Wasn't that Better, Kid?

According to the old adage, “It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.” These are words to live by when it comes to dealing with certain opera singers. With time usually in short supply, you have to make things happen. If an apology is necessary it is a small price to pay for a viable production. The classic example, probably true, is of the soprano who refused to take any direction at all: she would only walk onstage, stand in one place, and walk off. I guess she thought that there was no difference between a concert and an opera. How dreadfully dull for the audience. Realizing that he could get nowhere with her, the director waited for the performance and then had the follow spot operator move the spotlight around the stage. The soprano, conditioned to “find the light,” reacted in knee-jerk fashion, keeping herself in the centre of the spotlight and inadvertently giving the director at least some movement. She was never the wiser.

I had a similar experience in 1965 when I was directing Andrea Chénier at San Francisco Opera. This was to be the gala opener of the season and General Director Kurt Herbert Adler never spared any expense on those. His all-star cast included Franco Corelli in the title role, Renata Tebaldi as Maddalena, and Ettore Bastianini as Gérard. I had previously worked with Corelli and Tebaldi. Bastianini would be new to me; for reasons I couldn’t possibly anticipate it would be the one and only time I would work with him. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before I arrived in San Francisco I received word that Corelli had suffered a hernia and had to withdraw. Too many high notes? I wondered. Adler had to cast around for a replacement. It was (and remains) a tough assignment. Big name tenors are among the rarest of opera singers. Fortunately the great Richard Tucker was available. Unfortunately he was a notoriously tough negotiator. This perhaps explains why the famously tightfisted Adler had always disliked him. On this occasion, though, Adler had little choice. He could hardly replace the legendary Franco Corelli with a bargain-bin no-name. On top of that, Tucker had to know that he had Adler over a barrel. Out came the chequebook. I don’t know how much Tucker ended up getting, but I do know that it was more than Adler was accustomed to paying, and likely more than even Tebaldi was receiving.

It would be my first time working with Tucker, though our ships had crossed in the night a decade earlier. In 1955–56 an anthology television series called the Screen Directors Playhouse briefly graced the airwaves. One of the episodes was titled “The Day I Met Caruso,” and its featherweight plot centred on a young girl (played by Sandy Descher) encountering the great tenor on a train. The producers naturally wanted Mario Lanza to play the part of Caruso — he had recently starred in the film The Great Caruso — but by this point he was more interested in the big screen than the little one. Tucker became a logical candidate: he was a bona fide opera singer and similar enough in appearance, but apparently his screen test was unbelievably bad. The producers and director Frank Borzage kept casting around until they landed on a young, completely unknown singer barely out of UCLA: me. I wondered if Richard carried a grudge about that little snub, but when we met it became clear that he had no idea of who I was.

He was, to put it diplomatically, not renowned for his acting ability, and he was uncooperative to boot. Our problems started with the first rehearsal. Straight away he started calling me “kid.” “Listen here, kid,” he’d say, “I’ve done Chénier so many times ya don’t have to tell me what to do, kid. I’ve got it all worked out, kid.” He may have had it worked out in his own mind, but his version didn’t always jibe with mine. Not that it mattered much. He cruised through rehearsals in a world all his own and I managed to make him look good. That is, until we got to the finale.

The opera is set during the French Revolution. In the last scene, Chénier is one of several people sentenced to go to the guillotine. Maddalena, desperate to be with him at all costs, arranges to take the place of one of the condemned women. A tumbrel, escorted by soldiers, rolls onto the stage with a few of the condemned. Chénier and Maddalena sing a heartbreaking love duet. They are called to the tumbrel by name. Realizing they will be joined forever in death, they turn to each other and sing, “Viva la morte insiem!” It is a high, loud, and ringing climax. With the orchestra playing the fiery conclusion, they climb onto the tumbrel, which slowly moves on, taking all on-board to their fate. All of this is specified in the score. And this is how I staged it during the rehearsal period. Richard, however, had other ideas.

After the dress rehearsal, my assistant came running up to me. “Oh, Lotfi! Madame Tebaldi and Mr. Tucker must speak with you about a very urgent matter.” I rushed to the stage, my assistant hot on my heels.

“Listen, kid,” Richard said flatly, “while Renata and I are singing, nobody comes onstage with us. OK?”

“But Richard, you and Madame Tebaldi must be carried away. We have to have the tumbrel full of people onstage.”

“No, kid, no. Give us a staircase. We’ll go up a staircase.”

“First of all, I don’t have a staircase. Second of all, even if I did have a staircase, where is it supposed to lead to?”

“I don’t care, kid. But nobody onstage. Just me and Renata, kid.”

Finally I got him to compromise. I promised not to cue the tumbrel until the very last moment, after he and Tebaldi had finished their climactic “Viva la morte insiem.” Practically at the moment when the curtain falls. “Well, I don’t like it, kid,” he grumbled. “I mean, I wanted a staircase. But, well, if you haven’t got a staircase, then awright, kid, fine. I don’t like it but, well, if it’s the best you can do, we’ll do it.”

My assistant had been dutifully jotting notes during the entire conversation. When Tucker walked off she furrowed her brow and said, “We’ll need to run this with the supers. Props will need to know. It affects the lighting.” She began to scan the schedule. “Today was supposed to be our last rehearsal. There’s no time to run this tomorrow. You know, Lotfi, this is a pretty big change.” She bit the end of her pencil worriedly.

Richard Tucker and Renata Tebaldi in Andrea Chénier, 1965.
Photo by Robert Lackenbach.

“My dear,” I said, placing a calming hand on her arm, “I have no intention of changing a thing.”

What Tucker didn’t know was that I had learned a marvellous trick during my misadventures in Italy. An Italian singer rehearses with you for weeks and does exactly what you tell him to do, every movement. Comes the opening night and it is as if the two of you have never met. He does everything exactly as he wants to do it. When you confront him about this, he says, “Oh, maestro, I don’t know what happened. My liver wasn’t functioning, you know. I was so confused. My God, could you ever forgive me? Scusi, maestro, scusi.” How many times had this happened to me! This time, however, I was determined to pull the trick on Mr. Tucker.

On opening night, Tucker and Tebaldi got to the final minutes of the performance. Their faces angled toward the audience, they sang their guts out. Meanwhile, behind them, as originally rehearsed, the tumbrel rolled onstage loaded with victims for the guillotine while lines of soldiers got into position. Tucker and Tebaldi finished their final notes, joined hands, and turned upstage as the curtain came in. The audience went wild. As for me, I was positioned backstage wearing my most desolate face. “Richard! I’m so sorry,” I said, intercepting Tucker as he finished taking his bows. “I don’t know what the hell happened.”

But he wasn’t listening to me. “There you are, kid,” he said, “Wasn’t that better?” He hadn’t noticed a thing and assumed that I had followed his instructions.

“Well, Richard, as long as you’re happy with the arrangement …” We did it my way every single performance and Tucker never once noticed.

As for Bastianini, he proved to be an utter joy both on and off stage. We ended up hitting it off, spending some of our free time together. One night over dinner I committed a faux pas: while discussing the state of opera singing, I bemoaned the fact that there were “no great Rigolettos today.” Ettore looked crestfallen as he said, “It’s one of my roles.” I apologized for my thoughtless comment, saying that I hadn’t seen his interpretation. The embarrassment passed. Indeed, I forgot about it altogether when I learned that Ettore had been diagnosed with throat cancer and was not expected to live for very much longer. My first production with him would also be my last. I would not have the pleasure of deepening our budding friendship. On the day of his death a package arrived for me in the mail. It was from Ettore — a recording of his Rigoletto.