Chapter 2

It for sure wasn't that kind of a day when it all began.

In fact, it was actually a pretty shitty day all around. I'd waked up in a generally foul mood, and the cloudy morning hadn't done much to lift my spirits. Neither did my early attempts at exercising, there were those same dull tones in my ears when my mind was thinking of gloriously reverberating notes to thrill the very souls of all who heard.

Once again I found myself seriously questioning my choice of career.

Actually I'd started off in a completely different direction. In high school I'd found a talent for math and science, and my parents had—pretty strongly—suggested that I parlay that into something I could do for a living. The idea didn't really excite me, but what the hell, I didn't have any better ones, so in college I became an engineering major. And for two and a half years it seemed to go along kind of OK; I was making good grades, on the dean's list every semester regular as clockwork, and my professors seemed to think pretty well of me.

Except I was bored. Engineering was all right, I guessed, but it sure didn't get me very revved up. And I'd made the mistake of getting married fresh out of high school—we were boyfriend/girlfriend that last two years, and it had seemed like a great idea at the time—and that, by then, also wasn't getting me very revved up any more. Miriam was a pretty little thing, and was loyally helping out with part-time work as a waitress to get me through school, but she made no bones about it that she was looking forward to being able to quit and letting me support her on the supposedly munificent salary I'd draw as a professional electronics engineer, or computer designer, or whatever once I'd graduated.

It was out of that boredom that, on a lark, I one day made the fateful decision to audition for the school's choral society. And made an equally fateful discovery.

I had a Voice.

No, not that kind of voice. Not the voice of a rock star, or a crooner, or any of those pop singers you hear. A voice that fills the house, that echoes off the rafters. An operatic voice, in fact.

I'd always known I could sing, kind of. And I'd known I could sing loud; after a few drinks I could rattle the glasses behind the bar with "When the Saints Go Marchin' In" or "Ghost Riders in the Sky" or whatever. But that was just fooling around. After I did my audition, though, the choral director called me over to one side.

"I must tell you first, we cannot use you in chorus," he told me flatly. "You are too much, too strong. But." He held up his hand palm outwards as I started to turn away. "If you will study, if you will learn, there is a thing we do later, at commencement. It is opera, Lucia di Lammer­moor. Do you know it?" I shook my head no. "Never mind. We have wonderful soprano, it is for her we do this one. We have tenor, not so good but OK. We even have bass. We have others. But we need baritone, strong like you. Will you consider?"

I was frankly flabbergasted. But he was serious, and he wasn't going to charge me extra—well, not much extra—for lessons, I was still bored, so I said why not, I'd try it. And for the next three months he put me through absolute hell. He changed the way I breathed, he showed me how to make my voice from my diaphragm instead of my throat, he pushed me through drill after aggravating drill, time and again I'd sing what I thought was beautiful and he'd just say "no," and make me do it again.

So when Lucia went on there was I on stage as Enrico, the heroine's nasty brother, and there was the audience clapping like hell when I did my big duet with her. Well, I'm sure most of the applause was for her—she was one hell of a soprano back then, though she's since burned out—but I thought I kept up pretty well.

And I was hooked.

Oh, I finished out my last year, got my degree. I'd come this far, no sense quitting then. But my real focus was on singing; I loved it. Miriam had put up with Lucia and the run-up, but she got more and more waspish about the time I was spending on voice studies. She about had a conniption when I was cast as the dad in La Traviata, my last year's commencement production (opposite the same soprano, who was already showing little signs of vocal deterioration by then), but I got the biggest applause of the night for my one solo.

That did it. This was my career.

Miriam was so mad she was spitting nails when I told her. Wasn't what she'd signed on for, she said; you can't make big money "yelling noises" on stage, she said, stop being a baby and get with the program. And when I told her I was serious about it, she threatened to walk out and then finally did it. I was served with divorce papers a couple of weeks later.

I didn't care. I didn't care that Mom and Dad also thought I was making "a terrible mistake," either. This was what I wanted to do. And I started like a house afire, my very first professional audition landed me a job as comprimario—second-level singer, but still a hell of a promising start—at the local repertoire.

Trouble is, most U.S. cities don't have year-round opera companies. Mine sure didn't. So I had to cast about, and I made the sad discovery that once a comprimario, always a compri­mario, so far as opera companies go. Oh, I got the occasional lead, in the really small companies—Germont again in Traviata, the count in Marriage of Figaro, Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, that kind of thing. But the bigger companies, anything outside the sticks, always second fiddle. And the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, the really top ones—they wouldn't touch me.