‘There are women, Hermione,’ deliberately he made his voice even huskier, ‘who Verdi claimed are “born for others, who are quite unaware of their own egos, and who rise above the petty squabbles of lesser mortals”.’
Hermione was so moved she behaved herself for the rest of the afternoon.
On the other hand, she was not the only member of the cast to be worried that Fat Franco had been ousted by an unknown Australian. At least Franco would have ensured that Don Carlos was a commercial success. Confidence was restored, however, the moment Baby opened his mouth. The entire orchestra turned round to gawp, and at the end of his first duet with Chloe, Mikhail put down the score he was studying, ran across the hall and flung his arms round Baby. ‘You have most beautiful voice I ever hear. It will be privilege to vork with you.’
Mikhail’s own voice was just as impressive: Posa’s death scene had everyone in tears. Mikhail, however, was easily demoralized, particularly by Alpheus the bass who, in the great duet between Philip II and Posa, kept sighing and wearily holding the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb, as Mikhail, with his poor command of English, fluffed line after line.
Baby and Mikhail on the other hand took to each other instantly, almost as an extension of their comradely role in the opera. In the evening they went on pub crawls, rehearsing their songs for the next day to the noisy delight of the punters. They tried to take Tristan with them but, to their disappointment, he insisted on returning alone to a friend’s flat he had borrowed overlooking Regent’s Park. After all the rows and hysterics, he needed peace to study the next day’s score.
Mysteriously with Mikhail’s arrival things started to disappear. Serena mislaid some pearl earrings, Alpheus some gold cufflinks. Chloe had quite fancied Mikhail until a large topaz ring, the only decent present Alpheus had ever given her, went missing. The cutlery in the canteen had to be replaced twice in a week. Only Baby, Mikhail’s buddy, remained unfleeced, which convinced Hermione, who’d made an unbelievable fuss about a missing umbrella, that he must be the thief.
‘All Australians are descended from convicts.’
‘I have never stolen anything in my life except thunder,’ snapped Baby.
Poor little Christy Foxe, the PA, had the thankless task of getting the cast to the right mikes on time. A singer meant to sound far away has to stand back from the mike, but if, in the middle of a number, he has a love scene with another singer, he has to rush to the mike next to them.
In the ensemble numbers, therefore, it was like Waterloo in the rush-hour, with little Christy shunting Dame Hermione, like a cattle truck, in one direction, and the chorus master propelling Alpheus, like the Intercity Express, in the other. Collisions, screaming-matches, kicks on the shin and slapped faces were inevitable.
There were more rows in the control room, which was where singers flocked after a stint of recording to listen to the playback and try to persuade Serena and Sylvestre, Tristan’s handsome blond French sound engineer, to use the take in which they had sounded best.
Baby, who knew he sounded best in everything, got so bored even of listening to his own voice, not even handsome Sylvestre could distract him, so he frequently started dancing round the recording-machines, much to Alpheus’s disapproval.
Alpheus already disapproved of Granny’s hunky boyfriend, Giuseppe, because if Giuseppe’s consumption of red wine didn’t impair the beauty of his voice he might one day topple Alpheus in leading bass roles, as Alpheus had toppled Granny. Alpheus also disapproved of Granny, who sat calmly knitting colourful squares for a patchwork quilt for his and Giuseppe’s bed, shaking with laughter at his own even more colourful asides. He hardly bothered to put down his needles when he sang, but chilled the blood every time he opened his mouth to deliver the words of the Grand Inquisitor.
Alpheus disapproved most of all of the orchestra.
‘I think the brass section have been drinking,’ he complained, during an evening session.
‘I should be extremely surprised if they hadn’t,’ said the orchestra manager calmly.
In turn, the orchestra, who worked flat out at every session, thoroughly disapproved of the singers, regarding them as lazy, stupid, hypochondriacal, hysterical and grossly overpaid. They did, however, forgive Baby, because he made them laugh and was monumentally generous. Whenever hampers or crates of wine rolled in from his increasing army of fans, they were handed over to the orchestra. Alpheus, who begrudged giving away anything, was horrified. No wonder Baby had difficulty with tax bills.
Meanwhile, Chloe and Alpheus had worked out their schedule so that whenever neither of them was singing they could slope off to bed.
The ladies of the chorus also thought Alpheus was yummy, and whiled away long, cold hours gazing at him. Predominantly middle-aged, given to baggy jerseys and straining leggings, they were of little interest to Alpheus. One member of the chorus, however, Gloria Prescott, rose like Venus from the permanent waves and was nicknamed ‘Pushy Galore’ because she always pushed her way to the front, nodding, gesticulating, shaking her blonde ringleted head and overacting to catch the director’s or conductor’s eye. She also sucked up to Dame Hermione.
‘Ay am such a fan.’
So Hermione befriended Pushy to infuriate Chloe. Alpheus, Rannaldini, Sexton, Sylvestre and Mikhail had all clocked Pushy. In return, Pushy whispered constantly in all their ears, including Tristan’s, that her greatest role at music college had been Elisabetta and wouldn’t she be younger and prettier in the role than Dame Hermione? One morning she was practising one of Hermione’s arias, and hitting all the high notes perfectly, when Rannaldini’s vulpine smile came round the door.
‘Would you like me to accompany you, my child?’ Then, as he was tinkling away, ‘You see, I am not such an ogre. When I say thees or that ees bad, it is because I have ears to ’ear the wrong things.’
The chorus were not booked for the following day, but Rannaldini confided to Pushy that he would specially like to send a limo for her tomorrow afternoon so she could hear the orchestra recording the overture that he himself had composed, and then perhaps they could have tea at the Ritz. Pushy was in heaven.
But if Rannaldini was histrionic when he conducted Verdi he was ten times more difficult when it came to his own music. Having reduced the orchestra to nervous wrecks in the rehearsal beforehand he started rowing with an increasingly demented Tristan.
‘If you take it that fast,’ yelled Tristan, ‘the hunt will never have time to stream down the valley.’
‘Then they must stream queeker.’
‘Then you will lose magical flowing effect.’
‘I must be faithful to my music.’
‘First time bastard’s been faithful to anything,’ muttered Viking O’Neill, the first horn.
‘I must be faithful to story,’ shouted Tristan.
‘OK, we rehearse two ways: queek then flowing.’
Rannaldini proceeded to take his overture at a breakneck speed, his stick a blur, and then at such a funereal pace that the strings ran out of bow, the woodwind and the brass out of puff, and all got screamed at again.
Tristan nearly killed Rannaldini. So did Serena, when she saw the ringleted, beribboned Pushy Galore at the back of the hall.
‘Rannaldini said no outsiders,’ she stormed.
‘Sir Roberto kaindly sent a limo for me,’ simpered Pushy.
Tristan sat shaking in the control room, his head in his hands.
‘Quiet, please, we now record,’ said Rannaldini imperiously, filling the musicians with such terror they could hardly pick up their instruments. ‘Remember, gentlemen, this is for ever.’