Chapter 35

Rehearsals for Traviata started Tuesday with something less than a bang.

To start with the stage was, to put in plainly, a mess. Bits of the borrowed Traviata set were mixed in haphazardly with leftover bits of another borrowed set for Mozart's Cosí fan Tutte, the previous week's presentation, and it was all scattered higglety-pigglety. The real point of an opera rehearsal being to establish stage movement—the singers are expected to already know the music—it was clear that we weren't getting a lot done today.

I'd seen considerably worse, especially when I'd worked in European repertory companies that switch from one opera to another and back again daily during their seasons. But at least there things had seemed better organized, with most of the major set elements "flown"—raised and lowered from the rafters above, so they could be swapped out quickly. This house had no adequate rafters; it all had to be moved in from the wings. What it did have, apparently, was unions for the stagehands, which meant work got done more slowly and sometimes not at all for a while when disputes arose as to just which union had responsibility for which particular activity. Those disputes also tended to get loud, which kind of screws up an opera rehearsal.

If this kind of turmoil was tiresomely familiar to me, the previous evening had been anything but. I was used to quiet, solitary dinners from room service, especially on arrival nights. Instead we changed to more formal wear, Camilla looking radiant in an off-the-shoulder cocktail dress, and were chauffeured with Marilyn to what seemed to be one of the city's more elegant restaurants. On the way in Camilla was accosted by a number of people, all of whom wanted to welcome her; she was careful to introduce me to every one, which I appreciated, but this particular price of fame struck me as more an irritant than a benefit.

The food, though, was excellent; and once we were seated we were mostly left alone. Marilyn proved a font of industry gossip and scandal, and regaled us with numerous tales of what she'd picked up over the past week. She and Camilla teased back and forth a good bit, but I always felt comfortably included, and as the evening wore on she coaxed out of me some of my own operatic history, and expressed what seemed to me more than polite interest.

I'd been reluctant about going out to start with. I found, though, that I was thoroughly enjoying the evening. It was the first opportunity I'd had to watch Camilla interact extensively with other people, and her easy charm gave a lift to everything. I was especially struck by how totally Marilyn looked after her needs; I was sure it was only secondarily because it was her job that she was paid to do, and primarily because she and Camilla were such fast friends.

"Noon call tomorrow, Cam," she said as we parted back in the hotel lobby. "We'll leave here at quarter till. We walk, if you remember from last year."

"Rain or shine?" I put in.

Both of them laughed. Rain, it appeared, was sufficiently rare in this desert-encircled enclave that one simply didn't consider it a possibility. I shrugged good-humoredly; I traveled enough to be accustomed to ignorance about my present environment.

Being introduced around the rehearsal hall was a decidedly mixed bag for me. The comprimari and choristers were generally friendly but deferential; they knew nothing of my history, the only relevant thing to them was that I was singing a lead. An exception was the mezzo who was doing Flora, Violetta's (Camilla's) best friend in the opera; I'd sung with her in past productions. For a moment she assumed I'd be singing Douphol, a second-banana role in the third act who's Violetta's temporary "protector." When she heard I was to be Germont she looked at me in surprise. "Congratulations, Nick!" she said with honest feeling. "You've come up in the world."

The conductor, Minaslavska, on the other hand, barely gave me a nod. "I see your 'istory," he said briefly. "Do best you can." And he turned away to speak to somebody else.

Oh, well, he hadn't heard me lately. We'd see if he changed his tune after Saturday.

Lawrence Karpathian, our stage director—the one Camilla'd told me about—was even less hospitable. He was as much a flamer as Oliver had been but with a lot less talent and he, too, had apparently read my resumé. He made pretty clear that he'd put up with me for Camilla's sake, but he'd rather have nothing at all to do with me.

The tenor, a kid named Gordon Forgeron, barely acknowledged me so intent was he on Camilla. He apparently worshiped the ground she walked on and was in utter awe of her. From his perspective the chance to actually sing with her was something akin to a high-school class president being asked to advise Congress, and I figured he kept pinching himself to make sure it was all real.