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THREE
The first
memory I have of operatic singing was my mother quietly chanting “Che gelida
manina” (“What tiny, cold hands”) as she stretched a pair of mittens over the
ends of my fingers. My father was in the
kitchen drinking coffee, and could not hear.
From what I
am able to remember, my mother’s voice was even stronger than my grandmother’s,
endowed with the same delicate agility but possessing also an emanating
butterscotch warmth, something I would hear years later in Tebaldi and identify
by the enigmatic Italian term “spinto.” (Crudely put, “spinto” is the ability
to stuff a hall up to the rafters with sound, seemingly without the intention
to do so.)
My mother
would only sing when my father was away on one of his long sales trips. A week after he left, my mother would begin
to hum; a week later she would graduate to trills, and melodies sung on
nonsense syllables. A few days later she
would be pouring Italian arias over my pancakes like maple syrup, and by the
end of the week she was performing the final act of “Rigoletto,” singing mostly
Gilda but also the intervening parts of Maddalena, Rigoletto, Sparafucile, the
Duke of Mantua, and even the men’s chorus, ghosting away offstage with their
thunderstorm chromatics.
Two nights
later, she was entertaining me and my infant brother Bobby with the mad scene
from “Lucia di Lammermoor,” kitchen knife held up in her hands, splotches of
ketchup spilled on her apron to pass for the blood of her freshly murdered
husband – when my father walked in, home a week early. My mother shrieked a high D across the
living room, then stood there shrinking under my father’s quiet stare, her
spine jacking down like some sort of hydraulic lift. She set the knife on the couch and crept
upstairs to their bedroom, where she stayed for the next three days, pleading
illness. The following day, my father
went to work and asked for a demotion back to the home office. It was six months later, after family
finances forced my father back to the road, before my mother worked her way
back to a trill, released into the air like a renegade hummingbird as she hung
laundry on the clothesline.
* * *
After the
Sunday matinee of “Il Barbiere,” I came out to Bjune Drive and was greeted by a
hailstorm, nickel-size nuggets pelting the ground to the timpani roll of
thunder. It made a lovely post-dinner
cocktail to Rossini’s ringing final-act choruses, and so I stood there a while,
under the covered entranceway of the theater, bewitched.
The others
in the audience, likely islanders and Seattle-area natives, were not so
enamored, and charged into the downpour like warriors, umbrellas and determined
scowls firmly in place. I stood to the
side, behind a square-faced column, and tried to look inconsequential.
“So was I
good, or not?”
The voice
came in from behind me, spirited and husky.
I mistook it for a snatch of some passing conversation, and failed to
respond. Then came three taps on my
shoulder, and I turned to find Gabriella, shrouded by her long Italian hair.
“What? Was
I that bad?”
“Not at
all,” I answered, trying not to smile.
“If anything, you’re getting better.
Your breathing has evened out.”
“Not as
much fear,” she laughed. “Those cadenzas
were scaring the shit out of me.”
“I did
notice something slightly different in the first act, though. It seemed like you were placing your top
notes higher in the mouth, higher in the.…
What do you call it?”
“The mask.”
“Yes. The mask.
What was that?”
She dropped
the corners of her mouth. “Was it bad?”
“No. Not at all.
Just a little lighter, that’s all.
And I only noticed it early on, not later.”
Gabriella
placed her hands on either side of the square-faced column and let the side of
her umber hair fall along its length.
“I’m a bit sore today. I had to
take it easy till my voice warmed up.”
“Hmm. Like a pitcher working through the early
innings without his best stuff.”
“OK…?”
“Sorry. I’m a bit overfond of baseball
metaphors. But it’s no surprise, you
being sore. This Saturday night Sunday
matinee thing has to go.”
“Yes,
Maestro says the same thing. It’s pure
economics, of course; they get a better deal on the theater for two days
straight. Hey, after I get out of these
goofy clothes, you want to go somewhere and talk about my voice?”
I gave
Gabriella a studied squint. “I don’t
know. Are you going to turn into a
creep?”
She placed
an offended hand against her hip. “I beg
your pardon.”
“Who played
shortstop for the Orioles last year?”
“Placido
Domingo.”
“Not even
close.”
Gabriella
shook back her shoulders and raised her already-upturned nose. “I don’t have to be right. I’m a soprano. So – The Pegasus?”
“No. I’ve got a better idea.”
I took
Gabriella to the Madrona and introduced her to the wonders of martinis and
steamed mussels. After a few tentative
nibbles, she was going through them like popcorn, and drinking up the sauce
with her spoon.
“Damn,
Billy! These are gorgeous!”
“Eating
mussels is like ingesting the sea directly.”
“She paused
for a sip of her martini and made a face.
“And how about this?”
“Drinking
martinis is like ingesting gasoline directly.”
“Amen!”
“It’s an
acquired taste. Give it ten years or
so.”
“Yeah. I’ll get back to you on that.” She cleansed
her palate with ice water and watched the Winslow Ferry, slipping southeast
under quickly clearing skies. The
captain gave us two pulls on the horn, low baritone range, a quarter note
followed by a whole. Gabriella downed
another mussel and pointed her tiny seashell fork in my direction.
“Do you
know what I like about you, Billy?”
“Tell me
everything.”
“You are
the only person besides Maestro who knows what it is I’m doing up there. Do you know how hard it is to be working so
hard to do something, and have nobody really understand what it is you’re
doing?”
“No. But I can imagine it.”
“And do you
know, that when I’m singing just right, I can’t really hear my own voice. It rings right up out of my head and floats
away.”
“A separate
entity.”
“Exactly. I call it my heaven voice, because you know
when you die, your voice rises up out of your body and goes to heaven.”
“Did you
get that from Maestro?”
“No. That one’s mine. And it’s true, you know. But...
oh, what was I talking about? Oh! Yes – that’s why I need people like
you, Billy, people who can hear these things.
Because I can’t hear them myself.
I am totally disconnected from my own voice.”
“That’s a
shame, because you’re missing out on a wonderful experience.”
She tried
her martini again and winced a little less this time. “So why is it that you can hear these things,
Billy? You have no formal training – am I right?”
I took a
chunk out of my garlic bread and chewed it down before I answered. “I come from a long line of sopranos.”
“As good as
me?”
“No. But good.”
“Did they
ever take it anywhere?”
I heard
those little alarms going off again, and answered her with a blank gaze.
“Oh,” she
said. “I’ve re-entered the confidential
information zone. Jesus, Billy, you’re
like a one-man mine field. So tell me
this, at least. Why didn’t you say hi to
me after last night’s performance?”
There she
had me. “How did you...?”
“When you
know a part as well as I know Rosina, you start letting your eyes drift. Fourth row, orchestra right. Am I correct?”
“Well... yes.”
“And you
haven’t dropped by the cafe once this week.”
“I was
trying... not to be a creep.”
“Ah,
Billy!” She slapped me on the hand.
“Look, son, Gabriella Compton’s Diva Cafe is sort of like an exclusive
private club. It may be hard at first to
gain admittance, but once you’re in, you’re in.
Relax, wouldja?”
“Okay,” I
said. “I will.”
The
waitress came by and we ordered cappuccinos, plus a raspberry cheesecake and
two forks. Then we wandered into another
lengthy agenda of operatic subjects: the lush recitative orchestrations of
Richard Strauss, the appropriate age for major singers to retire from the
stage, the role of academia and monied foundations in propping up amusical,
overintellectualized modern operas; and, finally, a handful of opera jokes
aimed at the different voices.
“Three,” I
said. “One to screw it in, two to say,
‘I could’ve done it better.’”
Gabriella
covered her mouth and popped her eyes at me.
“God!” she tittered. “Bill! That
is so true!” Then she took a look at her watch.
“Uh-oh.”
“Ferry
time?”
“Ferry
time. Are you coming with?”
I might have
been a freshly initiated member of Gabriella’s Diva Cafe, but I wasn’t ready to
look like a stalker, so I had my lie tucked away in my shirt pocket, available
for ready use. “Actually, I’m heading
the other direction. Meeting a friend in
Bremerton.”
“Oh. Okay.
Well, I’d better go. Kiss my
hand?”
I couldn’t
refuse an offer like that. “Molto bene,
signorina.” I touched her hand to my lips in the gentleman’s manner, then
wished her “Buona notte” and watched her drift off along the waterfront. After finishing a cup of decaf and following
Gabriella’s ferry across the harbor, I paid my bill and began the five uphill
blocks to the Island Country Inn, Bainbridge’s only hotel.
Photo by MJV
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