Los Angeles, California, March 9, 1981
As she waited for a car to pick her up from the studio, Felicity sipped a mimosa and flipped through the Los Angeles Times. She started with the entertainment section and was pleased to see that her latest recording had earned five stars. The blues record she had put out last year had garnered enthusiastic approval from jazz experts but had been less enthusiastically received by the classical world. She was now putting the finishing touches on a recording of Guilio Cesare with a full period orchestra, not the modern one that had played at her Met debut. She saw her name in a second article and read: Felicity Alexander is an overrated opera singer.
“What?” Felicity lurched forward and half the contents of her glass spilled across her knees and the newspaper. Opera snobs sniping at her blues recording was one thing, but she was almost universally praised for her work in the classical arena.
Let us not forget that while other far more worthy singers toiled in minor European opera houses to hone their craft, read the article, Felicity Alexander’s celebrity came as a result of her last-minute substitution for the incomparable Jane Masters, implausible as that sounds, using her physical difference from Miss Masters to make a political statement, rather than staying true to the composer’s vision. That cheapness has never left her. Her recent performance of Norma at Covent Garden is a prime example. One of the most divine arias ever written, “Casta Diva,” was transformed by Miss Alexander into — Felicity put the soggy newspaper down. Her fingers tingled. Something sounded familiar. She looked down at the byline. Sarah Stilwell-Adams, her former classmate.
“That bitch!” Felicity knew she should stop reading. Sarah was jealous. She had always been jealous. She had not achieved the singing career she had longed for when she came to the Guildhall. The one they all longed for, even knowing few would accomplish it. And it must be an especial jab to Sarah that it was Black, foreign, outsider Felicity alone who had reached that goal. Desperate to punish herself, to absorb the malice bleeding from the paper with the sodden ink, she read on: Felicity Alexander has become a celebrity, a woman known for her outfits and her string of romances more than her music. Her vocal talent has taken a backseat to a personal life that leaves much to be desired.
Her car arrived. Felicity snapped back to reality. She balled up the newspaper and threw it into the garbage can as she left the building. She was here in Los Angeles not only to make a recording, but to shoot a film version of La Boheme. Sarah was watching from afar, a journalist and not a singer. Sarah was the outsider, and Felicity was the insider now.
Felicity had argued with her new agent, Margit, about which role to sing in Boheme. Robin was more sanguine about the switch than she had expected; her New York agency represented most of the Met’s regulars, and its agents were experts at running interference between the singers, artistic staff, and management. Margit was doing the same thing with the movie production team now. When the film studio first requested Felicity’s participation, she had wanted to play Musetta, thinking of how the colourful, scene-stealing character would look brilliant on camera. It was a rare event to have a Hollywood studio interested in filming an opera, and Margit had insisted that Felicity take the director’s offer of the lead role of Mimi — which, like Musetta, she would never be asked to play on stage as they both required bigger, fuller voices than Felicity had, which film editing could address in a way live theatre could not. The role of Musetta eventually went to a singer with a genuine big voice: Alesya Kravchenko.
Today they would be filming Musetta’s big scene. Alesya came up beside Felicity as she checked her reflection in the mirror hung behind the set.
“Looking good, sweetie!” Alesya said. “But not as good as me!” She struck a pose like a model on a runway. She seemed determined to wear Musetta’s big personality off set as well as on. When she and Felicity had worked on Nozze di Figaro in Chicago, Alesya had driven cast and crew nuts, mooning about as the spurned countess, even at coffee breaks. Felicity found it endearing; she herself was able to slip in and out of roles like changing costumes, but she enjoyed watching the processes other singers used.
Felicity scowled into the glass. “I’m not feeling so great today.” She saw that she looked tired, even under the layers of makeup.
Alesya exaggerated her alarm. “Don’t give me whatever you have!” she said, emitting her Musetta scream.
“No, it’s nothing you can catch,” Felicity said. She felt worn down and unsettled. The weight of this nomadic, competitive, lonely life pressed down on her in a city where people chased perfection.
“Period coming?” Alesya made a sympathetic face.
“Something like that.”
“I have Midol, if you need. Always good to be prepared.”
“I’m okay for now, but thanks.”
“So, I saw an interview you did,” Alesya went on. “You said you’re half-Ukrainian?”
Felicity wondered what had possessed her to share that fact. The way the interviewer kept saying she looked exactly like the rising soprano Evelyn Grimm had annoyed her; Evelyn was extremely dark-skinned and had delicate features and was very slim, but the interviewer saw none of those differences, and certainly not the contrast between their skin tones. Felicity hadn’t realized that her comment, spoken out of irritation, would be published. “Yeah,” she allowed.
“I always knew it,” Alesya said. “You have the … you know” — she tapped the middle of her face — “the nose. The Ukie schnozz.”
Felicity knew exactly what Alesya was talking about. Her nose, which had always felt mismatched and unbalanced compared to her other features, prevented her from being a real beauty. Alesya had a similar nose, but it fit better with the rest of her. Alesya didn’t have competing Black ancestry. The last thing Felicity wanted was a calling card from her father, front and centre on her face.
They were called to the set where, after days of being the constant focus, Felicity, in character as Mimi, was in the background, sitting at her table in the meticulously constructed café commenting bemusedly to Rodolfo about Musetta’s attention-seeking behaviour. The chorus members were milling around the square examining the stalls displaying toys for purchase on Christmas Eve.
Over the clamour generated by Musetta, Marcello, Alcindoro, the waiters, and bystanders, Felicity leaned in close to her leading man and sang of love, true love, not the games Musetta was playing, just love. Over the strength of the piano playing the orchestral score, the bigger voices of her co-stars, the antics of Musetta in a flashier, brighter coloured gown, the bustle of the chorus, Felicity’s voice rose.
The director called “Cut!” and there was some huddling, some discussion, and then assistant directors began circulating among the groupings of chorus and extras, making minute changes to where they stood and adjusting lighting. Felicity, unused to the ways of film, tried to shake off her feeling of boredom. Once again, the piano started and her voice pealed out across the set. Her mind lingered on what she was singing. “Io t’amo tanto, e sono tutta tua … Che mi parli di perdono?” As Musetta preened and flirted and commanded attention, Mimi’s pure love floated above it all, I love you so much, and I am all yours. Why speak to me of forgiveness? Her love for Claude had once been so strong. No one and nothing could penetrate it. Did he remember that?
She could let herself cry, but she couldn’t sing with a stone in her heart, with a rope around it pulling and choking. She slid to the floor. The piano kept playing as the tears spilled silently down her cheeks. A minute or two passed, then “Cut!” said the director again. The music stopped. Felicity dropped her head to her knees, shoulders shaking. The director huddled with the rest of his team, and then announced that they would be breaking indefinitely. Timothy Faustino, the singer playing Marcello, helped Felicity up from the floor and slowly walked her off the set, his arm around her. Felicity buried her face in his shoulder, heedless of the smears her makeup would leave on his costume. As they left the stage, she heard one chorus member ask another, “Do you know what’s going on?”
She heard the reply, “Didn’t you see it in Luigi Bertolli’s column on Monday? Her old teacher, Philip Cook, is sick.”
Tim took Felicity to her trailer. No words were spoken as they undressed each other. He knew the treatment she needed. Just as they were about to begin, there came a knocking at the door. Timothy swore and wrapped a towel around his waist before going to answer.
She heard him ask, “What do you want?”
A gofer spoke. “To see how long Miss Alexander needs.”
“She has a headache,” Timothy said. “She’s lying down and can’t be disturbed.”
Felicity felt gratitude for Timothy, that he would be back with her in a moment, that he would take the rock from her chest, and she would not have to be alone. That even if it was only for an hour or two, someone would love her.
Felicity sat on the couch on the set of Late Night With Z, opposite the host, Zebediah Miller. She was wearing a bright green silk dress with a very short skirt that continually rode up her crossed bare legs. The show’s stylist had left her hair loose and curly in a huge buoyant mass. She knew that to the audience she shone in a way that only a woman with a red-hot career could.
The beginning of the interview was the usual breathless banter and preening commentary on the designer of Felicity’s dress, jokes about whether Felicity’s halo of curls was prettier than Zebediah’s kinks styled into a tall high-top fade. Then the interview took a serious turn.
“You were involved in politics as a student in London, weren’t you?” said Zebediah. He pressed a button, and the screen hanging over the set filled with a black and white photo. Felicity didn’t remember seeing it before. She was wearing the plaid duffel coat that had seen her through all three of her Guildhall winters. Her hair was frizzy, as it always was in London, and she gripped a large megaphone and held it close to her rounded lips. To her right was Neville, his fist raised in a Black Power salute. To her left was Claude, his hand on her shoulder, smiling down into the soft expanse of her hair. It was a jolt to see herself, almost fifteen years ago, happier than she could remember being.
“You were known as the Nightingale of Trafalgar Square,” said Zebediah. “You led the singing at anti-apartheid sit-ins.”
“I did.” Felicity should look at the person interviewing her, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the picture of Claude.
“You knew Neville Carpenter, didn’t you? You’re together, right there in that picture.”
“Yes,” Felicity said. “We were friends in university.”
“It’s been just about a year and a half since he took power from Percy Tibbs in an armed coup.”
“It was peaceful,” said Felicity. “No one died.”
“And you’ve gone from protester to diva.”
Felicity uncrossed her legs and smiled into the camera, imagining that Claude was watching this interview. “Well, Z, I’m both. Because at the heart of it all, I’m still a girl from Grenada.”
Zebediah Miller looked down at his cue cards. “Grenada has a population of less than one hundred thousand people, and a land mass of one hundred and thirty-three square miles,” he said. “And you’re here in Hollywood, shooting a movie version of an opera set in Paris about painters and poets. How does that relate to the protest movement you were once so connected to?”
Had Neville and Claude jumped out of the photograph to grill her themselves? Felicity took a moment to breathe calm into her chest before she replied. “I would love to be in Grenada, singing for my people. But thanks to hundreds of years of European rule, that isn’t an option. Britain enslaved my people and took their labour for free and then ended slavery but continued to exploit us, and then they said they gave us our independence, though it wasn’t theirs to give. They did it with a mad dictator in charge who was killing people, and they refused to tell him to stop because they wanted us to be weak. Neville was able to stop Tibbs, but now he’s got the good old U S of A making it more difficult for his government to achieve what it’s trying to. Nothing about that is elevated. Nothing about it is beautiful. I have to live outside Grenada to show the potential of Grenadians, but I am telling you, if the rest of the world ever allows it, Grenada will be great.” She thought of one of Claude’s favourite quotes. “Martin Luther King said that justice —” She couldn’t remember the rest.
Zebediah cleared his throat. “I grew up in Tennessee,” he said, “In Memphis. Heart of the south, where Dr. King got killed, and I remember every second of that day.”
“Me, too,” said Felicity. The day that began the end of her life with Claude.
“What were you doing?”
“I was in opera school in London. I woke up and I was getting ready for class. It came over the radio.”
“I think I’m a little older than you?”
“I’m not telling,” said Felicity.
“I’m forty-two,” said Zebediah. “Yeah, I look good, don’t I?” He struck a pose, to wolf whistles from the audience. “A bit too old for you, right?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” flirted Felicity.
“I was twenty-nine when Dr. King died. I was married to my second wife. Don’t get me started on that.”
The audience laughed at a joke they were a part of.
“I was working as an organizer for the Black vote. My wife and I were actually going to a rally to hear Bobby Kennedy speak in Indianapolis. He announced at the rally that Dr. King had been shot. People fell out screaming, crying. It was crazy. But, back to you. Do you keep in touch with Neville Carpenter?”
Felicity cocked her head. “No, I don’t.”
“He’s a li’l hard to figure out, isn’t he? He does these speaking tours and the journalists love him, but how can they love a Communist?”
“He’s not a Communist, but so what if he is? Who says Communists are bad? Neville is doing a great job bringing a better standard of living to the people of Grenada, giving them a country they can be proud of.” She didn’t want to talk about Neville. Neville was too close to Claude, and thinking of Claude was still too distressing. She would have to distract Zebediah Miller. He wasn’t bad looking. She’d seen worse. She reached over and put a hand on his knee. “I don’t like to dwell on the past,” she said. He would never know how much she dwelt on it at night, how she wove a hard pillow of the past that kept her awake into the morning.
Zebediah blinked and covered her hand with his own before recovering. “Well, all right. Let’s talk about what it’s like to be an opera singer. Lots of hard work, right?”
“That’s right,” said Felicity.
“And lots of dudes panting after you, I bet,” he said. “Especially after a big performance? They all mob you after the show?”
“You got it.” Their knees were touching, and she felt herself smiling again.
Margit grabbed Felicity’s arm as soon as she came off set. “What was that?” she demanded.
Felicity pulled free. “An interview.”
“A mad dictator? The USA is making things difficult? Who says Communists are bad?”
“Well, it’s all true.”
Margit said, “You’re here to talk about the movie, not politics.”
“The host started with politics right away.”
“And you deflect. You should know that by now.”
Zebediah stepped off the set. “Commercial break,” he said, then, “Is there something wrong?”
“We got too political,” Felicity said. Too Black.
Zebediah turned his focus onto Margit. “That’s my fault,” he said. “I should have warned you that my show gets down and dirty.”
“Can you do a disclaimer, when you go back on?” Margit asked.
“Sure can.” He held out a pen and a notepad. “Why don’t you write out what you want me to say?” As she began scribbling, he lowered his voice and said to Felicity, “And would you do me the honour of writing down the phone number of your hotel?”