I have been a lifelong public relations warrior on behalf of the art form we all love, hell-bent on shielding neophytes from the kind of execrable singing that reinforces negative stereotypes about opera.
Karma has repaid me così: with a nightmare, spawned by this performance, in which I’m back working at the Met and disastrously late to be on Artistic Duty for a performance of Un ballo in maschera. They’re midway through the opening scene as I careen toward stage door, where I’m intercepted by a grim troika: Tom Connell (stage manager) Bill Malloy (head of wardrobe) and Victor Callegari (makeup). They break the urgent news that, because La Grunowa has fallen ill and nobody was around to call her cover, I have to go on as Ulrica (“But…I’m not even a mezzo!;” “Work with it: if you’d gotten here on time, this wouldn’t be happening.”).
Next thing I know, the curtain is rising after Verdi’s ominous orchestral introduction. I breathe deeply in my makeshift babushka and schmatta. But when I open my mouth to sing, this comes out. How is it possible that I’m making my Met debut summoning the Unholy while sounding like some dubbed Italian version of a possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist? Ma che brutta figura per la lirica! Adding insult to injury, I glance down at the podium, where a disdainful Mo. Nello Santi (the bane of my existence back in the day) sneers “Porca miseria.” I am awakened by another, saner voice in my head intoning, “Dude, this is f**ked up! We are outta here.” And I sit bolt upright in bed, bathed in a cold sweat.
[True confession: If it seems like I’m picking on la Barbieri, I admit I’ve held a grudge since she commandeered not only the Jury of the Rosa Ponselle Competition here in the 1980s but the entire shooting match. Like a charismatic con artist, she convinced the Ponselle Foundation’s Executive Director that the substantial prize money allotted for the winners should be held in escrow rather than be paid directly to the singers, since, as talented as they were, they were all “disasters” technically and stylistically. Instead, the money would be paid to her as reimbursement for lessons she would offer the winners at her home in Florence (because only she could “fix it”).
And did I mention I can’t unhear her singing “Voce di donna” as La Cieca in a 1975 Met performance of La Gioconda? It was pretty awful. Please don’t tell me through clenched teeth that her “artistry was still intact.” That’s just a lovely euphemism for, “sounds like Death chewin’ on a cracker”.]
