Prima Donna at Large (14 page)

This is something all singers have to put up with. We accept invitations to a social occasion and there's always somebody who expects us to perform in a professional capacity. Caruso sometimes accepts a fee to sing at such events. But I never do, because that puts you on some ambiguous level between honored guest and hired help. When I'm a guest, I want to be treated as a guest and nothing else.

“Dear little songbird,” the cow mooed, “do sing that nice little aria from
Madame Butterfly
for us. I so seldom get to hear it.”

That nice little aria
. That's actually what she called
Un Bel Dì
, one of the greatest pieces of music for soprano voice ever written—
that nice little aria
. “I am sorry,” I announced, projecting my voice so all could hear, “but if you would arrive in your box before the middle of the second act, and stop chattering, you
would
hear it—in the opera house, where it belongs.”

Caruso looked shocked. Toscanini smothered a laugh. The cow's friends frowned at me, while her enemies smiled in approval. But at last she understood and importuned me no further. In fact, she hasn't spoken to me since.

All this before we sat down to dinner.

Toscanini didn't really want to be there. He wasn't good at parties—he had no small talk. Gatti-Casazza was the same way; whenever I invited him and Toscanini both to a party, they created two little islands of gloom in the midst of all the gaiety. Those two were alike in so many ways; if one of them had been a woman, they would have been married.

Married, but now thinking of divorce. Somewhere between the quail in aspic and the
bombe Moscovite
Toscanini confided that he probably wouldn't be at the Metropolitan next season. He said it so casually that at first I didn't pay too much attention; he'd threatened to quit before. But he insisted that this time he meant it.

“It is this ‘retrenchment,'” he complained. “Everywhere I look, Gatti cuts the corners. Anything to save a few dollars, yes? How does he expect me to produce the first-class productions with so little money, so little rehearsal time? He expects me to work the miracles?
Questo non si può fare!
I am not magician!”

For once I found myself seeing Gatti's side of it. “The retrenchment wasn't his idea, you know. The board decides these things. Gatti is simply carrying out his instructions.”

“Then he should resign with me. We leave La Scala together, now we must leave the Metropolitan together.”

It was that statement, I think, that made me realize Toscanini wasn't just making empty threats. The idea of the Metropolitan Opera without Toscanini and Gatti at the helm—why, it was unthinkable! A chill ran through me.

Toscanini noticed. “Gerry?”

I shook my head. “I just realized what it meant. What would the Metropolitan do without you?”

“It would deteriorate,” he said matter-of-factly. Then he put on what I'd come to recognize as his romantic face. “The one thing that makes me hesitate,” he whispered, “is the thought of leaving you,
cara mia
.”

Just then one of the other dinner guests said something to me and the conversation took a different direction. Across the table and three or four chairs down, Caruso was seated between two lovely women with whom he was flirting with gusto. They were both laughing and having a good time; Caruso's only problem was deciding which one to concentrate on.

Caruso had tried to flirt with me when we first met. But I could never take him seriously; such a
funny
-looking man, and so unintentionally comical when he put on the airs of a languishing lover. I remember the first time I ever saw him—at Monte Carlo, at the first rehearsal for the
Bohème
we were to sing. He'd come in wearing a suit of shrieking green checks and bright yellow gloves, brandishing that ubiquitous gold-headed cane of his. But he was so pleasant and affable to everyone, so kind, that I couldn't help but like him.

That was back in the early stages of both our careers. I had never heard Caruso sing; and all during rehearsals he sang half-voice, saving himself for the performance. On opening night when I first heard the magnificent sound that came pouring out of the throat of that funny-looking Neapolitan, I was literally struck dumb with amazement. I stood like a statue on the stage until the conductor rapped sharply with his baton to bring me back to my senses. I'll never know another pleasure quite like that one—singing with Enrico Caruso for the very first time. At the end of Act III Caruso had lifted me bodily in full view of the audience and carried me all the way to my dressing room. Oh, what a moment that was! The Monte Carlo audience went wild. (Caruso has never even
tried
to heft up any other soprano he's sung with!)

Talk at the table turned to the war, and I let my mind wander, remembering. Toscanini murmured, “Where are you,
cara mia
? Of what do you think?”

“Monte Carlo,” I answered.

That place, it seemed to me, epitomized all that was both good and bad about the Europe that was now being torn to pieces. Frankly, I missed the glitter of Monte Carlo, the cultivated frivolity, the carefree abandon with which money was spent. Not only at the gaming tables (where I gambled just enough to learn not to gamble!), but in the little everyday gestures. Whether it was a Russian overtipping or an American calling out
All join in!
at the bar, it made for a kind of good-humored camaraderie and display for its own sake. Surfeited grand dukes, wearied kings incognito, phlegmatic John Bulls, American millionaires new to the international playground, sophisticated Parisian elegants—they all contributed to the pageantry that springs from the irrepressible urge for human expression.

Yet a lot of it was mere bravado. Monte Carlo has always paraded a snobbish indifference to less fortunate mortals; the well-being of the common man was not a popular topic of conversation. American millionaires found it hard to break into the inner circles, and European nobility found that marriage to American heiresses was not enough to arrest the decay of old families. Those centuries-old coats of arms were too tarnished; they could never again be burnished to their original brightness, not even with American money. Something was dying in Europe; and I think that underneath all the frenetic gaiety, Monte Carlo knew it.

Dinner ended, and the guests began drifting to other rooms in search of entertainment. I announced it was time for me to leave. My hostess made no attempt to dissuade me; she understood, as did everyone else there, that I do not keep late hours. As my escort, Toscanini then had an excuse to leave himself—for which he breathed a barely disguised sigh of relief. Caruso had settled on the younger of his two dinner companions (don't they always?), but he abandoned her long enough to say goodbye.

“Go straight home to bed, Gerry,” he ordered, eyes twinkling. “Although I do not understand why you insist you need your beauty sleep.” A nice compliment.

“Don't be too charming tonight, Rico,” I answered in the same vein. “Your lady may not let you go at all.”

He tried to look dismayed and failed. “How terrible! I will be careful.”

Toscanini and I were turning to go when a bass voice boomed out from across the room. “Miss Farrar! Do wait a moment—please!”

The bass voice had said
please
, but it was clearly a command. The owner of the voice was an oversized woman in her sixties wearing enough jewels to weigh down an elephant. She was one of those obtrusive people who thrust their faces into yours when they talked, and I'd always had trouble being polite to her. She never took hints; she was worse than the cow who'd wanted me to sing.

“Dear Miss Farrar, I have a favor I want to ask of you.” (
No
, I thought automatically.) “I have been racking my brains trying to think what to wear to the war relief costume ball. But when I saw you here tonight, I had the answer! Do allow me to wear one of your Butterfly costumes, my dear—it will be just the thing!”

I gritted my teeth. “Sorry, I never lend my costumes.”

“Ah, but you can make an exception this one time, can't you?”

“I'm sorry, no. There's still time for you to get an Oriental costume made up, isn't there?”

“But that's not the same as wearing one from the Metropolitan Opera!” she boomed. “If I show up in one of Geraldine Farrar's costumes, I'll win the prize!”

For what?
I wondered. I had lent some of my costumes to a few of these society matrons when I was new at the Met. They'd come back with the seams stretched and some of the ornaments missing; the costumes hadn't even been cleaned before they were returned. I told the woman no again, but she didn't want to hear me. She was about my height but outweighed me by a good sixty pounds, and she was closing in.

“Now, Miss Farrar, I'm just not going to take no for an answer! Do lend me one of those exquisite costumes—I'll let you choose which one! I will take good care of it and make sure everyone knows it belongs to you. And a wig. I'll need a wig.”

I stepped back from that overendowed dowager and looked her up and down. “Dear lady, until you can lift your façade and restrain your posterior, you would need not one but several of my Butterfly costumes. You would do better to choose something from Emmy Destinn's wardrobe.”

“Gerry!” Caruso looked horrified. The others within hearing distance tittered. Toscanini had his back turned, so I couldn't tell what he was thinking.

“Well, I
never
!” My buxom adversary flounced off, and believe you me, nobody flounced better than she did. I was heartily glad to be rid of her.

“Gerry, why you insult Emmy?” Caruso said in a low voice. He looked hurt.

“Oh, I don't know,” I muttered. “I can't stand women like that one. Look how fat she is—she'd ruin my costumes!”

“And that is why you insult Emmy? Because she is not slim and beautiful? You have no tolerance, Gerry, no understanding.”

“Don't scold me, Rico, I'm in no mood for it.” I tapped Toscanini on the shoulder. “Come.”

Toscanini's face was a mask until we got into the limousine and were snuggled comfortably under the fur lap rug. Then he laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. “Ah, Gerry! All these things I think to myself but cannot say to the ladies—you say them!
In fede mia!
You have heart of the lion!”

“Mmm,” I murmured. “But Rico's mad at me.”

He took my hand. “Eh, you must remember, Caruso and Emmy—they are friends for many years, many. Caruso feels protective, you understand?”

I snorted, and didn't even care that it was such an indelicate sound. “Emmy Destinn needs a protector the way you need conducting lessons.”

“Nevertheless, Caruso
thinks
he is protecting her, and that makes the difference, no?”

“I suppose.”

We rode in silence for a while, holding hands like a couple of schoolchildren. I wasn't concerned about Emmy and Caruso; it was my companion I was worrying about. There was a time when I'd actually thought about leaving the Metropolitan Opera—because of Toscanini. During his first year in New York we hadn't seen eye to eye on
anything;
the Maestro was so rigid, so demanding! But Toscanini had made the first gesture of reconciliation, and since then I'd sung in the best-conducted performances of my life. “You aren't really going to leave the Metropolitan, are you?” I asked.

“Is possible,” he shrugged. Then his voice took on a note of excitement. “Why do you not come with me, Gerry? You have never sung in
Italia
. Let my countrymen hear you, let them see you!” He laughed. “They make me national hero! I return home, and I bring America's brightest star with me, yes?” He laughed again. “It could be glorious,
cara mia
.”

That's all I needed—to start all over again in a new country, in the middle of a war. I put my head on his shoulder and said: “I don't want you to go, you know. I want you to stay right where you are and go on doing what you're doing now. I want you to keep on screaming at me in rehearsal and whispering compliments in my ear whenever we're alone. I don't want anything to change.”

“Ah, but the change, it starts already,” he reflected sadly. “But I understand you. There are things you want to keep in your heart, to cherish forever, yes? Even moments, special moments. Like this one.”

What a nice thing to say. “Tell me something. How is it possible for a person to be so nasty in rehearsal and so sweet the rest of the time?”

“Strange,” Toscanini said. “I am just wondering the same thing.”

The place where Fifth Avenue and Broadway meet is the windiest corner in town and no place to be in mid-winter. But around the corner on East Twenty-third Street is the Bon Ton Tea Shoppe, where I was meeting Morris Gest. I like the Bon Ton; they serve a good tea and they know how to treat celebrities. When the staff had assured itself that Miss Farrar's chair was comfortable and Miss Farrar's order had been taken and there was nothing else that Miss Farrar desired, I turned to Morris. “Well?”

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small porcelain jar. “They've made a good offer,” he said, “but I think I can get them to go higher.”

The label on the jar said
Creme Nerol
. I took off the lid and sniffed; it smelled good. “Very well, I'll try it tonight.” The makers of Creme Nerol had asked me to endorse their new skin and beauty product, but I wanted to test it first.

“They plan on running your picture in the advertisement. That should be good for a few more sales. By the way, the Old Man will be joining us here—I hope you don't mind.”

“Not at all, I'm glad he's coming.” And I was; I hadn't seen Morris's father-in-law for a while. Just then our tea arrived. I stirred and sipped and nibbled a little of the cream cake we were served—just a taste.