Chapter 8
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Maestro
Two words, like two stable chemical compounds, can be absolutely neutral until they are put together, and then they become something explosive. For a conductor, that can be the verb “have” and the noun “fun.”
A longer phrase, like “It will be fine,” sometimes competes, but “Have fun” seems to be the one that pushes my buttons, like “value engineering” did when I was chancellor of a university, and “collateralized expenses” when I was making many recordings. Hearing, “Have fun!” just before a concert is like fingernails on a blackboard to me. Give me “Merde!” or “Break a leg!” or “Hals und Beinbruch!” or “Toi toi toi!” or “In bocca al lupo!” or even the British “Good luck!,” which in any other culture would be a curse. Just don’t say “Have fun.”
Conducting is many things but fun is rarely one of them. There is joy and there is stress. There is a certain defensive pride in achieving a successful performance. There is glory in being inside the greatest expressions of the human soul, like navigating one of the towers of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia and moving it around. There is superhuman energy when 250 people are making music with you standing before them and a few thousand behind you. Yes, this is, in the profound meaning of the overused adjective, awesome.
It is also true that we look like we are having fun when the music is happy—because we become music when we conduct. We definitely do not look like we are having fun when we address Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique.” We are always in the zone of the intentionality of the composer, as we perceive it. We laugh. We weep. We dance. We despair. We hope. We die. Then we start all over again.
The price for the privilege is, however, pretty steep. Many of us give up. If, however, we are truly wise as well as persistent, we come to understand that wherever we are, no matter the qualities of the ensemble, the size of the town, or the seriousness of the artwork we are revivifying, what we do is valuable, occasionally magnificent, and always of equal importance. We never know who is out there in the dark behind us and how our performance is affecting them. Getting to that place is not easy, since most of us have visions of global fame dancing in our heads when we first taste the possibility of having a successful career.
But no career is linear, even if it looks that way. Leonard Bernstein made his debut with the New York Philharmonic on a Sunday afternoon in November of 1943. He became its music director in 1958. There were a lot of rainy Tuesdays and empty Februaries in between. However, the biographies printed in the program you read at a concert maintain a word count of, say, 250 words. We fill the space, and as the years go by, it all seems to follow logically. As the New York Philharmonic’s Web site states: “Leonard Bernstein, who had made his historic, unrehearsed and spectacularly successful debut with the Philharmonic in 1943, was Music Director for 11 seasons, a time of significant change and growth.”
We are so dependent on being hired and being taken seriously that a career is only linear in retrospect. It is historical fiction, the linear career, but one that people want to believe. The problem comes when a conductor believes it and expects it.
A number of years ago, as a lark, I took a fear-management course at Canyon Ranch, a resort and spa in Lenox, Massachusetts. What this amounts to is a series of high ropes challenges in which you are put in a life-saving harness, climb up a series of trees, and stand on a small platform facing another tree—with the idea of getting to a platform on the other tree without falling. In between you and the other tree are ropes on which you must walk. The challenges become progressively more difficult, until the most frightening one: All there is before you is a rope hanging equidistant between where you are standing and the platform attached to the tree you must get to. There are no wires. There is no net.
Although you are perfectly safe because of the harness, your brain forgets this, and you just see something out of a Tarzan movie. When I got to this point I surveyed the challenge, took a deep breath, and jumped. When I grabbed the rope, I did not quite have the momentum to make it to the tree. My feet just touched the platform. A quick response from my brain ordered my legs to kick off with enough power to send me back to the starting point of this challenge. I was now standing on the home platform, holding the rope. From the ground below, my coach shouted up to me. “John! Aim for the tree, not the platform!”
If there ever was a Eureka! moment for me, that was it. I inhaled, grabbed the rope, and swung toward the tree and not the platform, arriving with enough momentum to have gone through that tree. As I slid down two parallel wires to the ground, the coach wanted to know what I did for a living. I said I was a conductor.
I learned three things from this experience: (1) Being a conductor is fundamentally a solitary job, even though we are amid hundreds of performers and thousands of witnesses. It can be terribly lonely, even though you are not alone, and solutions to the challenges are yours and yours alone. (2) Those challenges are both unpredictable and complex. However, once we have prepared, rehearsed, and performed, we move on. Therefore, our stress levels are short-term and we tend to live rather long lives. (3) The goal of every performance is not the last note. The goal, rather, is a moment after the last note is over. It’s the tree, not the platform.
In the early nineteenth century, when conducting was becoming essential in performing new music, the person who stood up, waved his arms, ran rehearsals, and corrected everyone and everything lived in the city in which he worked. In the 150 years since then, the life of a conductor has changed radically, and travel is just another part of the job.
A conductor, like many performing musicians, is itinerant. Unless we are fortunate enough (and content) to live in the city that can support us and our art, we are the doctors who make house calls. Instead of the black case my father carried with him, which included a stethoscope, syringes, a blood-pressure cuff, and various pharmaceuticals, we travel not just with our costumes and support materials but with our entire studio. For some, that includes everything from a keyboard to a battery-powered pencil sharpener.
Music is paper and paper is heavy. Ironically, the lighter the music, the heavier the scores. That is because a pops concert usually contains many short works, sometimes fifteen or twenty. The scores are unwieldy and extremely heavy. They have to travel with you in the overhead compartment, because there can be no chance of their getting accidentally sent to Buenos Aires when you are going to Bilbao. Mahler’s Symphony no. 3, which fills an entire concert, is a single book of 231 pages weighing twenty ounces. Danny Elfman’s “Music for the Films of Tim Burton,” which also fills an entire concert, is bound in seventeen separate books, weighing eleven pounds.
Before we leave home, we check the weather predictions to help determine what clothes to pack. Clothes tell the orchestra many things about the guest conductor. The local musicians see everything and pass judgment: Is that a Rolex on his wrist? Those comfortable shoes seem trendy. A member of the music staff at the Metropolitan Opera once said, “We are not a blue-jeans institution.” I remember wearing a black shirt, black trousers, and black shoes to a first rehearsal once and having a musician say, “You must be the conductor. You’re dressed like one.”
When we appear in the new city, it can be at rehearsals; a dinner (formal, informal); a press reception (suit and tie); a postconcert dinner (suit and tie); the performance (white tie; all black; a sartorial statement—even if it is a self-deprecating, all-black, no-nonsense Nehru jacket). All these things are heavy and have to be accommodated by your suitcases and your hotel room…the one that is next to a construction site. While the reader may think clothes are totally irrelevant to success, they can be a potential hindrance in forming a dynamic relationship with the local musicians.
The airport experience is common to many. Certain objects peculiar to our profession raise security alarms, like our batons and the case in which we carry them. Toscanini, as I previously said, proved that a baton can be used as a weapon. Batons are generally made of wood. They can take a certain amount of stress—after all, they have to whip through the air and not snap—but they need to be protected when packed with scores and other essentials. The batons and their cases will be the subject of much scrutiny and curiosity.
A recent trip from Barcelona to New York had already put me on a special list, because I was flying under three names, and the various computer programs could not figure out the obvious fact that all three names were for the same person. The name on my ticket said “JohnFran Mauceri Sr.” (the “Sr.” was for “señor” and not “senior,” even though I am a senior citizen); my frequent-flyer name was “John Mauceri”; and my passport has “John Francis Mauceri.” I breezed through passport control, and then security, where I was asked what I had done in Barcelona, and was happily on my way to the gate when I was stopped to experience “special screening.”
Sitting on a chair, I handed the agent my belt and then my shoes. He then put on a special glove and felt the bottom of my socks. I then went through a series of semi-intrusive pats and rubs. Then came my carry-on. Zip: the nasal sprays and hand sanitizers. Zip: the power bars and a book. Zip: the baton case and the music. The baton case I have used for thirty-five years is a white PVC pipe, the same kind used for plumbing. It is virtually indestructible, lightweight—and evidently very suspicious-looking.
The security agent looked frightened and stepped back. I smiled and said, “May I open it for you?” He said, “Sí.” As I did, his eyes darted toward a colleague. I removed a baton and waved it in a nonthreatening way and said, smilingly, “Now, what do I do for a living?” He called for help and his colleague came to the rescue. “Es director de orquesta. Es una batuta!” With that, the agent decided, perhaps naively, that I was not dangerous. I was released.
Security in airports and on airplanes is nothing new to those of us who have been flying to work for a half-century. We have been wanded, X-rayed, patted down, required to turn computers on and off and remove our shoes, had our electric shavers confiscated, and stood in the rain for hours to get to work or return home—whether because of the Irish Republican Army’s attacks in London, various wars in Israel and the Middle East, threats of kidnapping by Italian Communists, or terrorist attacks in New York, Paris, and Brussels. As someone who was supposed to fly home for Christmas on the doomed Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988, and decided to take an earlier flight that morning instead, I am aware of how very close we are to the violence that always has accompanied civilization. It just seems to be part of our job and does not deter us.
A baton case made of polyvinyl chloride, with two batons emerging from within
Everyone who has traveled knows the challenges of the journey. The conductor’s hotel room is also his office, his studio, the place of study and practice, as well as his bedroom. What is a charming hotel on a vacation can be a challenge for a conductor. Our needs for food, for example, are unusual. We must maintain a specific level of nutrition at certain times of the day that are not congruent with “normal” guests. We are more like athletes than businessmen, and we are definitely not tourists.
After we performers check in and agree (somewhat reluctantly) to accept the room we have been assigned (“How many rooms did Dad try?” is the question our son usually asks), we take a mental picture of just where we put each and every object we unpack. We have to know where we put everything in that temporary tent-office-home. Once that commitment is made and we have begun to unpack, we may find out some things we forgot to notice (where is that hair dryer? how many hangers are there in the closet? is there a closet?). In Barcelona, a fine hotel did not provide facial tissues. In Brussels the room had no drawers. (“I am sorry, sir, we have no drawers,” the woman at the front desk told me.) In what was once called West Berlin, before recording Erwin Schulhoff’s opera Flammen, I found myself studying and comparing two versions of the score in the lobby of the Schweizerhof Hotel, with the music spread out on the radiators, since there were no desks big enough to accommodate them.
We conductors watch news reports on whatever television channel is in a language we understand, and as a result we have a very wide view of what people believe is important. (“Solar-powered football stadium opens in Senegal!”) We are the opposite of provincial, and we know a great deal about global weather. (“Toasty in Madagascar today.”)
We know how to sew on buttons and iron our clothes. The public’s image of us creates us as much as who we actually are. When we appear onstage, the magic begins and we are the magicians for the evening. When the performance is over, the orchestra and the chorus go home to their families, and we go back to a hotel room.
Occasionally there is a dinner with a member of the administration of the orchestra. This is rare, and for an obvious reason: The orchestra gives hundreds of performances each year. It is unreasonable to expect some kind of party for us as we wind down from the experience of just having conducted Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony or Das Rheingold. If there is a reception, we are rarely at our best: Exhausted and yet still pumping with adrenaline, our bodies mostly want food and rest. The room will be noisy and people will be speaking in foreign languages. They will remember us but we will have little memory of what we said and to whom we said it.
I once carried on a fascinating postconcert conversation with a man in Montpelier, France, about Mary Magdalene and the Holy Grail. Montpelier is near an area where many mysteries regarding the Holy Grail are said to have taken place. During World War II, Hitler had sent archaeologists to this region to find the sacred object that is the subject of Wagner’s Parsifal. The gentleman at the reception and I conversed in French. I pronounced Magdalene “Magdalà” in the style of the original Aramaic pronunciation, meaning “of the tower.” It took me about ten minutes to realize he worked for Kimberly-Clark and was talking about the restaurant chain McDonald’s. French pronunciation in a loud room can make homonyms out of the most amazing words and lead to astonishing conversations.
Normally, after a concert the conductor returns to the hotel. It is eleven thirty, the restaurant is closed, and there is no room service. If you are smart enough, you bought a sandwich before going to the concert. The bar may still be open.
We must always contend with the myth of glamour. Was it Stokowski and Toscanini who invented the image of first-class travel, doting valets and servants, adoring fans, and the whiff of sexual scandal? (Stokowski married three times; Toscanini remained married to one person, but their various infidelities were generally known.) The glamour image was honed by Karajan and his brilliant use of the media. Bernstein used it as a professor and projected the image of a family man. Both invited the media into their private lives, something unimaginable a few generations before. Karajan was more of a movie star: elegant, implacable, handsome, rich, and global. His aviator sunglasses, Alpine skiing, yoga, and pilot’s license were all part of a European upper-class image that was immensely successful and attractive.
Midnight dinner after European Philharmonia concert in Brussels, April 30, 2016: sandwich made at breakfast; potato chips taken from dressing room; martini from the bar
But for every Karajan and every Bernstein there is the everyday life of an itinerant conductor. The great jobs are for a European to become a music director of an American orchestra. Money, cars, a PR office, and the creation of a hero all follow. Within Europe the system is quite different: The conductor is a worker who goes from city to city. Those who can afford it bring along someone, a domestic partner or a musical assistant who functions as an extra pair of ears (especially in an opera).
The assistant conductors of American orchestras seem to pick and choose how they assist. If the repertory is standard, they want to attend and watch. If it is music they never hope to perform, with the approval of the orchestra’s management they simply sit there and go home after rehearsal, if they show up at all. The assistant hired by a traveling conductor, however, is also someone to have dinner with and talk with about the artistic conditions. The entourage is something that only the wealthiest conductors can manage, and it makes perfect sense in protecting and advising the conductor, but this is just for the very few.
I laughed when visiting Simon Rattle once in the conductor’s dressing room at Berlin’s Philharmonie, where Sir Simon had been the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for sixteen years. In the room was a steamer trunk in which his clothes were hanging. The case, battered from thousands of miles of travel, acted as his portable dressing room. It reminded me that we are all itinerant actors, merely strutting and fretting our hour on the stage, even when we lead the Berlin Philharmonic. Backstage is always offstage and not intended to be seen or imagined by the audience.
Conductors must continually adapt to the backstage life. It is rarely pretty. No one spends money on designing or building backstage, whether you are performing in Lisbon’s 1793 opera house or in Glasgow’s Hydro, which opened in 2013. In Brazil, rehearsals for the national orchestra took place an hour out of town in part of a sports stadium. The conductor’s room was about the size of a bathroom in an airplane…only there was no toilet. One has to be prepared to bring water and food. In Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, arriving for a concert with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Xalapa, I asked where the conductor’s dressing room was and a helpful person pointed to an empty chair on the stage, between the timpani and the snare drum. There I sat, trying to look unobtrusive, until I made my ceremonial entrance as a maestro.
At these moments—especially packing up, unpacking, and packing up again—I usually find myself singing “hi ho the glamorous life” from Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music.
The other part of the backstage story relates to how we get paid. Conductors only get paid when they perform, not when they rehearse. If performances are cancelled, we do not get paid. As I have said, we pay a percentage of our fee to our managers. If there is a global manager, that agency always gets paid something. Local managers share in the percentages, and that is prenegotiated. In other words, an Italian agent may take 10 percent of a fee in managing a contract within Italy, and the global agency will take 5 percent on top for its work. The question of taxes and other deductions depends on the country and on one’s citizenship.
When we work in America, most conductors are part of the “gig economy,” also known as the “1099 economy,” since 1099 is the number on the forms the Internal Revenue Service requires for income that is “other than the salary paid by an employer to an employee.” Even as the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Opera, the Pittsburgh Opera, and the longtime director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, I was never viewed as an employee. I was a contractor, an independent contractor. Conductors run their own business, and the institutions that hire us pay no benefits whatsoever. All independent contractors are responsible for handling their own taxes, keeping track of their potentially deductible expenses, and familiarizing themselves with the requisite tax forms, all in time to send the forms to the federal government by April 15. No conductor wants to retire. Few conductors can afford to retire unless they have been vested in a retirement program at a university or have created a private retirement fund early on.
Taxes are taken out of our paychecks in some countries but not others—the UK and Japan withhold taxes, and France does not. The United States has reciprocal arrangements with certain countries, but all the federal, state, and local taxes require different forms, and different requests for reimbursements for non-residents. It is extremely complicated, and artists need help to do this correctly.
A conductor’s “office” is never closed. We are always preparing for the next rehearsal, reviewing the last rehearsal, adjusting the materials to be rehearsed based on the time remaining, and shaping the process to culminate in the performance. If there are multiple performances, we must review everything from the last performance in order to adapt for the next one.
All of this becomes more complicated and time consuming when we conduct an opera. Learning an opera can and should take at least a month, since it requires the total understanding of the words, the music, the orchestration, and the history behind its creation. It takes weeks to rehearse an opera, because it involves so many moving parts: singers, staging, orchestra, chorus. At first all of these elements are rehearsed separately—always with the conductor present—and as one approaches the final rehearsal, the various elements are gradually brought together.
Orchestra rehearsals for the opera proceed without singers. The conductor has to know what potential give-and-take there might be with the singers (even as he has barely met the cast) while teaching the orchestra the score. (In major opera houses and with standard repertory, the orchestra is already prepared for this.) The conductor is usually given one piano rehearsal to go through the score with the soloists in order for all parties to understand each other’s expectations and needs. This is a hugely complex rehearsal, as one can imagine, and never really sufficient.
The stage director establishes the work ahead by giving a production talk about the ideas behind the staging. This is a fairly new ritual, since operas are frequently interpreted by stage directors who see themselves as auteurs. The days are filled with staging for the soloists (accompanied by a pianist), and the evenings, in most theaters, involve staging with the chorus. That’s because only the very biggest companies have full-time choruses, and the other theaters employ singers who have day jobs. What makes all of this especially complicated is that orchestra rehearsals frequently conflict with staging rehearsals. The conductor can easily lose contact with the cast, and musical issues that should be under his supervision can fall to the pianist or the director.
After a week or so, there are piano run-throughs of entire acts. These will not take place on stage, but in a large room in which the scenic elements are implied by markings taped on the floor, or parts of the stairs, which are present along with other three-dimensional props. A Sitzprobe follows. That is the German word for a rehearsal in which the orchestra and all the singers, hopefully including the chorus, perform the entire opera without staging.
Ideally this rehearsal should take place in the auditorium, so that everyone can have a relatively good idea of the balances, but that does not happen most of the time. Instead, the Sitzprobe usually takes place in a room into which everyone is crammed. It is very loud and very exciting. When it takes place in the auditorium, the balances are nonetheless false, since either the singers are sitting in front of the closed curtain, or everyone is on an empty stage without benefit of the “bounce” given to voices from the scenic walls that will ultimately be behind them. An empty stage will eat their sound and create a good deal of concern.
Next comes the stage-and-piano rehearsals. The entire company rehearses on the stage with the stairs and props, but usually not in costume. They attempt to understand the physical realities of space and acoustics, but are accompanied only by a piano in the pit and conducted by the conductor.
After a number of stage-and-piano rehearsals, there will be stage-and-orchestra rehearsals (perhaps with costumes and some lighting). This will be the first time the singers and the orchestra (and the conductor) can hear what the composite elements will sound like.
Technical rehearsals will have started by this point in which the stage director and the set designer work with the lighting designer to create the visual pictures the audience will see. There are no singers at these long and tedious rehearsals. Sometimes a young assistant director or stage manager will stand on the stage to represent a singer’s positions as the lighting is refined.
There may then be a single piano-dress rehearsal, with costumes and makeup, followed the next day by the dress rehearsal, known as the general rehearsal. There may be an invited audience, and this final rehearsal will act more like a performance. Stopping is always an option, but is usually frowned upon when there is an audience. At Covent Garden, for example, John Tooley, the company’s general director at the time, told me that if I stopped during the dress rehearsal of Puccini’s La fanciulla del West I would “get a rather dusty reception from the orchestra.”
Opera singers need a few days between performances, in order for their vocal cords to rest. They sing unamplified over a large symphony orchestra and cannot be expected to do this every night, unlike pop singers, who use a microphone. This means a conductor, who has been working three-session days, frequently starting at ten a.m. and ending at eleven p.m., will suddenly find himself with absolutely nothing to do for days between performances. Mind you, if there are two casts, the rehearsal period is even more complicated, and there are few days off between performances.
If you were wondering why opera tickets are so expensive, consider what you have just read and the costs of employing all the artists as well as the company’s management and staff, not to mention renting the auditorium, which is not necessarily owned by the opera company.
Once the opera opens, a conductor now adapts to the performance cycle. Before the Internet, it was possible to go through entire days without speaking a word to anyone except the person in a restaurant taking your order for dinner. In my case, those days were filled with endless, goal-less walks and many books. Even now, an image on a screen and a voice on a cellular phone only go so far. One Christmas season I was conducting La Bohème at Covent Garden, which was of course an honor and a highlight of my life. However, I can still see myself walking on Floral Street toward the Covent Garden tube stop once the performance was over and I had said good night to the doorman. I was among a crowd of people carrying the bright red programs of the opera I had just conducted. They were happy, usually walking in pairs and chatting. Once inside London’s Underground, there would still be a few people carrying the programs, mingled with other passengers. Gradually, there were none.
I was staying at Natalia Makarova’s apartment, which she kindly had offered to me. I would leave the train to find an empty platform, walk to her flat, open the door—and find silence. A telephone call to the United States was far too expensive in those days. In bed I read The Color Purple and The Neverending Story. It was difficult to accept the numbing loneliness of that experience and square it with what I had just done at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, an hour before.
On the day of our last performance in any foreign city, many of us already have our bags packed and on the bed. Inevitably one sleeps next to a suitcase, no matter what the romantic rumors are to the contrary.
Being the music director of a symphony orchestra or an opera house changes many things, of course. You are “the boss”—but, as I already pointed out, just how much authority you have will vary immensely—even though the public rarely sees behind that particular curtain. In 1989, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director, André Previn, learned that the orchestra’s executive director, Ernest Fleischmann, had booked a tour of Japan with Esa-Pekka Salonen leading the orchestra, and had given him the title of principal guest conductor. Previn saw this as an unacceptable usurpation of his artistic authority, and, since Fleischmann had not bothered to discuss the matter with him, he returned the favor. At his next rehearsal, he announced to the orchestra that he would be resigning since “you already have a music director and don’t need two.” Fleischmann had the last word. When Previn showed up the next day for his concert, he found that his key could not open the dressing-room door. Fleischmann had had the lock changed.
This might be Brussels, Barcelona, or Berlin on the afternoon of the last performance.
At an opera house, an artistic director will outrank you, as will the general director, who outranks everyone. At the Pittsburgh Opera, the artistic director determined just how many notes of the armonica part in the mad scene in Lucia di Lammermoor I could use, even as I had the holograph of Donizetti’s score to show him. At the Washington Opera, general director Martin Feinstein, who had appointed me, thought that my colleague Cal Stewart Kellogg should be the house Verdi conductor, assigning him new productions of Macbeth, Un ballo in maschera, and Falstaff. After two seasons, I resigned.
Music directorships can also be wonderful, because you get to nurture and protect the musicians and the institution. You may also have an opportunity to choose the repertory you love and wish to champion. You live in a city and are a leader within its artistic community, working with great and dedicated people. As a steward, you are also the face of the institution, lobbying for its support. This is a privilege. At the same time, you are also the subject of intense curiosity and scrutiny whenever you set foot in a grocery store or go to the movies.
You may well ask, when all is said and done: is this a lone journey, a communal one, or perhaps a cosmic one? Yes. Yes. Yes. Sometimes it is truly glamorous. I have conducted Walton’s Orb and Sceptre for Queen Elizabeth II, which had been composed for her coronation, and, as I said, Turandot at La Scala for Prince Charles and Princess Diana; performed for two presidents of the United States—and had Paul McCartney think it was cool to meet me. Returning home and sitting in seat 3A of a jumbo jet, drinking a mimosa, feet resting on the wall, and awaiting a good meal does make one feel like a very successful person indeed. We easily forget the stresses that just preceded our arriving in that very special seat. We have already moved on to the next challenge and we are going home.
However, we suffer when we are not working—“between engagements”—and we suffer when we are engaged, from the stress of leaving home and family behind and the unknowns that lie ahead of us. We must therefore find a certain contentment in what we are privileged to do that will override the massive challenges and expectations—those we bring to the job and those brought by the musicians, managers, and public to our art.
When I was in high school, I visited Birgit Nilsson at the Hotel Alden in New York. I had painted her portrait and composed a song cycle for her, and she was generous enough to spend a few hours with a kid she did not know. When she came to the door, she invited me in to sit in the tiny living room of her suite. The television was on. The program was Truth or Consequences, a popular game show. She said, “When I travel I always put on the television. It makes me feel less lonely.”
I have never forgotten that moment. Here she was, the dramatic soprano of the age, and on the day of a performance of Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera she was listening to a simple game show—one that featured “Beulah the Buzzer” every time a contestant did not answer correctly—to keep from feeling less lonely. She had been to a reception with the Swedish ambassador the night before. His wife had commented on the fact that Nilsson had no children. “And I said to her, ‘You can’t have everything,’ ” said Birgit. I was sixteen years old at the time and I remember every minute of our time together.
One of a number of autographed photos from Birgit Nilsson to me
And every time I turn on the television in my hotel room, alone in some city or other, and in a new time zone, I think of her. I think of her generosity and what she shared with me, and I feel strangely connected to the secret backstage history shared by all of us who live on the road and whose occupation is to perform for you—and I am okay with all of it.