“Figaro’s” Travesty Singer: Dorotea Bussani

Here is another lady whom history has not treated very kindly.  Bussani was hired to sing the “pants role” of Cherubino in “Le Nozze di Figaro” by her own husband, the stage manager and contractor Francesco Bussani. She was reportedly very pretty and possessed of a lovely voice, and was evidently quite willing to appear onstage in pantaloons.

Da Ponte wrote that he could not stand her, saying she was “vulgar and of little merit.” Stories surface about her inability to memorize her part and to improvise any embellishments in her second aria, “Voi, che sapete.” I don’t know how true these stories are, since Bussani was performing in an important city in an Imperial Theater with a hand-picked troupe of superstars who would not have tolerated such amateurish behavior.

In my book, “The Murder of Figaro,” I cut la Bussani a little break. Da Ponte has a serious crush on her. She shyly asks Mozart if she can add embellishments to her aria, and the composer encourages her not only to improvise at will, but to confess all sorts of things to him concerning the intrigues and murders and denunciations that are threatening to ruin his immortal opera. She has a lot to say.

“The Murder of Figaro” version of Bussani’s doings is as likely to have some truth in it as the official historic version. I chose to believe them, so I wrote them into the book.

Lorenzo Da Ponte, Librettist for three Mozart Operas.

What a life!.

This man did so many things, became so many things, and said so many things, both true and untrue! Where to begin? Poet, polyglot, orator, charmer of women, scholar, impresario; and, as one scholar described him, a ‘professional insolvent.’

In my book, Da Ponte is hugely important as a particularly inept intriguer, and as a surprisingly sentimental lover. He is not involved in the action much, because I stuck him in jail for most of the story. Da Ponte was never in jail. But he could have been.

I am going to tell you some his story in reverse order, since he spent the better part (in both senses) of his life in America. He arrived on our shores in 1805, fleeing with his new wife from his creditors in London; just one of the many major European cities from which he was forced to decamp.

In America he labored for a brief time as a greengrocer, then as a  bookseller, and an Italian tutor. He was ‘discovered’ by Clement Clark Moore (of “T’was the Night Before Christmas” fame) and became a literary lion in New York society. He was the founder of the Italian department at Columbia, also an impresario who brought the brightest European stars (Malibran! García!) to New York, and who built America’s first real Opera House in 1833, when he was 89 years of age.

Occasionally, stories of his shady sexual and financial past drifted across the Atlantic, but these sordid tales from decadent Europe did not seem to bother his American friends and students very much. They loved him.

Da Ponte, equally in love with his new country, made a fresh start, giving up his libertine ways, settling down with his adored wife Nancy and producing a quartet of charming and talented children.  His financial woes followed him, however, to the end of his days. He died in 1838, and his funeral overflowed with mourners. And creditors.

In 1783 Da Ponte arrived in Vienna after a peripatetic failed job search, with nothing but a letter of introduction to the composer Salieri. He wangled that letter into the job of Imperial Poet to the Court of Joseph II, who, as Da Ponte brags in my book “Adores me!” This was probably true.

He wangled a patron also, the building magnate Raimund Wetzlar von Plankenstern, who was also a patron of Mozart. In his memoirs Da Ponte claims that Mozart begged him for a libretto. In my book Da Ponte does the begging. It seemed more of a likely story to me. However the collaboration began, it produced three sublime operas. Da Ponte was banished from Vienna in 1790.

In 1773, Da Ponte, who was Jewish, was ordained as a Catholic priest.He lived, purportedly, in a Venetian brothel, with another ladyfriend, and had two children by her.  Accused of organizing all sorts of entertainments in the brothel, he was tried on morals charges and banished from Venice in 1779.

In 1749, a gifted child, Emanuel Conegliano was born in Ceneda in the Republic of Venice.  He attended the Ceneda seminary, and was baptized Lorenzo Da Ponte by the presiding Bishop. He taught at the Seminary before moving to the city of Venice and beginning his life of dissipation bad business deals, immortal librettos and American successes.

Francesco Benucci: Mozart’s Inspiration for Figaro

It is quite possible that Mozart would never have written “The Marriage of Figaro” had he not been inspired by two great comic singers working in Vienna: the sprightly Nancy Storace, who would create the role of Susanna; the other was Francesco Benucci, the best buffo bass in Europe, who would create the title role of Figaro.  These superstars were almost surely his models.

Benucci and Storace were an inseparable team throughout their working lives. In 1783, although they were under contract in the same theater in Venice, the pair allowed themselves to be lured away to sing in Emperor Joseph II’s new buffa company in Vienna. The newly- assembled troupe was brilliant and the money was very, very good.

Mozart, who had moved to Vienna from Salzburg, heard the basso sing that same year, and wrote an enthusiastic letter to his father about him. The composer’s his creative wheels began a-turning: he started writing an opera with Benucci’s voice and stage presence in mind; however his plans went awry, and the project was abandoned

.Meanwhile, Benucci was stealing the show in operas by Salieri, Stephen Storace (Nancy’s brother), and Martín y Soler. The Benucci-Storace duo was also working the private salon circuit, each accompanying the other at the keyboard; a charming onstage picture and a testament to their all-around musicianship.

But the best was yet to come. Benucci would appear in all three of the sublime Mozart/Da Ponte operas beginning with Le Nozze di Figaro in 1786.

The tenor Michael Kelly describes the scene in which Benucci first sang the show’s big hit tune “Non piu andrai, farfallone amoroso” in an orchestral rehearsal:

“…when Benucci came to the fine passage ‘Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla gloria militar,’ which he gave out with stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself, for the whole of the performers onstage and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated ‘Bravo! Bravo Maestro! Viva! Viva grande Mozart!’”

In my novel “The Murder of Figaro,” Benucci has almost nothing to do but perform brilliantly as Figaro. Mozart and Da Ponte do speculate what Benucci might do if the above-mention famous aria were to be cut out by the Imperial Censor: murder, to be exact. And cannibalism.

In his real life there is no record of any scandals or marriages or big romances in his life, either with women or with men. And certainly no hint of mayhem or man-eating.

When Don Giovanni premiered in Prague in 1787, Benucci took the role of Leporello, bringing the scabrous Catalog Aria to life for the first time, whipping the audiences into a frenzy. For the Vienna premiere, Mozart wrote an extra comic duet for him and Luisa Laschi in the role of Zerlina ((who as you recall, created the role of Contessa Almaviva in “Figaro.” Think about that, all you light lyric sopranos!). This duet is usually cut today; but I have seen it done, and it’s pretty shocking, involving as it does, another side of dear sweet lamblike little Zerlina, who ties Leporello to a chair and promises to shave him and then cut out his heart and his eyes with a razor. This is a symbolic castration scene pure and simple:  Zerlina, raped by Don Giovanni, is heard threatening a helpless man and vowing to take bloody vengeance on him and all men. In C Major.

In 1790 Benucci created the role of Guglielmo in Cosí fan Tutte in Vienna; singing that role’s heavenly ensembles, and the sarcastically gooey-sweet First Act and darkly-bitter Second act arias. Mozart wrote him a third aria also, “Rivolgete a lui lo sguardo,” which was cut from the show for dramatic reasons. It is sung only as a concert aria today.

I am sorry that I have no gossip to spill about Benucci. He seemed completely wedded to his craft. He was the best. He was beloved.   He sang until he retired, moved back to his natal city of Livorno, and died in 1824.

The Real and Exciting Life of Mozart’s Irish tenor Michael Kelly, 1762-1826

In my book “The Murder of Figaro” I do a bit of a hatchet job on this hardworking singer, who created the double roles of Don Basilio and Don Curzio in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.”  I needed a buffoon in my story, and Kelly got cast in the part of a preening, bitchy, gossipy know-it-all Irish tippler. Heaven knows the man had an inflated ego, but one cannot function as a tenor without one.

In truth, Kelly (or Ochelli) sang everything everywhere, knew everybody, and from all accounts was befriended and beloved everywhere he went, in Britain and all over Europe. During his long and distinguished career, he managed to sing soprano, alto, tenor and bass with great success. He was friends with Salieri and Paisiello. He was close with Stephen and Nancy Storace and dined often with the Mozarts. Mozart continued to love him in spite of the famous musical argument between himself and Amadé,  which is featured in my book with some extra nasty twists thrown in. Kelly won that argument, by the way, which is surprising because Mozart had an ego of his own, and after all it was his opera. When Kelly left for London, he and Mozart wept at parting.

In Britain, Kelly became the principal English tenor in the old Drury Lane Theater and toured around performing lots of Handel, including “Messiah” “Jephtha,” and other works.  He played Macheath in “The Beggar’s Opera” opposite his ladyfriend Anna Crouch as Polly. La Crouch and Kelly lived together in a cozy arrangement with Mr. Crouch, all happy as clams, evidently. For a while Anna was also favoring the Prince of Wales, who did not move in with them; he merely added his royal lustre to the two other men, who were OK with it. Autre temps, autre moeurs, I guess.

Ladies seemed to adore Michael Kelly, which could make life precarious. In his youth, when an infuriated rival arrived with blood in his eye at the opera house he was singing in, Kelly ran offstage and out the stage door in the middle of the performance. Everybody was sympathetic afterwards, including the management.

Kelly himself became the manager of the Kings Theater in 1793, and published his entertaining and frankly self-regarding “Reminiscences” in 1826, and died shortly thereafter.

In my historical mystery novel “The Murder of Figaro,” the English Soprano Nancy Storace (1765-1817), who created the role of Susanna in “Le Nozze di Figaro,” gets her full due as an intelligent, confident artist; she is one of the few characters who actually realizes what Mozart is.

However, in my tale she, like everybody else, has an agenda of her own– to wrench the composer away from his wife and spirit him off to England and have him all to herself, artistically and otherwise. There were rumors that Storace and Mozart had a fling, and I wouldn’t blame her for at least trying. I would have.

Her real story is a bit more textured than a comic murder mystery generally permits, and I will now make it up to la Storace by telling you some of it.

The soprano made her debut in England at age twelve, moved to Italy and started a career there until she was recruited to join the Italian company in Vienna. Her singer colleagues Michael Kelly and Francesco Benucci were always generous in their praise of her singing and her comedic gifts. Mozart, Haydn and Salieri all adored her and composed wonderful music for her. They came to her rescue when in 1785 she suffered a severe vocal crisis (she could neither sing nor talk for several months (In the book this catastrophe has been assigned to another soprano). Mozart created new material for her diminished powers and adapted existing material to make her feel more comfortable .

When Storace brags about her perfect technique in my book, the author is lying. It’s true that in her earlier, wilder days in Italy, she challenged a colleague– an older celebrated castrato soprano named Marchesi– to a vocal duel, won it, possibly straining her voice; and was promptly fired by the management.

In my novel, Storace is chaperoned by her brother Stephen, but in real life she was  married and had recently given birth to a child who did not survive infancy. Storace, like many other female singers of that era, continued to perform onstage until late into pregnancy. She appeared in Paisiello’s mega-hit “The Barber of Seville” (not that one, the other one) until her confinement, at which point the much-maligned (by me) Luisa Laschi stepped in for her.

Her husband, John Fisher, was horrible to her. It was rumored that he beat her. Emperor Joseph II, who kept a micro-manager’s eye on his troupe, had Fisher deported for spousal abuse.  Inspired by this sordid tale, I decided that the Emperor would have a bit of a crush on Storace, and Storace would have a super-sized crush on Mozart.

Storace returned to England in 1787 and continued her singing career. She wanted to return to Vienna in 1788, but the Emperor’s new-found pleasure in making war exceeded the thrill of producing opera; he was not interested in paying her in spite of her celebrity. Storace never saw Mozart again. There was a man in her life, and a love child, who survived to adulthood; but she shied away from a second marriage, being nobody’s fool. She died suddenly in 1817.

Having sung the magnificent concert aria (“Ch’io mi scordi di te?/ Non temer amato bene”) that Mozart wrote for orchestra, Storace and for himself at the keyboard, I believe that the music reveals the deep bond between these two artists, and their sadness at parting from one another. In my book Mozart uses the aria, or the promise of the aria, as a bald-face bribe to persuade Storace to help him solve the mystery and to stop pestering him for sex.  Shame on me. He would never ever do that.

For my new historical/comic mystery “The Murder of Figaro,” I created a character loosely based on a historical opera singer, Luisa Laschi, who created the role of the Countess under Mozart’s direction.  I opted to give her a messy personal life, a serious case of self-involvement, or to put it more charitably, a strong instinct for self-preservation.

I needed to put a cliché horrible diva into my cast of characters, for the amusement of my readers; I picked Laschi for this role because she seemed to be so alone at the time: no stage mother, no husband, no protective brother who accompanied her from theater to theater, guarding her vulnerable virtue.  I have no idea how she comported herself in her real life, but I can tell you she was a trouper, she worked all the time, in Italy and in Austria, and she was adored.

I have a strong urge to apologize to, and set the record straight about, Signora Laschi; who, from her début in 1770 at ten years of age, was praised for her clear true lyric soprano, her  endless creamy legato singing, and her beautiful figure.  Laschi arrived in Vienna in 1784 when she was invited to join the Imperial Court’s Italian opera troupe.

By the time she appeared in “Figaro” in 1786, she was probably engaged to the famous tenor  Domenico Mombelli. Emperor Joseph II gave the couple permission to be married, but could not officiate at the wedding. He made a semi-icky joke in a letter to his Chancellor of Spectacles Count Rosenberg, whom he deputized to solemnize the marriage: “and I cede to you the Droit de Seigneur.” An obvious reference to “Figaro.”

Mombelli was invited into the troupe in August of 1786, making a third husband/wife singing team, along with the Mandinis and Bussanis.  The couple had two children who died in early infancy.  Laschi herself died in 1790 at the age of thirty.

Knowing operatic sopranos as intimately as I do, I can only say that the cliché of the demon diva is largely false. God knows performers are neurotic, insecure, melodramatic and occasionally, and necessarily, self-absorbed, but they also are kind, helpful, empathetic and willing to submit themselves to the wishes of composers, directors, conductors, impresarios, agents and patrons. They usually are able to suppress their own agendas to forward any performance they happen to be in. So, Signora, I apologize for using you so badly. You had a brief, incandescent career, knew Mozart, and gave life to his music;  and that is how we should remember you.

Seventy years ago, when I was five, my family moved to the leafy village where I would do most of my growing up. Right around my milestone birthday this year, I was visited by intense visions of my dearest childhood places. Certain trees. Certain rocks. Certain brooks. The visions were so strong that I felt I was there, in that particular there where kids live their secret kid lives.

In the village of my childhood, kids ranged free and feral any and everywhere, or as far as a twenty-pound Schwinn bike would take us; and our parents, secure in the knowledge that we were safe somewhere or other, and probably would not die, volunteered and sat on committees to elevate Village Life to near-unbearable levels of bliss.

Our Village, as the denizens loved to call it, has had many names. First it was called ‘Ossininck’, then Philipse Manor, also Scarborough, Sleepy Hollow, Whitson’s Corner; until it was incorporated in 1903 by its Founding Father and officially named “Briarcliff Manor.”

The Founding Dad was one Walter Law, a British immigrant who, having worked himself up from an impoverished door-to-door rug salesman to a partner in a prestigious company, threw it all over to become a gentleman farmer. At the turn of the twentieth century Law bought up most of the land that comprised Our Village, named it Briarcliff Farms, farmed the hell out of it, and built a house called “The Manor.” In 1902 he opened a monster Tudor Revival luxury resort hotel called Briarcliff Lodge (the biggest, best, and only hotel in Westchester County; and the only one equipped with a docking pole for dirigibles, should one ever fly to the Lodge. None ever did). The rich and famous came flocking to the Lodge to escape the heat of the city and stroll on its manicured grounds and golf links.

Being a philanthropist and a savvy businessperson, Law donated a gorgeous Tudor Revival railway station to Our Village, so that when theVanderbilts and Roosevelts and the royalty and other important people embarked from the train at our village, they knew they were in for a fabulous Tudor Revival time. Law then went on to donate the school, the town parks, and the first-ever public swimming pool. He also endowed the Congregational church and put a Tiffany window into it. Consequently nobody raised a fuss about the vaguely British name Law chose for his model Village. He was Lord of the Manor, and everyone was happy.

The pretty railroad station, the pool, the parks and the Congregational Church and its mesmerizing window, were all magical parts of my life as a child in Briarcliff when I lived there forty-three years after its naming. Built to last, they still exist today. The stupendous Briarcliff Lodge, which I saw exactly once, burned to the ground fifteen years ago.

I didn’t know any of this fascinating Briarcliff history at first because I was five at the time. What I knew was, there were briars. There was also a cliff, a monstrous massif one running north to south the whole length of the town. This steep hill once separated the rich from the middle and lower classes. The wealthy claimed the highlands– where they rusticated and played golf at the Lodge, or built their extravagant summer homes.

The farm workers and other ordinary folk lived at the base of the hill, in the moist bottomlands of the Pocantico River. We thought we had the best of it down there: the school and the pool and the Fire Station that blew its whistle every day at noon, and Pete’s Soda Fountain and the Rec Hall and Library. That was where ordinary Village Life took place. And did it ever.

Briarcliff was made for kids. When we weren’t courting death by tearing around on bikes, climbing into the swaying tops of trees, or fishing off the very dangerous railroad trestle that spanned the Pocantico, forming secret clubs (The Stargazing Club. The Indian Club. The short-lived but thrilling Lurkers Club, whose mission it was to peep through people’s windows after dark. Punishment was swift and harsh), or building hideouts, or joining neverending contests of one a cat or hide and seek, we partook of that organized, abundant Village Life, designed to keep us in a state of perpetual excitement.

Among the civic activities that our parents planned for us: swim lessons and tennis lessons at Law Park, the town variety show, concerts, town and school field days, visiting attractions (Rex Trailer and his Wonder Horse!) fairs, Firemen’s bazaars, flower shows, pet shows, junior church choir, fire engine rides, community sings and outdoor movies (Follow the Bouncing Ball! Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn!! all projected on the school wall!) ballroom dance classes at the Rec Hall, parades (Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day), Brownies, Scouts, and Junior Audubons. Everybody in every class did all these things together. You had to be there, and we were. Village Life was full to the brim with fun.

I thought everyone in America lived like this. It was a long time before I found out how wrong I was.

By the time I had settled into this mad schedule of delights, Village Life was undergoing changes. Mythical Briarcliff Lodge had become a private school campus, the uber-wealthy had sold their country houses to developers, and subdivisions began to sprout up on top of the big hill, the one-time playground of the rich and royal.

During Briarcliff’s housing boom, forests and meadows I considered to be mine were leveled for split-levels and ranch houses, and many more kids came down the hill to our pretty school (kindergarten through twelfth grade). At first I hated them. They cut down the woods for these jerks? The grief I felt over losing my sacred places was bitter. I can still taste it today.

A new school was built. Then another. More wild kid habitat had to be sacrificed. Trees fell. I could not be consoled.

Somehow a few sacred spots were left untouched, and are untouched still. The marshier sections of the Pocantico, where it oozed under the railroad trestle, became a Nature Park. A thin strip of forest on a steep rocky flank of the hill, known to all kids as The Little Woods, remains. I can see it on Google Earth.

Other mysteries survive as well. The romantic ruins of a stone coach house on Pine Road made me think of carriages and trotting horses. Then there was the huge brick Wall on Scarborough Road, sporting signs in raised brick letters that read “WALDHEIM.” I always yelled the name aloud (‘Walled Heem!!’) on the days I drove with Mom to pick up Dad at Scarborough Station. She lived with it.

But what was Waldheim? Who lived on the other side of that long, high wall? It took me decades to find out, but finding out was great.

James Speyer was a German-born Jewish New York banker and philanthropist who built a monster Tudor (of course) Revival villa and model farm, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, for “Our Crowd” to visit and admire. “Our Crowd” were wealthy German-Jewish people from the City. Perhaps, or certainly, they were not welcomed at Briarcliff Lodge. Mrs. Speyer was a New York socialite, and an animal rights advocate who provided her own personal ChowChow dog with a chauffeur and a maid. Life was lush, until the stock market crashed. The whole gorgeous domain was demolished and subdivided in the thirties. The Wall still stands , and I know how to pronounce the name now, too. I like to think that the magical life of pampered pets, maids, financiers, and manicured landscapes still goes on at Waldheim, as the ghosts of Our Crowd cavort on moonlit nights.

There were lots of ordinary middle-class Jewish people in Briarcliff. I did not know who was Jewish and who was not. I am happy to say that my mother, raised to be an anti-Semite, befriended the good Jewish ladies of Our Village through her work in Scouting; and thus was washed clean of her distrust of Our Crowd. One of her fabulous friends (my Brownie leader) contributed generously to my musical career when we were re-united by chance three decades later.

Our Village was white. We all looked the same, I thought, except for the Ghiazza kids in the summer, all of whom were lifeguards at the town pool, and all of whom bronzed up with enviable Italian suntans.

No visible black or brown people lived in Our Village. In the glory days at the Lodge, the black golf caddies who lived on the hill were forbidden to come down the hill to shop, or, God forbid, to hang out at the park or the pool.

The only black people I saw were the garbage men, who swore ferociously and bared their terrible white teeth at our dog, who was swearing ferociously and baring his terrible white teeth at them.

They were tough looking guys, and my mother and I were afraid of them, and the dog knew it, and that’s as far as we got with race relations in Briarcliff. My mother’s anti-black-people feelings ran deep. Even Scouts did not help. A troop of all-white Brownies did nothing to inspire her to love her fellow man regardless of their color.

Where did these black guys live? Ossining, maybe, or White Plains or Mamaronek. I didn’t know, nor did I care.

There were so many things and people in the wider world I didn’t care about, being far outside my charmed circle of privileged, exciting jam-packed Mayberry whitegirl Village Life. I roamed where I pleased, sledded and skated biked, camped out, learned the waltz and the hokey-pokey, played with the neighborhood gang (me and seven boys) and decorated my bike for yet another parade.

I wanted to be a kid forever and ever, but in the sixth grade the inevitable thing happened. The cool kids separated from the uncool kids. The girls stopped playing baseball and football and turned their attention to their clothes, hair, breast development and of course, boys. The boys withdrew in alarm and joined organized all-male ball leagues. Dance classes gave way to Junior Rec dances, where the reluctant boys had to ask the same girls they had viciously tackled in football games only last year– yes those selfsame girls– to dance.

These excruciatingly embarassing events were written up afterwards in the cool kids’slambook news-sheet: who had danced with whom, who was noticeably absent from spin-the-bottle, who wore the wrong kind of clothes or had bad hair. Ancient friendships dissolved, malicious cliques were formed. Suddenly Briarcliff’s sweet tendency to do everything together morphed into the misrule of the cool, and their commandment to join the rush to puberty, grow some breasts, or be forever damned.

I was damned. I was a loser. I was shunned and mocked. I found consolation in solitary rambles in what remained of the woods and fields, and in horseback riding lessons, books, music, and a few loyal loser friends. But I felt the real sting of being outside of things after having been so deeply inside. Here was the dark side of Village Life, the strict mandated conformity. I was twelve, and my perfect kidhood was over. I moved to New Jersey.

Google Earth shows me that the golf links on the storied heights of Briarcliff Manor are now the Trump National Golf Course, and heaven knows what sort of plutocrats and gangsters high-rollers hang out up there, and heaven knows how Village Life below has adjusted to the looming Trump presence. Everything may be different now.

I still dream about going back home to walk in the woods, sleep in a puptent in my back yard, climb a tree or take another forbidden dip in the Pocantico. My Briarcliff house is still there. I could just move back in.

Of course I never dream about the home I have made and lived in happily for over half my life. I suppose it’s because still I’m here and I need not yearn, just wash the dishes, tend the garden and run the Roomba. I have been many places and met all manner of folks in my life and I know that I really don’t want to return to the insularity of Village Life in Briarcliff. But the intensity of memory, and the enchantment, remain.

Scene 10 (Mozart’s bedroom, Night, April 24)

Mozart and Constanze

Duettino di rivelazioni

“Merde! Kaka! I’m not having a good time at all! I just hate being patronized by those damn Italians! You’d think people would at least be grateful that I could learn the beastly role in 15 minutes, step in and sing the silly recitatives they can’t even remember after weeks of drill!”

“Chérie, du calme, quelle espèce de passion!”

“M’enfin, I know I’m a matron and I stopped looking like a little girl a while ago, but honestly, darling! And that fat Nancy Storace with the cow’s eyes you think so much of, well! The woman never misses a chance to remind me that she is the international diva and I am the dilettante, and that my voice is rather pretty but my stage manner lacks this or that, and why don’t I try this bit of staging and this pose and this gestique that she used with such great success while singing for the Helsinki Grand Opera … I could just kill the bitch!”

“She’s just jealous. Storace has ambitions to take over your role, sweetheart.”

“Go on! She wants to sing Barbarina?”

“No, loviekin doviekin, she wants to sleep with me.”

“Ah, ha. Und es war Licht.”

“But darlingdear, I’m otherwise occupied. You sound so girlishly lovely in the little air; you’re charming onstage; your eyes are black and comely; you’re smarter than all of them put together, which is not saying a whole lot, I suppose … and heaven be continually praised, you’re married to me. Forever. Not subject to revision, derision or division.”

“If you insist, dumpling, I shall abide by the terms of my contract, letter and spirit. You know, I’m not all that wild to be onstage as I once was; and I really don’t enjoy the life, the back-stabbing, the pettiness, the creeping anxiety. I’d rather stay home and keep the oven warm.”
“Ah. Are you pregnant then?”

“Yes, dearie, I am. Let’s pray hard for this one.”

“And – your operatic ambitions are once more deferred?”

“Per sempre. Let Ouisia and Josepha and Sophie be in show business; I hate everybody else in it! Except Benucci; he’s a lamb, and his mind is fixed firmly on his craft. So if you run off with Storace I’ll run off with him.”

“Let’s save the coach fares and let them run off with each other.”