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Molto Agitato: The Mayhem Behind The Music At The Metropolitan OperaEditions
ReviewThe world of grand opera is the last bastion of old-fashioned glamour. A first night in the West End nowadays looks like a lacklustre episode of ‘Eastenders’, movie stars only do it once a year on Oscar night, and pop-stars don’t cut it at all, in isolation or in combination.( Sorry Posh!). Apart from perhaps state dinners (and I don’t get asked to too many of those), it takes a Gala or a première of a new production in the opera house to bring out the long frocks and the jewels and then it happens in very few places around the globe. The Metropolitan Opera in New York is one of these venues. This new book has been a bestseller in the USA. ‘Don’t read it,’ I was advised, ‘It’s so horrible about dear Jimmy,’ (Levine, that is, music director at the Met) and though I’m sure that maestro Levine was miffed at the revelations of his private life, the facts have been known to cognoscenti for decades and as far as I know he had satisfactorily helped the police with their enquiries. Anyway, I plunged in with few scruples and found out that his behaviour seems to have been par for the course ever since the institution was founded in 1880 with $600,000, contributed by a group of subscribers to build a theatre on Broadway at Thirty-ninth Street. The names and the site may have changed since the days of Nellie Melba, Emma Calve and the de Reszke brothers, but those maestros, tenors and divas fascinated and dominated their public every bit as much as the 3 tenors, the Alagnas or Renee Fleming do today at The Lincoln Center. Author Johanna Fiedler, daughter of long-time Boston Pops conductor, Arthur, worked there for many years with her eyes and ears wide open, and has been assiduous in her historic research as well. For example, the career of Maria Callas, surely the ultimate opera goddess due to the combination of her personal magnetism and her dedication to her art, is investigated in considerable detail. Let us not forget that it takes true ART for Montserrat Caballe to convince as a consumptive courtesan, or an overweight OAP tenor to pass as a lovesick teenager (I say that with reverence). Avid devotees, I suspect, will relish the details of Kathleen Battle’s dismissal from the august house and the author, from an insider’s position, explains the code when an artist does not appear. The phrasing is critical. ‘Ill’ means genuinely sick, ‘indisposed’ means trouble backstage, ‘artistic differences’ means an out-and-out clash of egos, blazing rows and possibly legal action, but Miss Battle alone in the history of the Met. merited ‘unprofessional actions, profoundly detrimental to artistic collaborations between cast members’. I treasure the T-shirt I was given by a company member which reads ‘I Survived The Battle’. - review by Stewart Grimshaw |
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