A few memories of Marches and Mays at the Houston Grand Opera.
3 May 1993 Things are really jumping at the opera! The second cast of Aida is up and running; we fired Thomas Booth after the piano dress and hired Michael Sylvester. Then the tenor in Barbiere fell ill; Kip Wilborn was whisked in, he sang Sunday matinee from the pit; today we start staging him just in case he has to go on. Now it seems that Bartoli, God forbid, is getting the same bug. I hope she stays on because Tamara is in no shape to step in, vocally. Someday she may be a good Rosina, but not this week.
9 May 1993 I wish I had gone to Wednesday's performance of Barbiere. Apparently, it was a night to remember. Palacio had been ill for the past week or so, so we brought in Kip Wilborn to stand by. Anyway, Palacio was really sick by the Wednesday night performance and was removed by David Gockley after the first scene, and Kip finished the show. Then during the curtain calls, a piece of equipment that hangs on the DL wall fell and hit a dresser. He was rendered unconscious, suffered compound fractures in his leg for which he had to have surgery; furthermore, the accident triggered an epileptic seizure, of which he hadn't had one in ten years, and which caused temporary short-term memory loss. But he's on the mend now, thank God.
16 May 1993 I suppose Frida is going OK--the stagings are sometimes a zoo; the director, the choreographer, and the puppet master all doing different things at once, everyone's talking and putting in their two cents' worth, and who the hell is in charge? Even the music rehearsals--Ward had to command quiet more than once, which rarely happens in a music rehearsal, at least in the opera world. Things like ensemble and integrity of tone are apparently of no real value to anyone but the music staff; the actors don't seem to care. And that bitch-on-heels of a director is driving me nuts.
27 May 1993 I must say, Ward has been wonderfully patient during these Frida rehearsals. This cast is so unbelievably chatty! I guess in opera, we're used to a certain code of behavior; we're not used to everyone talking all the time, especially when the conductor is running the rehearsal. The other morning, we had a brief music rehearsal of the finale and Ward was making a change in a certain spot. As usual, as soon as they stopped singing, the cast broke into general discussion and murmurings; then one of them piped up to Ward, "Could you repeat what you just said, please?" Ward asked her in return, "Were you talking?" "Yes." "Then I won't repeat it." I nearly guffawed!
Then there's the girl who is habitually late, or meandering around the sixth floor without telling stage management where she is. I was supposed to have a coaching with the three calaveras, and she was the only one missing at the appointed time. When she sauntered nonchalantly into the room a good five minutes into the coaching, Shawn, the ASM, told her she was late, to which she replied, "I've been here the whole time." She doesn't get it. Merely being in the building doesn't constitute being on time for your call. Space cadet.
18 March 1994 First day of Traviata chorus stagings. Harry Silverstein is the ideal director to chase away the 10 a. m. drowzies. The man is nuts.
During break, a small group of us went out for a smoke by the stage door. A white stretch limo and a Wagoneer pulled up to the curb; from the second vehicle emerged Cecilia Bartoli, arrived to rehearse the recital she's giving tonight; from the limo emerged an obvious companion of hers--an absolutely gorgeous male speciman, tall, slender, broad-shouldered, dressed in shades of muted blue, hair slicked back into a ponytail. A walking advertisement for Drakkar Noir. I'm afraid I gaped a bit, and I might even have left a small pool of drool on the pavement.
15 May 1994 We closed Turandot last Tuesday. I finally, finally got the Act II procession right, banda-wise. John smiled at me on the monitor; I wished he could see me smile back and hear my "thank you." The banda players were very complimentary afterwards, shook my hand and told me I did great.
But oh, the agony I went through during rehearsals! The second orchestra staging was the worst. Understand, first of all, that I and the poor banda were situated in the catwalks, six floors above the pit. John kept picking on me incessantly over the monitor; he wanted every note perfectly in line with the orchestra, pick-pick-pick, I'm behind one bar and ahead the next, over-and-over-and-over, pick-pick-pick. Finally, it was intermission before Act III, and I went out to the loading dock for a much needed smoke. As soon as I sat down with my smoking buddies from the chorus, I burst into tears, babbling, "It's too hard, we're too far from the pit, it's never gonna be perfect, he's just got to accept that! I'm trying my damnedest, but it's never gonna be perfect!" They tried to console me, but I kept crying, non-stop, shaking all over. A nervous wreck. (However, you will recall, dear Journal, that this is the time of year when I usually have a meltdown. End of the season, and all that.) Top of Act III, I had to conduct chorus offstage left, which I did with the tears still spouting and the nose running. "Has Leticia got a cold?" "No, she's crying!" Back upstairs in the catwalk, I was still crying. The banda were very sympathetic. They knew what my problem was, since they could hear everything John said over the monitor. I took up my baton for our next entrance, my hand was shaking, and I could barely see the monitor through my tears. Somehow, I made it through, but I was still crying when I got home, and kept it up till the wee hours. I wanted to strangle John. He knows how hard it is; he conducted banda for Julius Rudel at NYCO in the early years; he knows what it's like to be constantly picked on. Now he's on the other side of the monitor, and he's doing it to me.
But when he smiled at me onscreen during that last performance, I felt our old good feeling was restored. He's given me a lot of grief during the past five years, but deep down we have a solid respect for each other.
Note: Over the years, John DeMain and I forged a wonderful working relationship. He could be tough sometimes, but I wouldn't have missed those productions for anything in the world.
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