A Cadenza for Caruso

A Cadenza for Caruso

An Opera Mystery

Barbara Paul

MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

For my family
—

The Trabers in California

and the Pauls in Massachusetts

1

The acoustics were not good. The sight-lines were terrible. The stage was cavernous and hard to light, the dressing rooms were windowless and none too clean, the backstage area was cramped and inadequate.

Enrico Caruso sighed in contentment. Beautiful, simply beautiful.

He swaggered out to center stage and struck a heroic pose for the empty auditorium. Before long that famous Diamond Horseshoe would be ablaze with light, packed with New Yorkers eager to hear him sing again. Caruso always felt at home in the Metropolitan Opera House. Covent Garden was more glamorous, La Scala had the blessings of tradition behind it—but the Metropolitan was his kingdom. A man can be forgiven for strutting a little in his own kingdom.

A discreet cough from the wings ended the moment. “What is it, Ugo?” Caruso called out.

“There is no running water backstage,” his valet answered. “How can I make the dressing room clean when there is no running water backstage?”

“Of course there is running water backstage. There has been running water here for years and years.” Two years.

“It is not running
now
, Rico,” Ugo said glumly. “Everywhere is dirt and dust and no water.”

The tenor waved his arms in the air. “Then find the running-water expert! Take care of this terrible problem!” The valet muttered something under his breath and disappeared.
Martino would know what to do
, Caruso thought in exasperation. But Martino was back at the hotel.

“Ah, Enrico! You are here, you are here!” A familiar voice floated out of the dark auditorium as its owner came down the aisle toward the stage. Giulio Gatti-Casazza, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, had met Caruso's ship a few days earlier; but now, on the stage of the Met, they greeted each other as if after a ten-year separation.

“Mr. Gatti!” Caruso said affectionately. He liked working with Gatti-Casazza. The previous manager had had no real understanding of opera or, even worse, of opera singers. But Mr. Gatti knew what terrible hardships singers had to face. Mr. Gatti knew everything.

“The new opera—it progresses, yes?” Gatti-Casazza wanted to know.

“It is all in here,” Caruso said solemnly, tapping his forehead. “It is here,” grasping his throat dramatically, “that the trouble lies.”

Gatti-Casazza's eyes grew wide. “The voice …?”

“An annoyingly persistent sore throat,” the tenor said worriedly. “Everything irritates it—smoke, dust …” Then he remembered. “Ugo says there is no running water backstage. Dust everywhere—”

“Ah yes, a small problem with the plumbing,” the general manager said soothingly. “Soon to be remedied, I am assured. If your man can wait a little while …? Good. But tell me, Enrico, what are you doing for your throat?”

“My special spray, gargles, I wear amber beads around my neck—”

“You are smoking those strong Egyptian cigarettes still?”

Caruso grinned sheepishly. “I use a holder.”

Gatti-Casazza waved a finger at him admonishingly. “That is the cause of your sore throat, Enrico! Put the cigarettes aside, at least until after the première. You owe that much to Puccini.” His face darkened. “We must do all we can to ease his burden.”

Caruso nodded in sober agreement. The composer was coming to New York to supervise the world première of his new opera—an occasion for joy and celebration under normal circumstances. But Puccini would be arriving under a cloud, still suffering the effects of a shocking scandal that at one point had driven him close to suicide. Puccini had said that working on the new opera was all that kept him sane.

“I will undertake to cheer him up,” Caruso announced expansively. “I am very good at cheering people up.”

“That you are, Enrico,” the other man laughed, “that you are. Puccini's ship arrives early tomorrow morning, by the way. You will have a few days before we begin work in earnest.”

“I work every day,” Caruso proclaimed. “Even on Sundays.”

The general manager was plucking at his beard—a familiar signal that something was bothering him. “Enrico—no tricks this time. No little surprises for the other singers. I want your word. No practical jokes at all.”

Caruso was hurt. “You think I play jokes when we prepare a new opera?”

“No filling the other singers' hats with flour. No nailing of oranges to the table.”

“There are no oranges in the new opera.”

“Whatever. I want you to promise me you will play no pranks at all.”

“Such a promise is not necessary,” the tenor said with offended dignity, “but I give it just the same.”

Gatti-Casazza's smile of relief was so dazzling that Caruso forgave him on the spot. “I believe you, Enrico. We will have good rehearsals—and a great performance, yes?”

The tenor decided to leave poor Ugo to cope with the dirty dressing room as best he could; he himself would walk back to the Hotel Knickerbocker—only two short blocks away, overlooking Times Square, the “crossroads of the world.” Caruso liked being in the center of things. No lover of exercise, Caruso nevertheless enjoyed strolling the streets of New York. It was a crisp, bright day in November, the year was 1910, and all was right with the world.

He hadn't gone a full block before some stranger was pounding him on the back and calling him
primo tenore
. He was, of course,
primo
—but it was always gratifying to hear someone say so. Caruso talked to the man in Italian, delighted as always with the polyglot nature of New York's citizenry. He himself slipped in an English sentence now and then; he always did, when talking in Italian—good practice. The back-thumping stranger had been born in Milan and had on more than one occasion heard Caruso sing at La Scala. He didn't ask for money, so Caruso didn't offer any; they parted on friendly terms.

But in the lobby of the Hotel Knickerbocker a supplicant did lie in wait. Another stranger and another Italian, but this one was shabby and defeated-looking. Caruso listened sympathetically to the man's hard-luck story, and then with a grandiose gesture handed him a moderate sum of money. He basked momentarily in the outpouring of gratitude that followed; when the supplicant had left, Caruso pulled out a small notebook and carefully wrote down the amount he had given away. Keeping accounts was important.

Caruso pushed open the door to his hotel apartment. “Martino! Mario! Barthélemy!” The three other members of his entourage (beside Ugo) came running. “Mario, my throat spray. Martino, a hot bath and clean clothes. Use the jasmine scent.” To Barthélemy: “After the bath, we work.”

Barthélemy smiled. “We work on the end of the first act?”

“Yes, yes, we work on the end of the first act,” Caruso flapped a hand at him. “And Martino—arrange with the management for a small dinner party tomorrow night. The great Puccini should not spend his first evening in New York alone. Let's see—we ask Amato, Scotti, Crispano …” He counted on his fingers. “Eight people.”

“I will take care of it, Rico,” Martino said. Caruso put the matter out of his mind; once Martino knew about it, the dinner party was as good as arranged. Martino had been with him longer than anybody else and was in charge of the other valets. In fact, he was in charge of almost everything.

Young Mario came hurrying in with the throat spray.
Ah, that felt good
. Caruso tried a high note, sprayed some more. “Let us have slightly more glycerine in the next batch, Mario.”

The young man's mournful eyes peered out beneath his mop of thick dark hair. “I will mix it up this very day, signore.” Polite boy, Mario—he couldn't quite bring himself to say
Rico
as the others did. A little too solemn for one so young, but
very
polite.

Caruso luxuriated in his scented bath for almost an hour, eating ice cream and smoking the strong cigarettes Gatti-Casazza had warned him about. He dressed in his second outfit of the day and would probably change one more time: a singer had to be careful of infection.

Time to work. First the breathing exercises. Then the scales, for warm-up. Then the music.

Five years earlier Giacomo Puccini had seen a play in New York called
The Girl of the Golden West
and had been impressed by it. So impressed, in fact, that he'd made it the basis of his new opera—
La Fanciulla del West
. To Caruso this was one of the most exotic operas he'd ever appeared in. A rowdy saloon scene, a card game with life-or-death stakes, a manhunt, a lynching party, live horses on stage, California gold miners, cowboys and Indians, outlaws, vigilantes—everything about the Gold Rush and America's Old West that was
so
exciting! Caruso was singing the role of the dashing bandit Ramerrez, and Gatti-Casazza had promised him he would indeed be packing a six-shooter.

Barthélemy was seated at the gold-and-white Empire-style piano. “The end of the first act,” he announced firmly.

Caruso shrugged acquiescence. Barthélemy was more than just an accompanist; he was an excellent musician in his own right. And if Barthélemy felt that the end of the first act needed work, then the end of the first act needed work. Caruso knew when to listen.

He sang, half-voice, repeating phrases over and over until he and Barthélemy both were satisfied. The music was something of a departure for Puccini. Gatti-Casazza was excited about the score; he'd said it was more mature and more dramatic than Puccini's earlier work.
It's certainly harder to sing
, Caruso thought. More augmented intervals, more dissonance. The tenor liked it.

This was the music Puccini had labored over to keep himself from committing suicide. An opera that grew out of such pain could not be the same sweetly romantic kind of melody the Italian lyric theatre had loved for so many years. Melody there was aplenty in
La Fanciulla del West
, but there was also dissonance.

Elvira.

Dissonance, Elvira—how quickly one word called up the other! It was Elvira Puccini who'd caused all the trouble.

“Rico,” Barthélemy said reprovingly, “you're not concentrating.”

Caruso announced a small intermission and called to Mario for his throat spray.

It was Elvira's jealousy of her famous and handsome husband that had brought about the tragedy. Of course, one could say Puccini had given her plenty of cause—but not this time, not really. Puccini had been carrying on a mild flirtation with a young servant girl named Doria, right there in his own home in the village Torre del Lago. Elvira had accused the two of having an affair and drove the girl out of the house.

For weeks Elvira spread rumors about the girl, taunting her publicly in the streets of Torre del Lago, calling her names a respectable married woman wasn't supposed to know. Aware of Puccini's reputation with the ladies, many of the villagers believed Elivra's accusations. Even Doria's family began to doubt her.