Colin Barrett: Blog

I honestly wish I were making up the rather dreadful bit of stage business that Lawrence proposes for Scarpia's death scene, but I'm not. I actually saw this performed in a Tosca I attended at the Washington National Opera (not one of the world's top houses, but it still should be better than this, and at the time Placido Domingo was the company's general director).
It's a truly horrible example of a stage director trying overly hard to inject himself (or herself, women do it too) into the creative process of the work he or she is trying to present. The libretto contains rather explicit instruction about what's going on after Tosca stabs Scarpia and he rather gruesomely dies, and the music is clearly written that way. Once the tumult of his death is done, the orchestra subsides into a somewhat reverent tone as she retrieves the pass she's conned him into writing for her from his dead hand, lights candles and sets them around his body, lays a cross on his chest, and composes herself to leave the room. There's no orchestral background for a life-and-death struggle between her and a mortally wounded Scarpia, as Lawrence suggests and as I regrettably saw performed in Washington. This was purely an interpolation by a bad stage director, as I hope I make clear in my story.
My thought at that performance was one of regret that others unfamiliar with the opera had to witness this travesty. That was unfortunately so for my late wife, who attended with me for her first and only viewing of Tosca. She still enjoyed the evening, but to me this put a blight on the experience I'd hoped to offer her.
Oh, and anybody who thinks less of Nick because he stands by while his girlfriend does his fighting for him is invited to consider their respective positions in the operatic world. She's an established star, he's new to the ranks of lead singers. To which of them is Lawrence likely to respond better? She has the chops to get the job done, as she does without raising her voice; as he points out, the only result if he tried to do it himself would likely be an extended screaming match (or worse) to nobody's benefit. Machismo needs to come to a halt where its only result can be destructive.

I wish I'd had the imagination to develop more about the Akulla. I did think about it, but it didn't fit well with my story, which I wanted to focus on a single member of the species stranded on a strange world and his interaction with the denizens of that world and their individual hopes and dreams.
It's pretty clear that the "authorities" have more knowledge of Asmedogh than Nick had thought, or wanted them to have. Where does this lead? Or have they successfully deflected the potential problem?
If you're growing too impatient for the answers, I again mention that the entire novel (complete with a cover, if you want such) is available, along with my other major fiction, on Amazon. Very low cost ($3 a book); I want readers, not riches.

Once upon a time in my long-ago youth I used to be a news reporter. I gave it up for Lent-a Lent that, I'm happy to say, never ended for me-but I can still recall the techniques and priorities of the discipline.
Which are, I have to tell you, pretty much as I describe. You "open up" an interview subject by seeming to be his or her friend, agreeing with (or at least not openly disputing) pretty much anything he/she says, thereby inducing them to confide things they might otherwise prefer to conceal, and then you write the result up as you see fit. As the well-known Miranda warning goes, "anything you say can and will be used against you"; but, unlike the police, members of the so-called "third estate" aren't obliged to caution you in advance. The reporters are single-mindedly looking for a "story" that will be attractive to a public insistent on sticking its busybody nose into matters that are none of its affair, and shamelessly panders to that prurient interest without much regard to whom their reportage may hurt.
I quit the profession after I was asssigned a job I found especially distasteful. A wealthy man had been found dead in Florida, and his widow had been arrested for the murder. She had two young children (as I recall, from a previous marriage) who, enterprising reporters at the scene had discovered, were flying out of the area to relatives elsewhere. The plane was scheduled to stop briefly in the Alabama city where I was working at the time, and my superiors told me to board the plane and try to interview these two kids, who were in their teens, for God's sake. I was supposed to get their own words for how they felt about the situation. I mean, their dad (or step-dad, I suppose) was dead, and their mom was accused of killing him, now how do you suppose they felt about all this? That was why they were being shipped away-to avoid all the nosey-parkers who were badgering them with such stupid and intrusive questions. Anyhow, I was too young and new to the job to outright refuse the assignment (besides, if I had, they'd simply have assigned somebody else, maybe somebody a lot more aggressive that I was prepared to be), so I got on that plane, found the two kids, identified myself to the older and simply asked "Do you have anything to say?" I got the negative I expected, told her "thank you," and walked back off the plane. Not exactly the kind of interviewing technique I'd been taught, but I wasn't about to use those techniques to harrass a couple of distraught children for the edification of readers who get off on schadenfreude (it's a German word that roughly translates to the fine art of taking pleasure from others' misfortunes). Soon afterwards I found another profession.
Yes, there's good to be found in news reporting; it isn't all negative. But I can still remember stories of news reporters chasing Marina Oswald (widow of the deceased Kennedy assasin Lee Harvey Oswald) across Texas at speeds said to have reached a dangerous 80 mph for the sole purpose of witnessing her subsequent remarriage to someone else. Never mind the benefits the nation realized from such as the Watergate investigative journalism, I'm still glad I left the field.
That's the kind of thing that Marilyn acted to protect Nick against.
Oh, the "Farley file." That's for real, and so's the back-story I use in the novel. Most contemporary politicians follow Roosevelt's lead, as do many in other disciplines that entail meeting a lot of people. It's a good way on ingratiating yourself with people you don't really know very well.

I've heard of plenty of opera singers who throw temper tantrums, but never one who does it second-hand the way Camilla does in my story. I made that part up because it seemed like fun. Still, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that there are real-world parallels; divas-the Italian word litarally translates as goddesses, but is used as a designation for operatic prima donnas ("first ladies"), which is to say leading sopranos-are pretty well known for their devotion to public attention.
And programs do matter to some singers, as well as other performers. There's a story from years ago involving tenor Giuseppe di Stefano. He was to do a concert when he suddenly got a gander at the program, which included several paid advertisements, one of them promoting a recording by rival Mario del Monaco, touting del Monaco as "the greatest tenor in the world." Di Stefano supposedly refused to perform if the program was passed out to the audience, and it wasn't; that particular concert went on with no program at all. I don't know whether or not that's a true story, but it reflects the egos that flourish in the opera world. (The famous "three tenors" concerts were the first time in my recollection that artists with this rarest of male voices were able to set aside their sometimes bitter rivalries and share a stage with each other. Even then the rivalry wasn't entirely abandoned; remember Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo getting together to mock Luciano Pavarotti's show-off vocal turn in the song "O Sole Mio?" It was partly in fun, and all three singers treated it that way on the stage, but many of the clashes between singers of the past were regarded much more seriously by those involved. The Hatfields and the McCoys were good buddies by comparison with the way some opera singers regarded their competitors.)
If you're an experienced theater-goer you've probably encountered performances where the program was amended with an insert such as I describe, correcting a cast member's name. I'm not sure I've heard of a newspaper reviewer overlooking the insert, but there have been plenty of published reviews with all sorts of errors, so this isn't that far-fetched. And reviews do indeed matter to anyone who performs on a stage, whether operatic or other, and can have a significant impact on their careers.

The attitude of my "Agent Smith" is unfortunately not that unusual in the law enforcement community. All too accustomed to dealing with the dregs of society in their daily encounters with members of the public, they often tend to expect deference from those members of the public and react with suspicion, even aggression, when it isn't forthcoming.
Even so, I'm afraid I refuse to join the ranks of the cop-bashers who've become so widely popular of late. These men and women put their lives on the line daily for the preservation of our society and social order. Yes, there are bad apples, as in any field you may care to name, but so far as I can tell they're the exception, not the rule. As "Smith" is in my tale. Later on he'll show up even worse than he does in this chapter, but, once again, I don't present him as typical.
Meantime, for the moment, Asmedogh remains safe from discovery while Nick and Camilla pursue their musical careers.