The Many Faces of Love

Opera singers are forever singing about love, but they probably make more mistakes than average when it comes to interpersonal relationships. It has never ceased to amaze me that a gifted artist can express profound insight into the human condition while onstage, and yet be relatively clueless out in the real world. Part of the problem is the nature of the job: opera singers are constantly on the road, wrestling with intense emotions, and dealing with admirers, flatterers, and opportunists. The profession offers a great deal of camaraderie but theatre, by its nature, is illusory. It can be hard to tell what’s what.

When it comes to marriage, I once devised a theory. A successful diva will need three men: The first will be a major domo who will walk the dog, arrange the limo, make the reservations, supervise the cleaning, and select the flowers. The second will be a rich, older gentleman with his own plane who will fly to Paris for your opening at the Bastille and sponsor the cast party at Maxim’s. The third will be a young hunk for sex. You can never find everything in one man. Never. More than a few singers have agreed with me.

Inevitably, there are one-night stands. The most readily available candidates are other opera singers, and often things end badly. I advise singers to be objective. You are vulnerable, away from home, lonely, and completely susceptible. When a colleague comes on to you, realize that he or she is as lonely as you are, and that it’s only a temporary comfort in the night. Beyond that, it doesn’t actually mean anything.

And then there are what might be termed “extra-curricular” relationships. I knew many a singer who had both a spouse and a paramour — often many paramours, one for each city in which he or she performed. In Europe especially it was not only common but fairly out in the open. Paramours were known and acknowledged. They became part of our little stage families — that is, until the day of the dress rehearsal. That was when the artists’ wives and husbands would show up and the paramours would magically disappear! I was once working with Tito Gobbi, and as we were about to start a rehearsal he got very agitated: he had misplaced his glasses and he was desperate to find them. The reason? His wife was about to arrive in town, which meant that his mistress was about to leave. He dearly wanted to see this woman just one last time. I finally tracked down his glasses and he had a moment with her. Afterward he looked at me with a mixture of gratitude and melancholy. “It is so difficult to grow old,” he sighed.

Even platonic friendship isn’t clear-cut. When I hear, “Oh, so-and-so is my friend,” I know it’s usually a case of either wishful thinking or a misunderstanding of the nature of friendship. You only get a few true friends in a lifetime, but singers often confuse professional relationships with personal ones. In reality, one or two colleagues may turn out to be friends. The rest will fall into one of three categories:

• Favourites: These are the artists you simply love to work with. It’s as if each can read the other’s mind. The collaboration strives constantly for greater and greater achievement. You always look forward to working with them.
• Familiars: These are the colleagues you get along with. The experience is professional and predictable. Though the work won’t soar, the quality will be good and there will be no problems.
• Frenemies: With colleagues like these, who needs enemies? They specialize in schadenfreude, probably due to their personal insecurities. You should be wary of them. Conductors and agents especially tend to fall into this category.

François Truffaut hit the nail on the head in La nuit américaine, a film about the making of a film. During a scene set at a cast party, one of the characters, Severine, portrayed by Valentina Cortese, looks around at her fellow performers and astutely comments on the nature of performers’ relationships: We come together for a show. We have love affairs, we argue, we threaten suicide. At the end we exchange addresses and phone numbers, we swear eternal friendship, and then we all go our separate ways and POOF! Nobody remembers anything or anybody. Your work is a fantasy, and fantasies will do you in every time.