriella’s, part
of the reason they were selected for this “Figaro” is because they both possess
the warm but well-tempered vibrato of the more natural bel canto style. When the three of them sing together, then,
their vibratos fall in place like the smooth-edged pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,
and life is perfect. (I know I’m getting
a little too technical about this, but trust me – the sound is gorgeous.)
So Dad, I told Gabriella about
Mom. It’s the first time I ever told
anyone. With you, of course, I never
needed to tell it, and I sort of assumed that you told Bobby when he was old
enough, so I never felt the need to bring it up. And anyone else who ever asked me, all my
life, I would just tell them that my mother died young, of an illness, and that
always served to effectively end the discussion.
But you know? It wasn’t as bad as I
thought it would be, and now Gabriella keeps asking me for details, and to
repeat little parts of it for her. From
what little I know, I have concluded that Gabriella has led a mostly happy
life, and I sense that she is using this story as a way of tapping into rivers
of tragedy when she has to sing her mournful arias. Her “Porgi, Amor” has grown remarkably deeper
these last few weeks, and I imagine she’s thinking of mom when she sings it.
Now, it’s sort of like the twentieth
time you go to see “Rigoletto.” I know that it’s Gilda’s body in the sack, and
when the jester pulls that string he’s going to find that his own fear has
killed his only daughter. And every time
he lets out that dreadful gasp and cries out “Mia figlia!” it still hits me
right in the gut, same as always. But
each time the blow becomes a little softer, and I’ve even begun to develop a
sort of fondness for the way that it makes me feel. It makes me feel more… human.
When I see you again, I want to talk
about mom. Okay? We don’t have to talk about her every day,
but when we do, I want her to be our “Rigoletto,” our sad story. It has been a long time since mom has felt
like anything more than a distant figure of mythology, and now that I have
brought her down to the earthen fields of folklore, she’s more alive to me than
she’s ever been.
As close as Gabriella and I have
grown, I still can’t tell her about Bobby.
That one still hurts too much.
Once again, I have to apologize for
overstaying my welcome here in the Pacific Northwest, but I have a sneaking
suspicion that this mission of yours has just as much to do with my personal
well-being as with the encouragement of America’s Singing Youth. So I am willing to be a little selfish. And I’ll tell you something else, too. By telling mom’s story three weeks ago, and
with each performance of “Figaro,” my long-mummified childhood ears continue to
open up, and I am led to this one devastating conclusion: Gabriella’s voice is
mom’s voice. Seriously.
One of the first things Gabriella
ever told me was how, when you die, it’s not your soul that rises up out of
your body, it’s your voice. Let’s just
say that I am beginning to believe this, and perhaps, also, that some voices
are too grand and beautiful to break free of the atmosphere, and so they drift
around in the ozone for a while, like cello satellites, and then finally fall
back to earth.
I am nearing the end. I’ll write you again soon. If you see her, give my love to Stephanie.
Con affeto,
Bill
Photo by MJV
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