The Return of the Queen: Zeffirelli’s ‘Callas Forever’

Callas Forever: Zeffirelli, Ardant and Irons, between takes

Franco Zeffirelli’s homage to the Ur-diva, Callas Forever, was produced in 2002, but it's still awaiting general release in the U.S.; I saw it in Paris, at the tiny Lucenaire Forum, during the Christmas holiday in 2002. Zeffirelli knew and worked with Callas, of course, and in some ways she’s never left him: her memory wafts through much of the work he’s done since her death, in 1977 — notably his film of La Traviata (1982). Presumably, nobody is in a better position to tell us the truth about this woman and her art.

Yet the film left me wondering whether Zeffirelli ever knew the truth, or whether he simply can't bear to tell it now.

On the evidence of Callas Forever, Zeffirelli wonders guiltily if he couldn’t have done something to save her or (at the very least) to make her lonely last days more pleasant. He uses the movie as wish fulfillment, rewriting the past, fantasizing. What Callas really needed, he posits, was to get back to work. Though her voice was shot, she was still a great actress and wonderfully photogenic: a movie career should have been available to her. Couldn’t Zeffirelli have found a project for her? (Callas’ participation in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Medea, from 1969, is never mentioned.)

Thus Callas Forever presents the intriguing spectacle of Callas coming out of retirement to film a role she never performed onstage, miming Carmen to a soundtrack of her own EMI recording, from 1964. She’s played by Fanny Ardant, the French actress who starred in the Paris production of Terrence McNally’s Master Class. Jeremy Irons plays the fictional Larry Kelly, the producer of the Carmen film, a longtime associate of Callas’ who, when we meet him, has forsworn opera. But instead of merely secluding himself, like Callas, Larry has stooped to managing a punk band.

The film falls apart before it even gets going. Making Larry a punk-rock impresario creates an easy, unrewarding target. (His band, Bad Dreams, never seen in the film, has gained notoriety for mooning its audience, something we are to infer that a true artist, such as Callas, never, ever does.) Though Zeffirelli’s co-screenwriter, Martin Sherman, wrote the Janis Joplin fable The Rose, it’s obvious these guys know nothing of punk: Bad Dreams is depicted as playing stadium concerts in an era when punk bands didn’t play venues bigger than basements. (Not playing stadiums was the point of punk.) Such mistakes challenge one’s willing suspension of disbelief — a real problem, because in any work of fantasy, whether Callas Forever or Tolkien’s The Return of the King, the audience must believe in the world you’re creating, or you can’t tell your story.

But this movie is full of puzzles that stop a viewer short. For example, almost every man in the film, from Larry’s lover (Jay Rodan) to Don José (Italian pin-up Gabriel Garko), is extravagantly good-looking. Zeffirelli’s longtime penchant for casting attractive men sometimes makes sense: Romeo and Juliet (1968) is about hormonal overdrive, and the actors illustrate that. Here, however, Zeffirelli uses men as set decoration, and it’s baffling. Is he trying to say something about gays and Callas? (If so, McNally did a better job, in The Lisbon Traviata.)

More curiously, Zeffirelli and Sherman name Irons’ character after the founder of Dallas’ opera company, who often worked with Callas (and Zeffirelli) and who died three years before the diva. The film’s Larry Kelly is self-absorbed, petty, manipulative and the engineer of Callas’ final, humiliating concert tours; he’s also one of Irons’ least convincing characterizations. Yet these multiple offenses may not be intended as insults: after all, this Larry Kelly is nothing short of a miracle worker, able to produce an entire film, from financing to final cut, in the few summer months before Callas’ death. Talk about fantasy!

Such shortcomings might be excused if the film developed any of its themes (youth/age, art/trash, truth/fakery, love/career, memory/immortality) or presented its heroine in a more interesting light. Ardant is a fine actress, and she’s up to the job: one sometimes has the feeling that one is watching the real Callas portray a character named Callas. Her physical transformation is stunning, her wildness and determination beautifully played. But here — as in Master Class — we’re given the unsettling image of Callas as stereotype.

See the diva mope. See the diva rage. See the diva make a grotesque play for the much younger tenor. See the diva play her own records in a fit of morbid self-pity (not unlike Tom Hanks in Philadelphia). Even if the real Callas did such things, we don’t want to watch it — not because it tarnishes our idol, but because it tells us nothing about why Callas was Callas. (After all, if acting out to Callas records made one a great artist, I’d be Henry James by now.) Zeffirelli’s personal knowledge of the singer avails him few insights that can’t be gleaned from a magazine article; the average episode of VH1’s Behind the Music is more enlightening — and more original. Zeffirelli gorges on clichés, including some of his own making. Almost shot for shot, he recreates the scenes from his own La Traviata film in which the lonely, peignoir-clad heroine roams her Paris apartment, while a man (Renato Cestiè’s young porter in Traviata, Irons in Callas Forever) spies on her. Violetta, Maria: what’s the difference?

Ultimately, Callas herself shatters Zeffirelli’s fantasy. The entire movie is a game of “what if,” and in the closing scene, Callas firmly, irrevocably ends the game, as if the memory of the real woman is so powerful that it permits Zeffirelli to go no further. He can’t imagine her letting him rescue her.

She’s a daunting figure for anyone to contemplate, but perhaps particularly so for Zeffirelli. Callas is remembered (inaccurately) as pouring all her creative gifts into a brilliant, brief career; Zeffirelli has been coasting for decades, drowning his inspiration in crowd-pleasing but meaningless décor. Look at his most recent Traviata for the Met: why should Violetta sell her jewels, when she could make more money selling off the furniture and the Fiestaware in her vast country mansion? Certainly Callas was conscious of the visual dimension of her art, and that’s why photographs of her onstage are often more communicative than other singers’ entire performances. But Zeffirelli seldom gets beneath the surface appearances of anything. It’s not even clear that he tries — even when the story is as personal as Tea with Mussolini (his disappointing film from 1999) or Callas Forever.

So far as Larry is a self-portrait, the glimpse we get of Zeffirelli in Callas Forever is pretty sad, and not only because of Irons’ wan performance. Zeffirelli once gave himself co-screenwriting credit with William Shakespeare, but that erstwhile brio is absent here. Larry and Callas are the same age, but they’re not peers. Larry isn’t an artist at all. He merely creates opportunities for artists, some of whom (Bad Dreams) he openly disdains. Callas never compromises; Larry negotiates. She lives alone with the memory of a passionate love affair; he has a lover, but treats him indifferently. And so on. The appropriate rock reference here is from Neil Young: “It’s better to burn out than it is to rust.” If that’s how Zeffirelli sees himself, no wonder his fantasy Callas defeats him.

At every point, he’s undermined by Callas’ voice, which he uses extensively on the soundtrack. Perhaps Zeffirelli can be pardoned for not creating art that stands up to that voice — still compelling, decades after the recordings were made, long after one has listened to them over and over. In Callas Forever, I heard her Carmen and “Un bel dì” as if for the first time; in Master Class, the finale of La Sonnambula proved similarly revelatory. What was happening on screen or onstage was irrelevant and (by comparison) uninteresting; in both cases, I grew impatient with the writers, the directors, the actors, anyone who prevented me from listening more. Neither script could explain (or compete with) the voice itself.

Callas was a great artist and a glamorous personality. It’s only natural that other artists would be drawn to her. They want to explain her, understand her, possess her. But she resists. She won’t be pinned down. Mourning Aristotle Onassis doesn’t explain her last days — not entirely — just as no single circumstance explains the coloring of a phrase in the Habañera. Perhaps only another artist of her stature, one as able to grasp multiplicity, one who sees every color in the spectrum as brilliantly as she did, could do her justice. Callas will always contradict pat answers — and Zeffirelli, of all people, should know that.

This essay was originally intended for Opera News, but tabled pending general release in the U.S. of Zeffirelli's film. Since Callas Forever went direct to DVD in America, in 2005, my article never ran in the magazine, and it appears here for the first time.

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Préfecture Follies of 2007

If I've dropped off the radar screen lately, there's a reason. It's that time of year again, the annual Préfecture Follies, as I struggle to remain in this country legally. The process does get easier and easier ... up to a point.

As in years past, I spent sleepless nights, fretting for weeks over the paperwork, then managing to do it all at the last minute. Again I booked a hotel room in Versailles and overnighted there, then awoke at 4AM in order to arrive at the Préfecture (across the street) and begin standing on line. This year, I broke my record, arriving at 4:25. I was third.

Spring having arrived early this year (my garden in Beynes has been blooming since January, and the irises are unfurling this week), the weather was better yesterday than it's been in previous years — but "better" is a relative term. It's hard to dress warmly when you know the temperature's going to be in the mid-80s later in the day, yet in the pre-dawn hours, when you're not moving, and there's a stiff breeze blowing from the north, you regret having left your parka in storage back in Westchester. My hands were so cold that I couldn't hold the book I'd filched from the hotel. (Molière, The Learned Ladies. Yes, people do leave the strangest things in hotel rooms.)

Fortunately, my fellow standees were the chummiest I've yet encountered there: a gregarious Romanian, whose French was terrible but whose good cheer was as infectious as welcome; a thoughtful Moroccan chef, whose French was, of course, flawless; and a sullen-looking Senegalese hip-hopper who turned out to be sleepy, not sullen. We actually had conversations.

"Why would you leave the United States?" the Moroccan wanted to know.

"The food is better here," I replied.

"Are you nuts?" came the answer.

But I felt like a savvy character. I knew the ropes. I had the skills. I'd even planned my menu the night before, to minimize the need for bathroom breaks. (Which are nigh impossible, because there are no bathrooms.) Although there were only a handful of us for the first 90 minutes, the later arrivals eventually numbered more than 120, according a shamelessly gleeful head count conducted by the Romanian, who was first on the line. In all likelihood, most of these people didn't even get wait-listed. "There's no point coming here at all after 7AM, even on the best days," said the Senegalese, "but you have to know." One poor soul showed up at 8:15, and we marvelled at her cluelessness. We would never be so dumb.

Exercising the astute powers of political observation that are the hallmark of the disenfranchised, we agreed that Nicolas Sarkozy is all but certain to win the presidential elections. (The first round of voting will be Sunday.) Sarkozy is a hardliner, who as interior minister already made things tough for immigrants in France, and as president would like to make things tougher still; we agreed that it was worth enduring a few hardships if it meant retaining our legal status and staying out of Sarko's clutches. "You can't expect them to make it easy for you," said the Romanian. "They can't just let people in. You have to make an effort."

After a mere 4 hours and 20 minutes of waiting, we were admitted indoors. This year I didn't receive the expected convocation, reminding me to show up and telling me what documents I'd require. Without the list of documents, I was directed first to the general assistance area — even though I already knew which documents and had them on my person, in triplicate. "Well of course you didn't get a convocation," said the woman there. "C'est normal. You're supposed to come here directly, any time in the two months prior to the expiration of your residency card. Then we'd have given you the list, and you could have done the rest by mail. You don't have to come here early, you don't have to wait. Of course now that your card is expiring in a few days, you have to do everything in person, right away."

From her demeanor, you'd have thought I'd inconvenienced her, rather than myself: though she's usually one of the pleasanter people at the Préfecture, yesterday she was almost surly. Meanwhile, I was mortified. I'd suffered in all the usual ways, yet I didn't have to.

After a few hours, I remembered — dimly — that yes indeed, I had been warned about this. Last year, somebody (probably La Souriante, the Smiling Woman, who's always been so kind to me — no, really) told me about the two-month deadline and the processing by mail. Somehow, I'd forgotten: apparently my wits are not their sharpest on these mornings when I've been waiting for hours in the dark with no sleep and no coffee. If I renew again next year, please remind me, in late February, that it's time to be efficient.

I was told to come back at noon to get a new number, for the processing room, which doubles as a day-care center for the yowling babies and rambunctious toddlers of the other applicants. Maybe they bring the neighbors' kids, too; who knows? There are a lot of them. You stare at them with festering envy you don't bother to disguise. Wouldn't you love to be screaming and running around, too, instead of sitting there, hour after hour?

The young woman at the window there was the same who'd been a trainee last year, under the supervision of La Souriante, who's gone now, presumably retired. (Maybe that's why she was smiling.) One surprise in the processing: the Ex-trainee wanted a new copy of my birth certificate, with an officially recognized translation, even though I'd already provided both two years ago. Do they think something's changed? Could I have been born a second time, without notifying them or selling the story to Weekly News of the World? Fortunately, I'd brought both the certificate and the translation, so we continued without a hitch ... for a while.

Last year, I imposed on several people to write testimonial letters, to show that there was some chance of my earning a little money from freelance gigs, but La Souriante showed little interest in them. So this year I imposed only on F. Paul Driscoll at Opera News — and thereby flustered the Ex-trainee. "But you've just given me a sworn statement to the effect that you will undertake no professional activity while you're here!" she yelped.

"It says that I will neither seek nor accept employment in France — this is freelance for an American magazine," I babbled. "— I've always been told that this is acceptable!" The Ex-trainee remained doubtful. Suddenly I had visions of being deported — frog-marched out of the Préfecture and straight to the airport — and my room isn't even clean.

In the end, however, my American income didn't raise anybody else's eyebrows. What they really care about is my bank statements; next year, I won't pester F. Paul. Yet the lesson was reinforced: now that I've been here a few years, the only remaining complications in this process are those I create for myself. Damn.

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The Dark Victory of Rena Grant

I have no photos of Rena.
But she might like to be remembered this way.

Rena still sneaks up on me. I am suddenly eager to share with her a book or a song, or a bit of malicious gossip. I pass beneath her window, on the NYU campus, and I start to call up, to see if she's home: does she want to hang out for a while? Or worse: I pass beneath her window and hope she doesn't see me. She'll want to drink, and her drinking has become something I want to avoid.

But she isn't there. Fifteen years ago, she locked herself in that apartment and set out methodically to drink herself to death. She began with the scotch she preferred, and moved on quickly to vodka, then nail-polish remover and rubbing alcohol, until there was nothing left to drink, and no Rena left to drink it. The only light in her room came from the television: I don't know what she was watching. By the end, it probably didn't matter. The television was just another voice in her head.

Her demons had become too noisy, so she drowned them. She was schizophrenic, we learned afterward, and like other schizophrenics she self-medicated, using scotch as a drug. For a long time, it worked.

She was from a little town in Scotland so remote, she said, that the only entertainment was to sit around watching the peat do whatever it is that peat does. She looked like the young Bette Davis, smart and dangerous, with enormous, passionate eyes. She always had style.

I remember running into her one afternoon in New Haven. She was struggling along the street, tacking up leaflets in protest of Thatcher's oppression of the miners. That much wasn't surprising, although I barely knew her at the time: Rena was Scots, Rena was Communist. Protesting Thatcher, protesting any capitalistic, imperialistic transgression, was predictable behavior from her. But she had dressed up to do it.

Her nails freshly painted, her hair upswept, she wore a vintage shirt-dress, a faux-pearl necklace, and pumps. A third-hand fox stole clung to her shoulders only in an instinctive attempt to attack her throat. Without style, nothing.

Yes, Rena's revolution would be glamorous. Nobody doubted it. Rena would see to it. She spun tales of proletarian paradises, so vivid that the happy workers seemed to dance before us as she spoke. The romance carried her away. She sang sentimental Victorian songs: "I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls." She pantomimed Verdi heroines, and poured another drink.

Her friends didn't know why she drank so much: we didn't know that she drank so much. She was by turns graceful and deceitful in her drinking. A little diversion here or there kept you from noticing that she was never without a drink, or that she became ill if she went more than an hour without alcohol. When she went to teach her classes, she recycled little cartons of Tropicana orange juice to fill with scotch, which she'd sip while she lectured. If a play ran on too long, she pretended to dislike it, left early, and went for a drink as if to purge the aesthetic offense.

The first time I ever walked out of a play, I was with Rena Grant. It was an appalling production — and Shakespeare's Scottish play, to add insult to injury. I was willing to slog it out, just to see Glenda Jackson. But Rena whispered in my ear, "Do you want to go?" And so we went. To a bar.

Eventually she stopped leaving her apartment. We pretended not to notice that she could no longer fake sobriety. We pretended not to notice what a struggle it had become just to hold herself upright.

And the voices in her head became louder, impossible for her to ignore. She was never much of a housekeeper, but her apartment became squalid. Dishes stacked up in the sink, a thick layer of grime coated the stove and much of the kitchen, both her bed linens and the cat's litter box went unchanged, and ashtrays went unemptied.

This didn't prevent her from inviting people in, but it began to alarm her guests. For my thirtieth-birthday party, the apartment was in such malodorous disorder that friends arriving early felt compelled to do a fast clean-up: since it was a surprise party, there was no possibility of moving to another venue.

Rena was embarrassed by this incident and hired a cleaning woman to come in a few times a month. This violated her political principles, but she had no alternative, she explained to me. "Whenever I start to clean house, I hear my mother's voice, telling me I'm no good at it."

"You hear voices?" I said.

"Figuratively, of course," she lied.

Not long afterward, a dispute with a colleague became so violent that the poor fellow was honestly scared. He complained to the department chairman, and Rena was ordered to see a psychiatrist. For many years, Rena had prepared for just this occasion. She had studied all the right books, and her melding of psychology and politics in the field of English literature had made her an academic star. (She ripped through Oxford and Yale, receiving her doctorate while still in her early twenties.) She used to brag that she knew precisely what to say to make a psychiatrist think she was crazy — and what to say to make a psychiatrist think she was sane. She had memorized all the appropriate rejoinders, just as an actress memorizes dialogue.

But when the interview came, she couldn't play the part. The psychiatrist saw through her defenses, clearly enough at least to recognize that her mental health was poor, but not clearly enough to identify her sickness or to treat it.

Maybe death was her victory over the dark, the only way to prevent the destruction of what she had. If she had survived, her future would have been grim, and brief. The weekend she died, Rena faced the loss of her job, deportation back to Scotland, institutionalization and (in all likelihood) organ failure and the death it was already too late to stop.

When the paramedics arrived in her apartment, they thought she was pregnant, so distended was her belly.

I got the call around dawn on a Sunday morning when I had, as it happened, stayed up all night, doing things I shouldn't have done. My friend Kyra Sinkowsky broke the news to me, but I didn't believe her. Rena was always testing people, devising intrigues, plotting elaborate practical jokes.

Her colleagues and students at NYU held a memorial service for her, in Deutsches Haus, on May Day. Her father was there, whom we'd never met: he was the subject of her bitterest, most horrifying stories, and we now realized that we could not be certain any of those stories, and their ingredient accusations, were true.

Most people who spoke were sad and very, very sorry, gently grieving, sweetly nostalgic in their recollections of Rena, yet it seemed to me they could be talking about almost anybody. They missed Rena, not only in the sense of feeling her absence but also in the sense of not hitting the target.

Meanwhile, I was angry. Angry at myself for not saving her. And angry at her for leaving too soon, with too much work left to be done. The glamorous revolution had not begun. The proletarian paradise was still out of reach. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Communism had been discredited, and even the Chinese and the Cubans were abandoning the precepts Rena held dear. John Major was still in office in Britain, George Bush in America. In Los Angeles, a jury had reached an obscene verdict in the Rodney King case, resulting in an explosion of violence that continued even as we spoke.

The memorial service was interrupted and brought to a halt when the university administration shut down the campus. New York police were concerned that the Los Angeles riots would spread to Manhattan — any minute now.

As I walked back to my office, I thought how much Rena would have enjoyed the timing — and how much more she would have enjoyed a popular uprising.

But there were no riots in New York that day, and Rena wouldn't have been there to see them anyway.

We had the stars.

In the days that followed, her friends circulated reassurances. There was nothing we could have done to stop her. She was a determined woman, we said; she argued down anyone who tried to intervene.

Moreover, Rena wouldn't have wanted us to blame ourselves. We continued to say this, until blame seemed more fearsome than death itself. We could face Rena's suicide, so long as we took no responsibility for her loss. No one of us could bear to think that any of the others might harbor some private, futile guilt. So we consoled each other. We survivors must not suffer. We were eager to let each other off the hook.

And yet, all the while I reassured our friends, I thought, "Of course you aren't to blame: I am."

If I hadn't turned away from the warnings, couldn't I have saved her? Couldn't I have been wiser, couldn't I have loved her better? She wouldn't have allowed the others to save her, but wouldn't she have allowed me?

I didn't want to be let off the hook. To bear no responsibility for her death would mean never to have shared her life.

I wanted to believe I could have saved her. I wanted to believe I could have made a difference. I wanted to believe my love was important. I wanted to believe I was not powerless, helpless, friendless.

And Rena wasn't there to correct me. She used to shudder whenever I said anything foolish (which was often). "Bill, darling, it just doesn't work that way," she would say, her Scots accent making every syllable more scornful.

And in this case, she might well have paraphrased her beloved Bette Davis: "Don't ask for the moon, Bill; we had the stars."

For the way it works is merely this: I was special to her, but I wasn't special enough to save her. It was foolish, and rather arrogant, to think I, of all the world, could have been the one. Maybe nobody was the one.

Her loss remains a deep wound, and a startling one: I go about my business, and look down to see I'm still bleeding. It's like an old war movie, where the soldier goes on fighting, never noticing he's been shot. Yet I'm in no hurry to heal.

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Molly Ivins

Quite possibly the most sophisticated person in the room

Word of Molly Ivins' passing has just reached me, courtesy of the on-line edition of The New York Times. I'm deeply sorry: her work was so far from completed. At least she lived to see Shrub on the ropes; the impeachment she sought will probably never happen, and the tar-and-feathering she'd have enjoyed so much will remain a pleasant dream among those who survive her.

Reminded that she studied in France and graduated from Smith, I am yet again struck by her success at the Mark Twain trick, that of pretending to be a backward country bumpkin when you're really the smartest, wickedest, funniest, and quite possibly most sophisticated person in the room. Even before Twain, Benjamin Franklin managed something quite like this, as well, but I realized long ago that I lack the genius, and I settle for "passing".

I first met her over the telephone in 1992, when I was working in the Rather office. Dan had to give a speech, requiring comic observations on local politics, to give someplace in Texas, and we thought it might be useful to call Molly and get her advice. She was delighted with the assignment, asked for a fifteen-minute break so that she could brainstorm, then called back to dictate to me about two pages of rapid-fire material. Only about a quarter of this was tame enough for Dan to use: we realized shortly that people grew uncomfortable when the anchorman was too funny. (Since my jokes are seldom very good, that realization turned out to be my big break as a comedy writer.)

Not long after our telephone meeting, I attended the Republican Convention in Houston. As I approached the Astrodome one afternoon, I spotted Molly Ivins. She was hard not to spot, as she walked alongside the parking lot: very tall, lots of hair, a billowing peasant dress, an immense shoulder bag stuffed with newspapers and scraps of God-only-knows. I ran over to introduce myself, certain she'd remember a conversation both so recent and so Rather. That's when I made a double discovery: 1) that Molly Ivins was shy, and 2) that the international attention now focused on her had made her jumpy. She reacted coldly to strangers, all of whom now appeared to be either autograph seekers, or outraged conservatives spoiling for a fight. The bond between us that seemed so certain a few weeks before was never going to happen. She had become a celebrity.

Yet how richly she deserved the attention! That very week, Pat Buchanan made his infamous "Take back our cities" speech at the convention, and Molly observed that it "probably sounded better in the original German." A funny line, and wise. I was in the Astrodome when Buchanan spoke, and I felt the room temperature rise ten degrees: Buchanan wasn't merely throwing red meat to the crowd, he was barbecuing. It was one of the scariest scenes I ever witnessed. But Molly kept her cool and simply let loose a few barbs — which in turn punctured Buchanan's balloon — which turned out to be full of hot air.

It’s for others to say who she was behind her wise-cracking Good Ol’ Gal mask, but I saw clearly that it was a mask. It was her own design, which is a mercy, and it may not have covered her full face, but she wore it pretty well. The mask was useful to her, permitting her to speak about things that mattered to her. She was able to win countless admirers, many of whom thought of her as a friend: one of my own friends, a Texas liberal, told me he’d cried when he heard the news of her death, and again the next morning. But she reminds me of other famous non-actors who play roles, who live up to a public image: even the best and most gratifying mask is never a perfect fit. Sometimes the mask is altogether uncomfortable and awkward. Professional actors are luckier, because they can change masks, and even remove them.

Although Molly Ivins and I bumped into each other a few more times, she never remembered me. (Part of the curse of being in Dan's shadow was that you got to meet fascinating people, few of whom ever saw you.) I was confident, however, that by admiring her discreetly, from afar, I was doing her a favor.

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Anna Russell

My first and favorite Valkyrie

The passing of Anna Russell in October, 2006, completely escaped my attention; I learned of it only weeks later. The news shouldn’t have come as a surprise — she was ninety-four — but when I’d corresponded with her only a few years ago, she was busy with books and other projects, and it was clear from a brief conversation with her daughter that, really, Mother was a handful.

I grew up listening to her albums, even before I'd started going to the opera or had much idea what she was talking about. She was just funny. Only after I started attending operas and concerts on a regular basis, and meeting professional singers, did I realize that Miss Russell was not making this up, you know. Every single thing she said turned out to be gospel truth.

By now, I’ve heard dozens of “singers who can’t count,” and who consider themselves endowed with “such magnificent voices that they cannot be bothered with correct tempi.” In contemporary operas, I’ve heard singers whose tone-deafness I suspected. In Emma Kirkby, I first encountered “the pure-white, or nymphs-and-shepherds style” of English soprano. A few bel canto specialists have confirmed Miss Russell’s assertion that “the only people who really enjoy coloratura singing are other coloratura sopranos.” German Lieder are frequently sung, just as Miss Russell promised, by people “with one or two rather loud notes at either end of the scale, and nothing much in between”; these folks do on occasion seem to be trying to make a noise loud enough “to kill a canary.”

It’s because of Miss Russell that I can never attend a Wagner opera without fighting back laughter. Miss Russell’s “Introduction to the Ring Cycle” is likely her most celebrated and enduring work, in which she’d sing all the roles while explaining the plot. That plot is of course ludicrous, although it’s considered unforgivable ever to say so. Thus the “Introduction” was my ruin. I had memorized the entire monologue before I ever saw the Ring, and true to Miss Russell’s word, those four operas are the funniest ever written. By happy chance, I had tickets in standing room for my first Ring, so that I could make a quick break for the exit if any offended purists came at me.

I met her once, in Providence, following one of her farewell performances. Though the “Introduction” was no longer part of her repertory — “very competitive singing” being by that time beyond her reach — she did perform another masterpiece, “How to Write Your Own Gilbert & Sullivan Operetta.” In it, she identifies the Savoyard formula and applies it to a piece of her own invention, in which she again sings all the roles, this time wearing funny hats. Many of her lyrics are as good as Gilbert’s (“Things would be so different / If they were not as they are!” and “It’s very, very funny / To have lots and lots of money / And be horrible to those with none,” for example), and through years of listening, I’d memorized all of them, too.

Yet nothing could prepare me for the pleasure of seeing her in performance: her timing, her mugging, her infectious giddy fun in the stateliest music. It was like discovering that a character out of a favorite storybook was a real person, and afterward, I wanted to hug her. I settled for meeting her. She received me in her dressing room, autographed a poster for me (where did that thing wind up, anyway?), and introduced me to several friends who'd come to visit her. Then she whisked me out the door. If I didn't have the poster as proof, I'd think I'd dreamed it all. Come to mention it, now that I can’t find the poster, maybe I did dream it.

About three years ago, I had the great good fortune to interview her — by letter — for an article in Opera News, and during our correspondence I did tell her that I think of her every time I go to the concert hall. Of all the work I did for the magazine during three years there, I’m proudest of that interview, though it was merely a quick little paragraph in a survey of singers. Sadly, I was out of the office one morning when Miss Russell telephoned me: she'd grown quite deaf, and our receptionist's Puerto Rican accent is nearly incomprehensible even to other Spanish-speakers. I'm told it was an animated exchange.

Her obituary in the Times noted that it’s unlikely that a classical-music comedienne could enjoy such a successful career today, when music education is largely extinct. Even the late Victor Borge — her only rival — used to reach out to the unenlightened by sprinkling his act with non-musical jokes (“Audible Punctuation,” most notably) and slapstick, which Miss Russell used but sparingly. When she sang, she could depend upon a significant proportion of her audience knowing at least a little about the targets of her satire. And it’s true, her material gets funnier the more familiar one is with her subject.

Yet for me, Anna Russell’s comedy was part of my musical education — the foundation on which I built my later studies of “real” music and developed much of my taste and my appreciation for what the voice can (and can’t) do. Without conventional music education, I might not have gone much farther, but she gave me a helluva good start.

I remain grateful for every feisty minute she shared with me, and find myself singing, "Come back, and make me misera-bullllllllll again."

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A Nice Time Was Had by All

Nice view: The Mediterranean, from the Promenade des Anglais.

The lovely thing about being Over Here is that when other people visit, I get an opportunity to see familiar sites through new eyes, and to explore new places. When Mark Dennis, a friend since freshman year at Brown, got some free time, he suggested we head to the south of France, and it turned out to be a terrific trip.

We made our headquarters in Nice, which I'd explored only briefly on my way to Cannes last year with Nate Goodman. Mark rented an apartment, which wound up being cheaper than two hotel rooms, and also gave us a kitchen. Mark is an accomplished chef and wanted to take advantage of local markets and specialties.

The Niçois coastline, viewed from Mont Alban

Located about ten minutes from the spectacular waterfront and the Promenade des Anglais (the Niçois boardwalk), the apartment was spacious, simply furnished, and in the kitchen, just passably — Mark had to do some improvising when it came time to cook. We found a great market, and by the third day most of the vendors knew us on sight, practically falling over themselves to ask how our previous purchases had fared and to tempt us with new items. In restaurants and wine shops, too, we got similarly royal treatment, as soon as it became clear that we really wanted to consume something other than hamburgers and Coca-Cola.

We quickly learned that the Niçois are not Parisian. For one thing, long exposure to the British, who began vacationing here as soon as Napoleon went into exile, has given many of the locals a good grasp of the English language. Moreover, the slower pace and gentler climate there seem to make people mellower, chattier, more outgoing in every way. On our first morning, I got into a long conversation with a woman waiting on the checkout line at the market — the kind of conversation I'd never have in Paris (or New York) — and throughout our stay, folks were uncommonly sociable. Mark was particularly struck by the beauty of the women, and yes, they sunbathe topless on the beach, right in the middle of town; but, alas, it seems a truth universally acknowledged that two single, middle-aged men shopping for food and wine must be gay.

The Marché aux Fleurs, in Vieux Nice

At the apartment, Mark prepared fish one night — braised daurade — and his own interpretation of coq au vin, using guinea hen instead of chicken. At other meals, we ate out, and highlights include the staggering cheese plate at a restaurant in Beaune, on the drive southward; Oliviera, in Nice, which features a different olive oil in every dish, including dessert (don't scoff — it was the best tiramisu I ever ate); and my first sea urchins, in Antibes (like something out of Star Trek, they're eaten so fresh they're still writhing). We didn't try the Niçois gnocchi, which are made with spinach and named merda di can — dog shit — but we did sample the pissaladière, fritures, bouillabaisse, and other regional delights. Mark guided us meticulously through the local wines, and he came up with a winning list — the names of which I didn't write down, though naturally Mark logged each and every one.

The weather was spectacular, and we even got in some beach time. The Mediterranean was chilly, but the water is so clear and blue that it's irresistible. Thus, we never quite made it up to Cimiez, the neighborhood that boasts important collections of Matisse and Chagall and what's supposed to be a terrific archaeological museum. "We're on vacation; we shouldn't pressure ourselves," I kept saying, while Mark said, "There's always next time." We made a day trip to Antibes, only to discover that the Picasso museum was closed: the medieval fortress in which it's housed is under renovation. So in this wonderland that's been home to so many painters, we didn't see much art.

The Villa et Jardins Ephrussi de Rothschild,
at Cap Ferrat

A more ambitious jaunt took us eastward along the Riviera. We visited the spectacular villa and gardens of one of the Rothschilds, on a promontory like the prow of a ship sailing into the Mediterranean. (Béatrice Eprhussi de Rothschild, the lady who built the place, even named it after a ship: the Ile de France.) The villa itself was crammed with Italian Renaissance and Louis XVI art and furnishings, and the gardens burgeoned with all the plant life you can imagine, arranged thematically. The "exotic" garden featured mostly cacti and yucca. The house and garden at Beynes look pretty plain now: I think it is better to be a Rothschild than to visit one.

Continuing the drive, we peered over the roadway at Monaco and agreed there was no reason to go there, since Grace Kelly wasn't going to greet us, then drove across the Italian border, so that Mark could make his first visit to Italy. After my recent trips to Spain and Germany, where I found my language skills rusty at best, I was delighted to find myself speaking Italian without serious accident. At a seaside café in Ventimiglia, we toasted Guido Organschi, who taught us to drink espresso; though he's lived most of his life in Connecticut, he remains Italy's foremost cultural ambassador, and he's been a true mentor to Mark and to me.

The day trips seemed like a breeze compared with the drive to and from Beynes, so much longer than we expected — ten hours, not including breaks for lunch and espresso — and our minivan wasn't easy to navigate, especially in the parking garages. Most of these seem to have been designed for Matchbox cars. Since I still haven't learned to shift, all the burden of the wheel fell upon Mark, but he bore up heroically. However, though map-reading is not my specialty, I managed to keep us from getting lost ... much ... so I feel I did contribute something to the success of the trip.

And thus let it be said that a Nice time was had by all.

The Vieux Port is used primarily by pleasure boats
— and ferries to Corsica.

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Un certain air de Cologne

I am just back from Cologne, where I had my first glimpse of the Water of My Forefathers, namely the Rhine. With all those boats sputtering up and down, and not a Lorelei within earshot, the Rhine is a lot less romantic than Mr. Goethe or Mr. Heine (or Mr. Twain, for that matter) would have you believe, but it’s a nice river nonetheless.

I had terrific weather, and despite my last-minute anxieties, I found a great little hotel, cheap and located within easy walking distance to all the points of interest, yet on a quiet street.

The city was pretty much razed during World War II, after which they made a heroic effort to rebuild the older churches. These are as a result nice to look at from the outside, though dull on the inside. The Dom, the city cathedral, was spared most damage, and it is indeed impressive, a massive structure in slavish imitation of French Gothic. (The city's other early churches are in Romanesque design.) The rest of the city's architecture is post-War, neat and prosperous-looking, but nothing you'd actually travel to look at.

Smaller objects survived the war intact, and thus, though the streets are mostly empty of ancient monuments, the museums are chock-a-block full of artifacts. "Colonia" was a Roman capital, and the excellent archaeological museum is crammed with statuary, pottery, utensils, grave-markers, and a number of beautiful mosaics. One, the size of a tennis court, depicts scenes from the myths of Dionysus; another is marked with dozens of swastikas. They're backwards, but still — you think that Roman decorator knew something? Almost everything was excavated locally, with present-day street addresses provided.

In medieval times, Cologne was an important artistic center, and I found two museums with extensive collections of really exquisite paintings (a much softer, more naturalistic style than other Western Europeans were practicing, and unfamiliar to me), gorgeous Romanesque stonework and wonderfully carved and painted late-Gothic wooden statuary. Perhaps to atone for the Roman swastikas, and the Nazi ones yet to come, the city's mikva (ritual bath for Jewish women) was placed directly in front of the town hall, the High-Renaissance façade of which looks onto "Jewish Street."

(Only too late did I realize that I'd booked my German excursion for the High Holidays. No one else seemed to notice. L'shanah tovah, everybody.)

Later local innovations include Cologne Water — I didn't buy any, but you can smell it just walking past either of the two rival stores that claim to sell the authentic article (one is the Oldest, the other has the Original Recipe). The prize-winner, however, is Kölsch beer, which is served ceaselessly in small, skinny glasses.

I was unable to figure out when the Germans sleep, work or eat. There were few restaurants, and these were usually empty. The Kölners are ferocious shoppers, and they do enjoy a good pastry: a few citizens are delegated to help them pursue these activities. Mostly, however, they drink. They start filling the terraces and taverns to order a glass of beer around ten in the morning, and they're still at it sixteen hours later, when they order coffee.

I was startled by a) how much German I remembered, and b) how seldom I remembered it when I needed it. Halting, humming and hawing, I got by, but I was grateful that the Cologne folk are so patient. I made idiotic mistakes of accent, vocabulary and grammar that, though I heard them as they happened, I was unable to correct or prevent. It was like riding in a car that someone else was driving smack into a brick wall.

I did enjoy one small triumph: somebody asked if I were from Schwabia. I realize that the Schwabish accent is considered hopelessly backward and nearly unintelligible by most other Germans — but hey, it's within the border.

Otherwise, no strange adventures. I managed to fill my hours, and I do recommend the place, but anything longer than my three nights and two days would have been a struggle.

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