Sunday, March 8th

On Sunday morning Vanessa was lazily sipping a cup of coffee as she waited for the weatherman to come on the screen when John Axenbourg’s death was reported on CNN News. Without wasting any time, she picked up the phone and dialed her friend Sherelle.

“Girlfriend, are you up yet? she asked. “Well, then rise and shine, woman. I’ve got hot news!”

If the response at the other end of the line wasn’t quite as cheerful as Vanessa had hoped for, that was because Sherelle was still hung over from Saturday night’s charity ball. All those tangos, cha chas, waltzes and merengues -- not to mention the amount of cocaine she and her husband had snorted between sets -- had taken their toll. As a result, the excitement in Vanessa’s voice was much more than Sherelle Davis was prepared to handle.

“Hunh,” she grunted. “What’s happening?”

“Wake up, damn it. I have news,” hissed Vanessa. “While you and Andy were kicking your heels up at that SWYSH benefit, I saw a real live murder take place at the Metropolitan Opera House!”

“Are you putting me on?”

“No, it’s on CNN News. The guy who was starring in last night’s performance is the same man we saw on Broadway last summer in Man of La Mancha. Or at least he was the same man. He’s dead now. My brother was with me last night and went backstage to investigate. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything.”

Vanessa hung up the phone with triumph pounding in her chest. Sherelle would have to go a long way to top that!



Next:

Come Here Often?

Moments later, as he walked north along Broadway, Kevin stuck his hands into his coat pockets for warmth and discovered the $20 bill Lally had so coyly planted there as a tip. Shaking his head in amusement, he tried to decide where he might go for a nightcap. He was dressed much too formally to go out dancing, that was for sure. And a tux would definitely seem out of place in that Country & Western bar just around the corner from his apartment.

Shortly after crossing West 86th Street, he entered a piano bar called Ruby Slippers. As he made his way through the crowd of gay men (most of whom were middle-aged, beginning to get paunches, and liked to introduce themselves to strangers as “Friends of Dorothy's”), he made eye contact with a ruggedly handsome fellow whose furry eyebrows and dark, swarthy complexion had that distinctly mysterious Mediterranean look which never failed to get Kevin’s attention.

The contrast between his stark black ensemble and the more casual outfits being worn in the bar (most of the clientele that evening were dressed in jeans and sweaters) did a superb job of emphasizing Kevin’s immaculately trimmed blond hair and his look of Iowa farm boy innocence.

For a moment, he turned to face the elevated platform in the back of the room where an old woman -- someone who looked like a cross between his grandmother and a fossilized drag queen -- was seated at the piano. At least a dozen men, some of them quite drunk, were clustered around her, singing in unison.

“The night gets bitter.
The stars have lost their glitter.
With hope you burn up.
Tomorrow he may turn up.
There’s just no let up.
The live long night and day....”

The men gathered around the piano continued to sing as Kevin’s mind drifted back to John Axenbourg. He didn’t know how long he had been standing there, lost in reverie, when his thoughts were interrupted by a gentle nudge. The man with whom he had previously made eye contact had appeared at his side.

“What are you drinking tonight?”

Looking at the man’s face, Kevin could see a few streaks of gray in his otherwise raven-black hair. There were some wrinkles on the brow of the craggy, time-worn face -- wrinkles which caused the young blond to estimate the stranger’s age at just a little bit under fifty.

He tried to imagine that the man was a construction worker (an occupation which seemed highly unlikely for anyone living on Manhattan’s upper West Side). Whether or not the man would turn out to be real Daddy material, Kevin could feel himself being drawn into the stranger’s dark, brown eyes.

“How about a Heineken?” he asked, as he flashed the man a smile.

“Sounds good to me, son. My name’s Duke. What’s yours?”

“Kevin.”

Duke lifted a hairy hand to Kevin’s neck and gave the blond’s right ear a playful tug.

“Be right, back.”

“Thank you, Sir,” whispered Kevin. “Thank you very much.”





Next: Sunday, March 8th

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Dropping Lally Fitzwater off at her apartment after the performance had taken much longer than usual. Although Kevin had graciously accepted the old woman’s invitation to come upstairs and have a cup of coffee with her (an established ritual with many of his regular clients), for some reason Mrs. Fitzwater -- who was usually so prim and proper -- was talking a blue streak tonight.

“What’s more, I’ll never understand why they closed that restaurant that used to be located at the top of the Met. You’re too young to have eaten there, of course, but it used to be so romantic. Having your own private elevator made it feel wonderfully exclusive and the service was absolutely superb. The maitre d' always recognized my husband. We were treated like royalty every time we ate there. Of course, those were the days when our family foundation used to underwrite a new production once every three years. But all that has changed. Today, whenever I call people at the Met, it’s almost as if they had never even heard of Matt and Lally Fitzwater!”

Kevin shifted his position in the chair. The old woman’s monologue was beginning to bore him and he was anxious to leave.

“These days,” Lally continued with a semi-regal snort of derision, “it seems as if almost anyone can go to the Met. Why, just look at the people who were at tonight’s performance! All those Japanese tourists -- not to mention those colored people in our box. Now mind you, Lance, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times that I am not prejudiced against Negroes. Not at all. I just adored Leontyne Price back in the days when she was a new artist at the Met. But you must remember that she, at least, was a major talent. That pushy black woman seated in back of us tonight is nothing but a shameless social climber.”

Not wanting to appear rude to his client, Kevin continued listening to Lally’s diatribe. Soon the old woman was reliving the memories of days long gone, when she and her husband were at the center of New York’s society circles. The world she described was as alien to Kevin as life on the moon. But, to Lally, each charity event remained as fresh in her mind as on the day it had occurred.

Kevin looked down at his watch and cleared his throat. “Mrs. Fitzwater, it’s getting kind of late and if I don’t leave your apartment soon, you’re going to see one very handsome young man transformed into a big orange pumpkin wrapped in a black satin cummerbund. I hate to do this, but I really have to go.”

Lally stammered for words as she fought her way back to reality. “Yes, yes. Of course. How foolish of me. I was enjoying having someone to talk to so much that I completely forgot about the time. Now don’t you worry about the dishes, young man, I’ll take care of those myself. Here, let me show you to the door.”

While Kevin put on his coat, Lally reached into her purse and took out a twenty dollar bill from her wallet. Discreetly folding it in half, she made sure that it found its way into Kevin’s coat pocket as she reached up to give him a long and slightly sloppy kiss on the cheek.

“Thank you so much, Lance,” she cooed. “For the pleasure of your company.”

Knowing that freedom was just moments away, Kevin gave the old woman his most endearing smile. His straight blond hair and healthy complexion -- not to mention the near perfect dimples in his cheeks -- made him look totally irresistible.

“The pleasure, Mrs. Fitzwater, was all mine,” he whispered as he closed the door to Lally’s apartment behind him and headed down the hall to the elevator.


Next: Come Here Often?

Big Bertha To The Rescue

Placing a toasted bagel, several slices of Swiss cheese, a half a cantaloupe and a glass of milk on a small tray, Frank O’Connor carried his standard late night snack out of the tiny kitchen in his apartment and placed it on his bed. Picking up the remote control from his night table, he switched on the television set and watched in silence as CNN’s late night headline news program came on the air.

As the Met’s marketing director continued to eat, it became fairly obvious that, with the exception of a minor skirmish in the Middle East and a fire in the Paris subway, nothing of major importance was happening on the international front. The Pope was about to leave Rome on a tour of Africa and, in Great Britain, tabloids had once again leaked rumors of a possible rift between Prince Charles and Lady Diana.

The news was equally tame in America, where the President was vacationing at Camp David, a Continental Airlines jet had made an emergency landing in Cleveland and, down at the San Diego Zoo, one of the few panda bears in captivity had given birth to twins.

The anchorman reached for a piece of paper, glanced at it and looked up in surprise. “And now, this item just in from our news desk,” he said.

“Authorities are baffled by a mysterious death at the Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center where, less than an hour ago, baritone John Axenbourg collapsed and died onstage. The popular American opera singer was known to millions for his work on both sides of the Atlantic and had starred on Broadway last summer in a revival of Man of La Mancha. Axenbourg, who had just been seen in tonight’s live telecast of Das Rheingold, left no survivors. Police are requesting an autopsy.”

A split-second later, the anchorman’s bland, but reassuring smile returned to his face. “And now, here’s Dan Duttlinger with the latest in sports.”

“Thank you, Ron.”

As if by instinct, Frank reached for his bedside telephone, picking up the receiver just as the phone began to ring. Pressing a button on the remote control which would lower the sound coming from his television set, he brought the receiver to his ear in time to hear Drew Gelfand’s tense voice.

“Frank? It’s Drew. We’ve got a big problem on our hands. I don’t know if you saw what happened at the end of the telecast, but John Axenbourg is dead and the police think he’s been murdered.”

“I know,” replied O’Connor. “I just heard all about it on CNN.”

“It’s already on the goddamned news? Christ! Why can’t they react that fast when something good happens?” barked Gelfand.

“Who killed him?” asked O’Connor.

“How the fuck should I know?” answered his boss. “All I know is that he’s dead, his manager is escorting the body to the coroner’s office, and I’ve got a police detective sitting in my office who happened to be present at tonight’s performance. I need you to get some messages to Axenbourg’s manager, Glenn Rosenzweig, and whoever the hell is his publicist. Make sure they’re both in my office at 11:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. And Frank, you’d better be there, too. We’re going to need your help in planning a funeral for the poor bastard. Once we’re done with all of that, you and I have to develop some kind of strategy for dealing with the media. See you in the morning.”

There was a click on the line, followed by a dial tone.

O’Connor paused for a second, stunned by the anger in Gelfand’s voice and then placed the receiver back in its cradle. Reaching under the bed for his personal Rolodex, he quickly found the home phone numbers for Glenn Rosenzweig and Pat Gilford. As he waited for each of their answering machines to respond, the Met’s public relations director tried to grasp the impact of what he had just witnessed on TV.

“Murder at the Met” had been the last item on Saturday night’s prime time news broadcast. Even if Axenbourg’s death was a tragedy, this was one crisis which had some potential for getting the company free publicity.

After leaving messages for the dead baritone’s manager and publicist, O’Connor carried the empty snack tray back into the kitchen and laid it on the counter. Any hopes he might have had of resting at home on Sunday had been thoroughly shot to hell.

Returning to the bedroom, he took one of the videotapes he had rented from the bright yellow and red plastic bag from Tower Video and placed the cartridge into his VCR. There was a soft, whirring sound as the tape moved into position and then a grotesquely obese woman’s naked body came into view.

The camera panned in close, focusing on a set of massive thighs which were riddled with stretch marks and patches of cellulitis. Exhausted, but still horny, Frank O’Connor slowly undressed as the opening credits for Thunder Thighs: Big Bertha Balls the Boston Bombers flashed before him.

Moments later, as he sat on the edge of the bed, his fingers stroked his swollen cock until O’Connor silently -- and with almost clinical efficiency -- reached a sexual climax.

His tensions released, Frank shut off the VCR and went into the bathroom to wipe the splotches of sperm from his hairy abdomen. After brushing his teeth, he shut off the light in the bathroom, turned on the switch to his electric blanket and, with a sigh of exhaustion, crawled into bed.

By midnight, his arms were tightly wrapped around a pillow and O’Connor was sleeping like a baby.

Next:Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Twinkle, Twinkle, Dying Star

As she stood by the stage door, Edith Susnick waited patiently for the Met’s orchestra to leave the opera house before she could go backstage to greet the soloists. Most of the instrumentalists, having worked both the matinee and evening performances that Saturday, seemed anxious to go home and, as usual, left the opera house in a hurry.

Suddenly two police cars, their red lights flashing, came down the driveway leading to the Met’s stage door and screeched to a halt. Four cops jumped out and raced through the artist’s entrance.

Immediately, Edith’s suspicions were aroused. There had been no curtain calls after tonight’s performance -- a strange break from tradition -- and now the police were running backstage?

Several minutes later, Burt, the elderly black security guard who usually admitted visitors to the dressing room area, appeared at the stage door and addressed the crowd of people who were waiting to go backstage.

“Folks, can I have your attention for a second? No one’s going to be allowed backstage tonight and the artists will all be leaving from a different entrance. Sorry, but those are Mr. Gelfand’s orders.”

After Burt disappeared inside, most of the fans who had been waiting to go backstage remained in place (occasionally, when there were big crowds of visitors, the Met used such diversionary tactics to help its backstage staff leave work immediately after a performance). But as the minutes continued to pass and it became obvious that Burt’s instructions would hold, most of the people who had been waiting around the stage door began to disappear down the tunnel leading to the Seventh Avenue subway.

Her curiosity aroused, Edith -- who was in no rush to go home -- remained by the artists’ entrance, waiting for some clue as to what might have happened. Ten minutes later, a handful of musicians emerged from the stage door. Unlike the first group of instrumentalists (who had been cheerfully teasing each other about looking forward to the weekend) these men left the opera house in stony silence.

One of them, a man Edith recognized from previous conversations, was carrying his French horn in a dark black leather-bound case. She fell into step beside him and tugged at his sleeve to get his attention.

“What’s going on, Max? Why were all those cops backstage?”

The horn player looked at the woman beside him and, as they kept walking, struggled to find the right words with which to break the news.

“I hate to tell you this, kid, but John Axenbourg is dead. They think he might have been murdered. I don’t know any of the details about what happened but Mr. Gelfand has instructed all of the soloists to leave the building through another entrance. You won’t get any autographs tonight. Better go home and get some sleep. See ya next week, okay?”

“Sure. Thanks,” mumbled Edith, as she stopped walking and leaned against one of the cars parked in the driveway. For a moment, she was too stunned to react. Then her eyes welled up with tears and she started to cry.

Why would anyone want to kill an opera singer, especially someone who was as nice as John Axenbourg? The tall, dark baritone was so handsome and talented; the closest thing the Met had had to a matinee idol in years. Not only had he established himself on Broadway as well as in opera, he was one of the few male singers at the Met whom Edith genuinely admired -- an artist who was not only respected throughout the international music world but a man who had always been extremely kind to her.

Her brain was racing to keep pace with the questions which started springing to mind.

Why would anyone want to kill Axenbourg?

Why would anyone want to kill a man that so many people adored?

It all seemed so unreal.

As tears continued to stream down her cheeks, Edith thought of all the nights she had come to the Met to seek refuge from reality at the opera.

Refuge from the pressures of her job.

Refuge from her occasional bouts with loneliness and depression.

Refuge from a city that was filled with hatred, greed and violence.

It had always seemed as if the Met were the one place in New York where Edith could bury herself in a world of make believe; a world where -- even if violent acts had to occur -- at least they could be accompanied by some of the greatest music ever written.

She tried to remind herself she had been watching people die tragic deaths on the operatic stage for several decades. But those deaths only involved play-acting. John Axenbourg’s death had been real.

As she leaned against the parked car, Edith thought back to that historic performance at the old Met when Leonard Warren had died onstage. The great bass-baritone had been starring opposite Renata Tebaldi and Richard Tucker in Verdi’s La Forza del Destino when, suddenly, the audience saw him clutch his chest and collapse onstage. Within minutes, he had died of a heart attack.

That was on March 4, 1960, nearly thirty years ago. Since that night, the only other person to die at the Met was a female cellist who had been raped and murdered backstage sometime around 1980 while performing with a touring dance company.

Reaching into her purse, Edith found a handkerchief with which to wipe away the moisture from her tear-stained cheeks. Then, with her handkerchief clasped tightly in her hand, she began to walk home to her apartment on West End Avenue. As she passed one of the late night pizza parlors on Amsterdam Avenue, she tried to imagine a possible motive for Axenbourg’s murder.

Was another artist jealous of his career?

Was the Met about to become the newest arena for terrorist actions?

Was nothing sacred?

Edith Susnick shuddered with dread as she continued on her lonely journey home.






Next: Big Bertha To The Rescue

Who's On First?

Brad followed Drew off the main stage and down a hallway where dozens of costumes hung suspended from a series of clothes racks. A man in uniform stood near the set of blue metal doors leading to the artist’s reception area and, as the two men approached the entrance, Gelfand whispered some instructions to the security guard. He then turned and spoke to Brad.

"Wait right here until I can get everyone assembled for you."

Barry Russell had just finished removing Nancy Westheimer’s wig from the soprano’s head when Drew Gelfand suddenly appeared in the singer’s dressing room. "Nancy, darling, I need all of the principals in the reception area immediately. You’re going to have to talk to the police for a few minutes, my dear, but there’s absolutely no need to worry about your hair. Come along, sweetheart. Barry, you can go home early tonight."

Gelfand vanished from sight just as quickly as he had appeared. A moment later, as if his movements had been choreographed in advance, the makeup man swept Freia’s wig up in his arms and made a regal exit from Nancy Westheimer’s dressing room. Walking past Brad and the security guard, he placed the blond wig in its proper storage place before proceeding down to his locker. No one knew for sure what the Met’s chief wig man kept stashed in the back of his locker but Barry’s breath usually carried strong hints of either bourbon or rum.

Several minutes later, the principal singers (still clad in their dressing gowns) all stood in the artists’ reception area listening quietly as Drew introduced them to a tall black man wearing a dark brown sports jacket. As he stood with his hands on his hips, the man seemed to tower over the Met’s General Director.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Sergeant Carson from the Police Department. He was present at tonight’s performance and would like to ask you some questions," announced Drew. "I’m sure you’ll all give him your complete cooperation. Sergeant?"

Brad looked at the group of men and women who were gathered before him. Minus their costumes and wigs, they looked a little bit tired and certainly much older than they had appeared onstage. The singers all seemed badly shaken and, unless Brad was mistaken, more than a little bit suspicious of him.

"First, I should tell you that, since I’m not a big opera fan, I don’t know any of your names. Nor can I identify the faces before me with the characters I saw onstage during tonight’s performance," he confessed. "So I’d like to start by having someone here tell me which characters you all played and which of you were nearest to the victim when he died."

"That’s easy," stated Drew as he indicated each of the soloists in turn. "Minna Gustavson here was Fricka and Nancy Westheimer was Freia. Peter Atwood was Froh, James Bookman was Donner, and Stephen McLellan sang Loge. Although Madelyn Forston was Erda, Malcolm Esterhazy, Alberich, and Paul Rivendell, Mime, none of the last three artists were onstage at the end of the opera."

As they watched the detective’s face, it became obvious to the singers that the man standing in front of them hadn’t understood a word Drew said.

"Let me see if I can help," volunteered Minna Gustavson. "Nancy and I were standing on either side of John. He had just placed his arms over our shoulders as we all faced upstage toward Valhalla."

"What’s Valhalla?" asked Brad.

"Talk about a lucky break," chuckled Madelyn Fortson. "It looks like we’ve got a major Wagnerian scholar on our hands!"

"Please, Madelyn," hissed Drew. "No wisecracks tonight. One of our artists is dead and, although Sergeant Carson is a very capable detective, his work does not require him to have a complete knowledge of the operatic literature. He obviously knows very little about Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungen and needs our help so that he can understand what happened tonight."

Minna Gustavson straightened her shoulders and stepped forward with an air of authority.

"As I started to say -- before I was so rudely interrupted by that contralto over there -- Nancy and I were standing on either side of John, who was singing the role of Wotan. John had just placed his arms around our shoulders when we all started to walk upstage. All I can recall is that, at some point, his body started to sag and, as I continued to move forward, I felt his arm fall from my shoulders. The next thing I knew, he had fallen to the floor."

"What did you do when he fell?" asked Brad.

"I kept walking forward, of course," replied the soprano. "This was a live telecast and we’d rehearsed the timing of this scene very carefully."

Brad nodded toward Nancy Westheimer.

"What about you?"

The blond woman kept shifting her weight from one foot to another.

"Well, um, I pretty much did the same thing as Minna. I mean, like, whatever happened, you know, like, we had just so many bars in which to, like, make it to the top of the platform so we could salute the rainbow bridge. Officer, can I ask you something? Like, is that a real gun you’re wearing under your arm?"

"I’m afraid it is, Ma’am. Just think of it as part of my costume," Brad reassured the soprano.

"Mr. Gelfand, if this performance was telecast, would there be a videotape of it somewhere that I could watch?"

"I’m quite sure we have one," answered Drew. "In fact, with most of our VCRs you could probably stop the tape on a single frame if you saw anything that looked suspicious."

"I think that would probably be the best evidence for me to examine," said Brad. "Thank you all very much for your time. I might need to contact you later for further questioning, but at the moment I think I’ve got all the information I’ll need from you tonight. Can I speak to you in private, Mr. Gelfand?"

"Of course. Why don’t you come up to my office," suggested Drew as he ushered the detective out of the reception area. "The rest of you can all go home. I’ve left orders at the stage door that there be no visitors tonight. I’d appreciate it very much if you would all exit through the front of the house. The security guards will escort you there when you’re ready. Come with me, Officer."
Next: Twinkle, Twinkle, Dying Star

A Corpse Of Many Colors

It didn’t take long for Brad to find an usher who could escort him backstage but, considering the shriveled old man’s unpleasantly haughty attitude, Vanessa’s suggestion of any possible romantic involvement seemed absolutely ridiculous. After showing his police badge at the security checkpoint, Brad followed the elderly usher down a maze of corridors until they passed through the two large doors leading to the main stage.

From here, the Met’s great gold curtain didn’t look very impressive at all. The stage was brightly lit as workmen scurried about and, as Brad stepped over a cluster of thick cables, none of the glamour the audience had savored earlier that evening was present. He continued toward center stage, where he could see John Axenbourg’s body lying in a heap on a steeply slanted wooden platform. To his surprise, large portions of the scenery had already been broken off from the set and were being wheeled into the wings by the Met’s stagehands.

"Who’s in charge here?" asked Brad.

A dark, swarthy stagehand wearing a carpenter’s apron over his jeans pointed toward three men standing near the control booth at the far side of the stage. Two of them were dressed in business suits. The third wore jeans and a brightly-colored Met T-shirt. All three were huddled in an intense conversation.

"That blond guy in the dark suit is the one you want," yelled the stagehand as he headed toward the rear wall of the building.

Brad approached the three men and, flashing his police badge in his left hand, introduced himself. "Excuse me. I’m Sergeant Carson, a detective from the 61st Precinct. I was in the auditorium for tonight’s performance and was told that one of your singers died onstage rather mysteriously. I thought I’d better come back here to see if there’s been any foul play. Which one of you is in charge?"

The blond leaned forward to shake hands. "I’m Drew Gelfand, General Director of the Metropolitan Opera. This is Rick Freitag, one of our stage managers, and Glenn Rosenzweig, Mr. Axenbourg’s personal manager. How can we help you?"

"Well, first of all, we’ll need to rope off the area around the body."

The stage manager looked at Brad in disbelief. "Not unless you’ve got an extra $10,000 to cover the cost of overtime," he grumbled. "Listen, buddy, this is the Metropolitan Opera House, not Miami Vice. I’ve got to have this set all broken down and put away by midnight."

"Just cool it, Rick," urged Gelfand as he took Brad by the elbow and escorted him away from the stage manager’s booth. "Look, I don’t know who sent you backstage but I’m mighty glad to see you. I’ve already called an ambulance and the police are due here any minute. As you can imagine, we’re all pretty shaken up."

"I understand," said Brad. "If you don’t mind, I’d like to look at the victim’s corpse before it gets sent to the coroner for an autopsy. Then I’ll need to speak to the people who were onstage with this man when he died. Are they all still around?"

"Oh, sure. They’re changing out of their costumes right now," replied the Met’s General Director.

When Drew, Brad, and Glenn Rosenzweig knelt down beside John Axenbourg’s corpse, the baritone’s body was almost completely obscured by the shiny gold cape he had worn for the final scene of Das Rheingold. At first, Axenbourg’s skin color seemed surprisingly ruddy to the detective. Then Brad realized that the dead man’s face was still covered with pancake make-up and that the victim’s hair remained hidden beneath a wig. There were no traces of blood to be seen. Nor were there were any signs of foul play.

"When the paramedics get here, Mr. Rosenzweig, can you accompany the victim’s corpse to the coroner's office?" asked Brad. "We’ll need to have both his body and this costume inspected for any clues."

"Sure," answered Rosenzweig as he wiped tears from his eyes.

"You must understand one thing," interrupted Drew Gelfand. "We need to have that costume and wig back here within 48 hours. Glenn, you take care of everything when the ambulance arrives and I’ll see you in my office in the morning. Okay?"

"Yeah, Drew," sighed Axenbourg’s manager.

"Officer, why don’t you and I go to the dressing room area. Come with me."

Next: Who's On First?

Enquiring Minds Want To Know

As they left the Metropolitan Opera House and slowly walked across the plaza toward Lincoln Luxury Towers, Lally Fitzwater furiously berated her escort. "I’m just shocked that you would converse with those people so freely," she scolded Kevin. "Really, young man. There are limits, you know!"

But Kevin ignored the old lady’s grumbling. He had heard plenty of similar rants from Mrs. Fitzwater about the disheartening changes in the makeup of the Met's audience. As they approached her apartment building, he was too busy trying to figure out what could have happened to John Axenbourg.

For the Met not to allow its singers to take any curtain calls -- especially during a telecast -- was absolutely bizarre. The more he thought about it, the final moments of tonight’s performance seemed like the strangest thing he had ever experienced since he first began going to the opera.

Something was very wrong.

Next: A Corpse Of Many Colors

Duty Calls

The audience’s applause combined with the glare of the house lights helped to rouse Brad from his nap. In front of him, he could see Kevin helping Mrs. Fitzwater into her mink coat. To his left, Vanessa, who was applauding furiously, had a strangely confused look on her face.

"Why aren’t they coming out for their curtain calls?" she asked.

"Beats me," muttered Brad as he stood and stretched.

As Lally Fitzwater haughtily walked past Brad on her way out of the box, Kevin beckoned to the cop.

"I think you’d better go backstage. One of the singers collapsed during the final moments of the opera. Something’s very wrong," he whispered. "There might have been some foul play."

Mrs. Fitzwater re-appeared in the doorway; a mink-clad arm extended toward Kevin. "Are you coming with me, young man, or am I supposed to negotiate all these stairs by myself?" she asked.

As soon as the old woman and Kevin had disappeared from sight, Brad turned to his sister.

"I have to go backstage, Sis. The man who was sitting in front of us just told me there might have been a murder," he said. "Can you grab a taxi and get home by yourself?"

"Sure, I can find a cab," replied Vanessa. "I work on Wall Street, remember? We have cabs sitting by the curb in front of our building all day long."

As she adjusted her coat, Vanessa turned and gave Brad a withering look. "I really wish that just once in his life, my big brother could get as excited about escorting me to the opera as he does over the prospect of finding a dead body. Tell me something, Brad. Since when did you become so interested in going backstage at the opera? You, who falls asleep after hearing ten bars of classical music!"

"Don’t give me any grief tonight, Vanessa. Just tell me how to get backstage," insisted her brother.

"Oh, all right," sighed Vanessa. "After all these years on the police force you shouldn’t have too much trouble spotting a uniform. Grab the first usher you see and flash your badge at him. But whatever you do, Brad, do not let him see your gun. Most of the ushers at the Met are queer and whoever ends up taking you backstage will probably want to marry you."

"Thanks loads, Sis," groaned Brad. "I really needed to hear that tonight."



Next: Enquiring Minds Want To Know

Don't Just Lie There!

As soon as she could see stagehands emerging from the wings, Minna Gustavson (the mezzo soprano singing the role of Fricka) spun around and dashed downstage toward the inert body of her stricken colleague. Having sung frequently in European opera houses with John Axenbourg, she found it difficult to believe that -- even under the weight of such a heavy costume -- the athletic baritone who always exercised so religiously in order to stay in shape could have fainted from the heat.

"Wake up, John," she shouted as she slapped Axenbourg’s face in an attempt to stimulate his circulatory system. "Can you hear me?"

When the baritone failed to respond to her touch, Gustavson put her hand to the singer’s jugular vein to check for a pulse. Suddenly she recoiled from Axenbourg’s body. After emitting the kind of piercing scream that could only erupt from the chest cavity of a trained Wagnerian singer, Gustavson yelled "Oh my God, he’s dead!"

The production’s stage manager, Paul Frisch, was the first to react to the situation by cancelling all curtain calls and ordering the house lights up. The other singers onstage froze in horror as the audience’s applause continued in the background. From the control booth at the rear of the auditorium's orchestra level, Mark Hoffheimer, who had been providing the narration for the Met’s telecast, covered beautifully.

"The house lights have come up as the audience continues to applaud this historic performance which has been broadcast to you live tonight over the PBS network from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Conducted by Maestro Erich von Blindt, tonight’s performance of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold -- the first opera in the composer's tetralogy based on the Norse sagas comprising Der Ring des Nibelungen -- featured baritone John Axenbourg as Wotan, mezzo-soprano Minna Gustavson as Fricka, soprano Nancy Westheimer as Freia and contralto Madelyn Fortson as Erda. Also in tonight’s cast, we heard baritone Malcolm Esterhazy as Alberich, tenor Paul Rivendell as Mime and tenor Stephen McLellan as Loge. This evening’s telecast has been brought to you by Texaco, where you can trust your car to the man who wears the star. We thank you for your support. And now, we return you to your local PBS affiliate for station identification."

As he disconnected the microphone from his headset, Hoffheimer waved to the lighting designer on the opposite side of the booth. "What the fuck’s going on back there?"

"Damned if I know," shouted the man.


Next: Duty Calls

Valhalla Beckons

By 10:30 that night, John Axenbourg was in seventh heaven. Clad in Wotan’s costume, with a shiny cape flowing behind him, he looked like the very personification of Wagner’s mythical God. The baritone had carefully paced himself throughout the evening’s performance of Das Rheingold, knew that he had sung with great authority and suspected that, with just a few more minutes to go, he had scored a major career triumph during his first Met telecast.

Gesturing toward the castle which could be seen in the distance, he invited his fellow Gods to join him in their newly-built home. Having carefully rehearsed this moment, the singers portraying Fricka, Freia, Loge, and Froh all began to make their way toward the footlights. Only the baritone who was singing Donner remained upstage, anxiously awaiting the cue to raise his hammer in a move which would trigger some stunning scenic effects.

Suddenly, there was a roar of thunder.

A series of strobe lights shocked the audience out of its somnolence and, after delivering his final cue to the singers, Wayne DiStefano flicked off the light in the prompter’s box and raced down the hallway to the men’s room. Because Wagner’s one-act opera droned on relentlessly for two hours and forty minutes, Das Rheingold was one of the most difficult works in the repertoire for Wayne to prompt. He had tried to avoid being assigned to the production this season but, when the Met scheduled Das Rheingold as one of the telecasts in its “Live From Lincoln Center” series, Maestro von Blindt had insisted that Wayne be on duty in the prompter’s box.

By now, the first glimpse of Wagner’s rainbow bridge -- the span that Wotan would cross to enter his castle in the sky -- could be seen by the audience. The orchestra, under von Blindt’s baton, solemnly began to play Wagner’s familiar “Entrance Of The Gods Into Valhalla.”

Turning to face upstage, John Axenbourg kicked the train of his cape toward the audience and, as if by magic, the two women performing the roles of Freia and Fricka seemed to fit right beneath his outstretched arms. As the colors of the rainbow bridge intensified and the despairing cries of the Rhinemaidens could be heard offstage mourning the loss of their gold, the orchestra began to build toward the opera’s powerful climax.

Awed by the panoramic spectacle before them, no one in the audience saw the tiny glass dart which flew from the prompter’s box and embedded itself in the skin of John Axenbourg’s right hand. Since the television cameras had already zoomed back to show the entire stage picture, the millions of TV viewers who were watching the telecast were likewise unable to see Axenbourg’s fingers stiffen.

But, moments later, as the curtain began its slow descent and the Gods started walking upstage with their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, people were horrified to see the man portraying Wotan -- with his arms outstretched like Jesus Christ on the cross -- suddenly fall forward and crumple to the floor in a heap.

Although Axenbourg’s body hit the floor with a sickening thud, his colleagues -- all seasoned operatic professionals -- never once turned around or lost a beat. Instead, they kept moving slowly up the steeply-raked platform until their arms were raised in unison, exactly on cue, pointing toward Valhalla.

With his attention focused on the orchestra’s last few measures, Maestro von Blindt remained totally unaware that anything had gone wrong onstage.





Next: Don't Just Lie There!

We Meet In The Shadows

During the orchestral interlude between the third and fourth scenes of Das Rheingold, Kevin turned around to sneak a peek at the black couple seated slightly above and to the right behind him. Vanessa’s head was nodding as she struggled to stay awake. But it was fairly obvious that Brad had given up long ago.

With his head tilted backward and his legs spread apart, the detective was out like a light. Kevin gazed fondly at the man’s long legs, reminiscing about the many moments he had spent with his face nuzzled in the heat of Brad’s crotch.

Their first meeting had been a strange one (at least for someone who was a glorified hustler).

Several months ago, dressed in full leather, Kevin had gone to a man’s apartment on West 111th Street around midnight. After finishing with his client, he was walking back toward West End Avenue when a group of Puerto Rican punks started to taunt and threaten him.

"Look at the pretty blond faggot all dressed up to look like a fuckin’ Hell’s Angel," yelled one of the teenagers.

"Maybe we should teach the little queer boy a lesson," snarled one of his friends.

As the group advanced toward Kevin, he wheeled around and started to cross the street. Suddenly, the sound of a police siren came from an unmarked car which was double parked twenty feet ahead of him.

Thinking quickly, Kevin ran toward the automobile as the gang of teenagers split up and disappeared in the opposite direction. The driver’s door opened and a tall black man stepped from the car. "I’m Sergeant Carson from the Midtown North Precinct. Why don’t you hop in the front seat and I’ll give you a ride home."

Although, under normal circumstances, Kevin avoided the police like the plague, this was one time he wasn’t about to offer any resistance. Quickly jumping into the front seat of the car, he slammed the door and told Sergeant Carson his address.

"You look pretty shaken up, son. You gonna be all right?" asked the cop.

"I’ll be fine just as soon we get off this block," answered Kevin. "Jesus, that was a close shave!"

As they drove through Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Brad tried to calm his passenger’s nerves. The kid was kind of cute, he thought. Nice rosy cheeks and straight blond hair. The leather jacket and shiny black chaps didn’t make his passenger look like a sack of shit, either.

"Why would a group of punks be chasing after a nice little leather boy like you?" he asked.

"Oh, it’s a traditional Saturday night ritual with local teenagers," sighed Kevin. "Go out, get drunk with your friends and try to roll a fag so you can tell some poor, dumb 15-year-old girl you just knocked up what a big man you are."

"Hmmm. Well, if I were you, I’d try to carry a whistle on that keychain of yours," advised Brad. Know what I mean?"

"Yes, sir," mumbled Kevin.

"What was that?"

"I said ‘Yes, sir,’" replied the blonde.

"Good. Is this where you live, son?"

Kevin looked up at the entrance to his apartment building and nodded. He may never have thought of the dark brick building as home but, tonight, the light in its lobby shone with an unusually inviting warmth.

"Yeah, that’s it," he sighed. "Listen, officer, I’m really grateful for the ride. You probably saved my life. God, I wish there was some way I could thank you for coming to my rescue."

There was a moment of awkward silence before the man behind the steering wheel spoke.

"Well, for starters," Brad chuckled as he placed his right arm in back of the passenger’s headrest, "you might try wrapping those sexy lips of yours around my big black dick."

Kevin’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. He was so used to acting out this scene in fantasy sessions with his clients that he had never imagined getting it on with a genuine law enforcement officer.

"YES, SIR!" he said, as he reached over to undo the policeman’s belt.

Ever since that night, Sergeant Carson had made a point of pulling up to the curb in front of Kevin’s apartment, Kevin’s gym and, once or twice, the Columbia University library, to ask the young blond if he’d like to go for a ride. Their routine had become a fairly simple ritual which was repeated every three or four weeks.

Although Kevin had never had a chance to see the cop undressed during any of their trysts, he knew from the way his fingers had probed Carson’s heavily muscled legs, arms and torso that the man was built like the proverbial brick shithouse. And now the cop he had serviced so often was sitting right behind him in a box at the Metropolitan Opera House.

As he thought about what a thrill it had always been to deep throat Brad’s cock, Kevin could only shake his head in wonder and let out a sigh of disbelief.

His own Sergeant Carson. So near and yet so far.



Next: Valhalla Beckons

Relief Is At Hand

Once Wotan and Loge had descended to the depths of Nibelheim, Frank O’Connor (whose professional duties for the evening were now over) locked the door to the press room and headed home. After passing through the revolving door in the Met’s north lobby, he strode across Lincoln Center Plaza, turned left and walked north along Broadway.

Passing the Juilliard School of Music, O’Connor crossed West 66th Street as soon as the light changed and anxiously made his way through the familiar entrance to Tower Video. Frank stopped here often.

So often, in fact, that most of the sales clerks knew him by name.

Initially, Frank browsed through the section of the store which featured old movie musicals and romantic classics from the 1940s. After selecting copies of two of his favorite films (Now, Voyager and Flying Down to Rio) he headed for the adult films, where the selection process would be infinitely more difficult.

From September to May – the months during which the Metropolitan Opera was in season – O’Connor led a lifestyle which was mercilessly celibate. Like many workaholics, making love to himself in front of his VCR was the 38-year-old marketing director’s only sexual outlet. His work left precious little time for dinner dates or bar crawls. Even if someone had shown the slightest bit of interest in hopping into bed with him, Frank probably would have been too tired to get it up.

After several minutes of scanning the racks for something new, he grabbed three more boxes and headed for the check-out counter. Thank God for the bastard who invented VCR machines, he thought. Without that man’s help, I’d be crawling the goddamn walls.

With a vacant look on his face, Don, the clerk on duty, handed O’Connor a receipt on which the cash register had printed the exact time of his video rental: Saturday, March 7. 1987 -- 9:38 p.m.

Carrying his five videocasettes in a bright yellow plastic bag, O’Connor left Tower Video and headed toward his apartment, stopping at one of the late night Vietnamese fruit stands on Broadway to pick up some groceries. If the video worked its magic, Frank would be relieved of his sexual frustrations and sound asleep by midnight. Maybe, if God showed some mercy, he’d even be able to sleep late the following morning!





Next: We Meet In The Shadows

Lights Out, Everyone!

As the Met’s crystal chandeliers rose toward the ceiling, Maestro von Blindt, accompanied by the sound of mild applause, made his way to the podium. Instead of picking up his baton, he grasped the small pencil flashlight resting on his music stand.

Unlike most evenings at the Met, the musicians’ lamps in the orchestra pit had been extinguished so that, as the Met’s great gold curtain rose to reveal the scrim used for Das Rheingold, the auditorium would be in total darkness with the exception of the theatre’s red emergency exit signs.

Like a distant rumble from the deep, the orchestra’s double basses began to play the low E flat which signaled the start of Wagner’s opera. As a series of filmed projections evoked images of sunlight breaking through the waters of the Rhine, Brad’s eyelids began to feel heavy.

Why was Kevin at the opera, he wondered. And who was that ridiculous old bag sitting next to him?

The policeman’s thoughts began to blur as the light bleeding through the scrim revealed Wagner’s three Rhinemaidens scampering about the darkened stage. Whoever had designed this production had done a spectacular job of making the entire area look as if it were truly underwater. With so many tiny slivers of light darting back and forth, the effect was absolutely miraculous.

But for people like Sergeant Carson, it was also dangerously hypnotic. Within moments, the detective’s body had slumped in the chair. His head tilted backwards and, by the time the first Rhinemaiden opened her mouth to sing, Brad was sound asleep, dreaming of Kevin’s soft touch.



Next:Relief Is At Hand

Fancy Meeting You Here!

While Lally and Kevin were busy getting settled into their box seats, Sergeant Carson and his sister were entering the north lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House. As usual, Vanessa looked positively stunning (a foregone conclusion considering how much she had spent on her new ensemble).

Her brother, who was wearing a dark raincoat over his sport jacket, looked a trifle bulkier than usual. And, beneath a cosmetically perfect public face, Vanessa was absolutely livid.

"I can’t believe you wore your gun to the opera," she hissed. "Are you intentionally trying to embarrass me or is this your idea of a joke?"

Brad pushed through the crowd as he headed for the ticket takers. "It’s no joke, Vanessa. I had to put in a few extra hours at the police station this afternoon and figured I’d grab a quick bite before coming over to Lincoln Center," he explained.

"You said tonight’s performance was a one-act opera, so just relax. Nobody’s going to spot me wearing a concealed weapon and suddenly freak out while you’re parading your new gown up and down the Grand Staircase." A quick look at Vanessa’s face revealed that she was pouting again, just like she did when she was a little girl.

"C’mon, Sis. Cool those expensive six-inch heels," teased Brad. "Tell you what. Let’s just pretend we’re a couple of nice, social-climbing black yuppies, okay? Because I can guarantee you, there ain’t nobody in this crowd who would ever guess that I was armed."

After handing their tickets to one of the ushers at the main entrance to the auditorium, Brad took hold of his sister’s elbow and guided her up the stairs leading to the parterre level. As they entered their box, Sergeant Carson received his first big shock of the evening.

Seated by the railing were an old woman, her mink coat draped over the back of her chair, and a young man with blond hair who was dressed in a tuxedo. As they conversed, the two kept pointing to the television cameras on the main floor which were in position for the evening’s telecast. At first, the angle at which they sat made it difficult for Brad to see their faces.

However, after taking off her coat and hanging it in the tiny chamber behind their seats, Vanessa leaned forward to handle the social amenities. "Hello, Mrs. Fitzwater, it’s so nice to see you again. It’s too bad my husband, Peter, can’t be with us tonight. He’s away in Tokyo on business right now, but I’d love to have you meet my brother. Please let me introduce you. Mrs. Fitzwater, this is Brad Carson. Brad, this is our good friend, Mrs. Fitzwater."

The old woman stood up and nodded curtly toward Brad. Lally might share a box with this woman and her husband, but she had never in her life referred to a black person as her "good friend."

Mind you, now, it wasn’t that Lally Fitzwater was prejudiced. She knew lots of blacks had started coming to the opera in recent years. Lally just didn’t think such people belonged in the boxes on the Parterre level -- boxes which had been paid for by the cream of New York’s old-line society!

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Carson," she said. "I’d like for you and your sister to meet my nephew, Lance van Dyke. Pay attention, young man," Lally hissed as she snapped her fingers at her escort. "We have company."

Kevin struggled to maintain his composure as he turned around and recognized the tall black man facing him. The last place he ever expected to see Officer Carson was sharing a parterre box at the Metropolitan Opera House with old Lally Fitzwater!

As soon as Brad was sure that the old woman’s attention had been diverted by Vanessa’s jewelry, he winked at Kevin to let the young man know that his secret was safe. With a broad smile, he reached forward to shake hands and said, "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. van Dyke. Do you come here often?"




Next: Lights Out, Everyone!

Saturday, March 7th

When Lally Fitzwater opened the door to her apartment, the sight of Lance van Dyke looking so devilishly handsome in his black tuxedo filled the old woman’s heart with joy. Lance looked just like all the young men she admired in those Calvin Klein ads; his short blond hair and fair complexion absolutely radiated good health.

"How nice to see you again, Lance" she tittered. "If you can just help me with my coat, I’m all set and ready to go." Kevin reached for the black fur coat hanging from the door to Lally’s hallway closet and held it up as the old woman snuggled into her mink.

"Aren’t you looking lovely tonight, Mrs. Fitzwater! I’m so glad you asked me to accompany you to the Met," he said. "I just know you’ve got a full dance card these days."

Lally shuddered with delight at his flattery and closed the apartment door behind them. As they rode downstairs in the elevator, Kevin gave her a quick story synopsis of Wagner’s opera to help keep the conversation going.

"Do you love dragons as much as I do?" Lally asked, as they waited for the traffic light to change.

"They’re my favorite kind of beast," replied her escort (unless, Kevin thought, we include all those old dinosaurs who take young hustlers to the Met). As they walked past the fountain in Lincoln Center, Lally’s eye caught sight of a plane headed north over the Hudson River.

"Twinkle, twinkle, shine so bright, you’re the last plane I’ll see tonight," she muttered.

If Kevin failed to hear her it was because his attention had been distracted by a short and rather plainly-dressed woman who was standing in their path. "Oh, hi, Edith. Looking forward to tonight’s performance?" he asked.

Suddenly, he felt a tug on his arm as Lally pulled him toward the entrance to the Metropolitan Opera House. "Shame on you, Lance," she hissed. "You shouldn’t be talking to other women when you’re my date for the evening."

"But Mrs. Fitzwater, it was only Edith Susnick," Kevin sighed. "She’s the librarian at Columbia University who helped me when I was working on my term papers. Edith’s a very nice lady who knows an awful lot about opera."

"I don’t care what she does for a living or how much she knows, young man. Until tonight’s opera begins, I expect your undivided attention," barked Lally.

"You know, there’s something very strange about you, Lance," she added as they entered the Met’s lobby. "Whenever we go to the opera, you seem to know everyone in the audience. One would almost think you lived in Lincoln Center!"

Kevin didn’t pay too much attention to Lally’s accusations. He’d already been through this routine with enough clients to know that many old women were just not used to being out and around people. "It’s nothing to be upset about, Mrs. Fitzwater. I have lots of friends who come to the opera; it’s a musical passion we all share. And our passion helps us to meet other people who enjoy opera as well," he explained.

"Actually, you wouldn’t believe the stories behind some of the folks who stand through performances at the Met five or six times a week. Of course, those people can’t afford nice expensive box seats like yours, but there are some pretty interesting characters here. I’ll bet that if you were to meet some of them on the street somewhere, you’d never in a million years suspect that they went to the opera!"

Lally didn’t want to hear about those other people. As she stopped before one of the glass display cases housing historic costumes from the Met’s Golden Age of Opera, she turned to Kevin and said "That may well be true, son, but those folks will never get you anywhere in life. Now, then, why don’t you tell me more about yourself? I get the feeling that beneath those big beautiful blue eyes there lurks a real tiger of a man."


Next: Fancy Meeting You Here!

Great Ghosts From The Past

By the time Frank and Drew had finished their conversation, the Met’s General Director was running late for his appearance at a guild fundraiser in the Eleanor Belmont Room. After sharing the elevator ride down to the Grand Tier with his boss, O’Connor decided to spend some time browsing through the Met’s Portrait Gallery on the Concourse level. He came here whenever he needed to do some serious brainstorming. The portraits of such operatic legends as Enrico Caruso, Lotte Lehmann, Ezio Pinza, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink always provided a surefire source of inspiration. Whenever Frank needed to calm his emotions, the huge oil paintings of Bidu Sayao as Violetta and Lily Pons as the actress Philine in Mignon (petite women who, though they seemed so fragile and delicate, had made monumental contributions to opera) never failed to soothe his soul.

Since joining the Met, O’Connor had been forced to live in a constant state of crisis management. Why, he wondered, did he remain in this job when the stress was killing him? A stupid question if ever there was one.

He stayed because of his love for the art form.

He stayed because, as his friends always teased him, his heart was in the arts.

Back in the days when O’Connor was too young to resent working long hours (or being forced to report for duty on weekends) he never once objected to the outrageous demands his job made on his personal life. Even after receiving his marketing degree, Frank had never planned to lead a strict 9 to 5 existence. Perhaps that was why his nerves had never felt as raw as they did this morning.

As he stood in front of Franco Zeffirelli's set model for Act II of Puccini’s La Boheme, he thought about his private conversation with Drew Gelfand. The news from the Mayor’s office had been a real shocker; the kind of rabbit punch which could make anyone want to toss in the towel.

In reviewing how he had handled his department’s previous financial cutbacks, Frank had to admit that he had done fairly well. But there was no escaping the bottom line. The deadline for subscription renewals was only three weeks away and, if renewals didn’t match last year’s levels, he’d have no money left with which to sell single tickets for the fall season. He knew all too well that, without sufficient advertising money in his budget, a Marketing Director could only play a passive role in selling the Met to the public.

As he moved toward the large oil painting of Maria Callas as Gluck's Iphigenie (a portrait which had always been one of his favorites) Frank thought back to his first job in the music profession. Before returning to school for a marketing degree, he had been employed as the office manager for the Tiffany Agency. Although he had never really enjoyed the emotional tensions generated by the singers on Preston Alberghetti’s roster, he loved being in the opera business too much to quit.

Then Preston suddenly succumbed to an attack of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (one of the first AIDS victims in the world of classical music) and all of the plans they had discussed went up in smoke. Alberghetti’s singers moved on to other agencies and Frank decided to go back to school.

As soon as he had received his marketing degree, O’Connor had taken a job at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. His connections quickly led to a marketing position at the Met and, shortly after joining the staff of the world’s greatest opera company, Frank found himself being congratulated on his exceptional skill in dealing with the press and various vendors who serviced his department. However, after what Drew told him this morning, he wondered if any of that mattered anymore.

What was going on?

Frank knew he had had difficulty moving from the profit to the nonprofit sector and was still having trouble coping with his loss of financial freedom. But, as a marketing professional, he also understood that unless the Metropolitan Opera began to get more visibility in the press, it would not be able to raise enough money for the upcoming season.

His eyes focused on the portrait of an opera singer long dead and gone. Hell, all of the singers in this gallery were long dead and gone. Only a tiny fraction of the people in the Met’s audience had any idea who the people in these paintings were. And those few who did represented an infinitesimal portion of the public at large.

Could it be, Frank wondered, that despite everybody’s hard work, opera really was a dying art form?



Next: Saturday, March 7th

Whose Opera Is It, Anyway?

As he rode the elevator from the fifth floor down to sub-basement A, Erich von Blindt’s jaws were tightly clenched. This whole business about Supertitles made him sick to his stomach. The Maestro resented the way his musical authority was constantly being undermined by one financial crisis after another and was in hearty agreement with his predecessor that audiences should do their homework before coming to the opera.

In some ways, it seemed as if a conspiracy existed to divert people’s attention further and further away from the man who was at the helm of any operatic performance: the conductor. What was the point of those silly titles, anyway? When audiences tired of watching the ridiculously overblown spectacles the Met’s directors and designers put on the stage, were they supposed to read those stupid translations as if they were watching a foreign film?

Not if Erich von Blindt had anything to say about it! As far as he was concerned, the Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera was one of the few people in the world who could still insist that administrators show some respect for the composer. After all, the composer was supposed to be the most important force in an opera. And after that -- just in case anyone even cared anymore -- the conductor.

Without the conductor, reasoned von Blindt, there would be no control over the orchestra and singers. Even if the Met had been taken to task for its hard line on functioning as an operatic museum, wasn’t it a museum’s mission to preserve the past without succumbing to the pressures of present day fads?

As far as von Blindt was concerned, the Met’s Music Director was the equivalent of a great museum’s curator. All this talk of hiring singers for their marketability was absolute nonsense. What would happen to the Tate Gallery, the Prado, or the Louvre if their curators were instructed to start acquiring what Americans called "sofa-sized art" ? The public would bomb the museums!

As soon as the doors opened, von Blindt stormed out of the elevator, nearly knocking a coffee cup out of Wayne DiStefano’s hands.

Next: Great Ghosts From The Past

Thursday, March 5th

Shortly after 10:00 a.m., the Met’s Music Director, Director of Development, and Director of Marketing and Public Relations were ushered into Drew Gelfand’s inner office by his private secretary (a charming young Puerto Rican man whose soft, doe-like brown eyes glistened with vitality).

“Please sit down,” said Drew as he gestured to several large, comfortable chairs that were upholstered in black leather. “Manuel, tell anyone who calls that I’ll get back to them as soon as this meeting is over.”

Although these intimate conferences involving four or five of the Met’s top staff had become fairly routine events, today – with the company nearly three-quarters of the way through its season -- the people in Drew’s office were beginning to show signs of burnout.

Nan McFarlane’s jaw was thrust forward as she sat with her hands tensely folded in her lap.

Maestro Erich von Blindt looked as if he could use at least a week’s uninterrupted sleep.

Even Frank O’Connor, who was usually so cool and collected, seemed taut and on edge.

These three key staff members (who had been working overtime for the past six months) were each suffering from various degrees of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. By comparison, the only person in the room who seemed to be completely free from any symptoms of fatigue was their boss, Drew Gelfand. Glowing with good health, he was dressed in a dark blue business suit and a pale yellow tie which highlighted his carefully-trimmed moustache.

“Among the things I’d like to discuss with you this morning are the results of a report I commissioned from one of Opera America's professional consultants,” he began.

“As you know, our subscription sales have been steadily dropping and, with the critics constantly raking us over the coals, we’ve had a consistently negative image in the media. Part of the problem is that we seem to have outpriced ourselves from our audience. Lots of Met patrons lost their shirts in the stock market last year and those who still have substantial amounts of money are making some rather curious changes in their spending habits.”

“With the top price of our orchestra seats now resting at $125 per ticket, the only walk-up trade we’re getting at the box office seems to be coming from Japanese tourists. It looks to me as if the era of conspicuous consumption -- at least among New Yorkers -- is rapidly drawing to a close.”

Nan, who had developed a sixth sense for anticipating bad news, crossed her legs and started doodling on her steno pad as Drew continued his speech.

“Back when the company celebrated its Centennial, many of us were shocked to discover a growing resentment toward the Met on the part of opera fans in outlying areas. Many of these people informed us that they preferred to support their local opera companies instead of sending their money to the Met. According to my sources at Opera America,” Drew explained, “this trend will continue as regional companies prosper and keep servicing their local communities."

"To make matters worse, our conservative government -- which, as we all know, couldn’t care less about the arts -- is hiking the cost of bulk mailing rates for nonprofit organizations (a move which, since so much of our subscription campaign depends upon direct mail, is really going to hit us where it hurts).”

“To no one’s great surprise, it’s also very likely that ticket sales could be hurt by the steadily rising cost of living. According to this report, two orchestra seats to the Met, dinner near Lincoln Center, parking and a babysitter will cost a couple a whopping $400 per performance this year. Now, you don’t have to be Albert Einstein to figure out that that amount of money could keep the average Manhattan apartment dweller happily rolling in enough marijuana, pizza, Mrs. Fields’ cookies and Chinese takeout food to get him through a month’s supply of video rentals. If you add in the increased competition we face from personal computers and the home entertainment center, you’ll begin to see that we’re fighting an uphill battle.”

“As if all that weren’t enough to make you weep, we still have to deal with assholes like our friend David Delgado over at The New York Times. Just in case anyone in this room failed to read Mr. Delgado’s latest diatribe against the company, let me quote you from the article he wrote for last Sunday’s Arts and Leisure section:

“Next year’s Met season is so frightfully boring it could force a grizzly bear into early hibernation. It’s bad enough that the company continues to pursue an artistically bankrupt policy of mounting horridly overproduced productions which feature appallingly lackluster casts. However, since the departure of its former music director (the man who once vowed that Supertitles would only be used at the Metropolitan Opera House over his dead body), Drew Gelfand’s administration has steadfastly failed to take advantage of a superb opportunity to drag the Met -- albeit kicking and screaming -- into the latter half of the 20th century. Audiences at the New York City Opera and many other regional opera companies have been aided by the use of Supertitles for more than five years. Recent studies have shown that the popular appeal of these English-language translations (which are projected below a theatre’s proscenium) have enabled the vast majority of America’s opera companies to cultivate younger, broader-based and better-educated audiences while enhancing the fundraising efforts of what must certainly be more astute and aggressive boards of directors than the one currently governing the Met. Therefore, my advice to opera fans who want their money’s worth is to avoid the Metropolitan Opera like the plague. Paying outrageously inflated prices for such pathetically incoherent, poorly-produced artistic slop forces subscribers to buy into one of the highest-priced rip-offs on the nation’s cultural scene. Although New York’s society crowd and the perennial status-seekers who constitute a good part of the Met’s audience will insist on continuing to rub elbows with each other, the sensible subscriber should be capable of showing a great deal more respect for both his intelligence and his pocketbook.’

Does anyone have any questions?” asked Drew.

“Yeah. When was the last time that bastard got horse whipped?” queried Erich von Blindt.

“Knowing this critic’s personal preferences, I’d estimate the exact moment at sometime during the past 72 hours,” Drew replied with a knowing grin. “I think I can assure you that -- at least back in the days when Mr. Delgado and I used to cross paths on a nonprofessional basis -- David never lacked for sexual partners who could give him exactly what he wanted.”

The smile vanished from Gelfand’s face as he looked at the people seated in his room. “Now, let me ask the three of you a question. Did any of you walk across the plaza to attend a performance by the New York City Opera this season?”

Drew’s query was met with a stony silence.

“Did anyone catch any performances in Chicago, San Francisco, Houston or Washington?”

Again, there was no response.

“I thought as much,” sighed Gelfand.

“As you may know, I’ve recently asked several members of our board’s Executive Committee to accompany me whenever I’ve left town to discuss sharing the costs of a new production with my professional colleagues in other companies. While on the road, I’ve noticed something in cities where Supertitles are being used that has really been quite amazing. What impresses me the most is that I’ve seen the same phenomenon repeated with different markets performing wildly diverse repertory -- repertory as varied as Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso, Puccini's Tosca, Strauss’s Salome, and Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. For one thing, the audiences in these cities are much more involved in what’s happening onstage. They laugh at the jokes in the libretto and talk about the performance during intermission as if they had been watching a play on Broadway. For another thing, they stay in their seats until the end of the performance.”

“If any of you ever took the time to stand in the Met’s lobby during intermissions, you’d notice our audience fleeing the auditorium like rats leaving a sinking ship. Those of you who have worked here for several seasons may think these people are departing because they have to get up and go to work in the morning but that’s just not true,” sighed Gelfand. “I’m afraid the reason so many people are leaving our opera house before the performance ends is because they’re bored shitless.”

Maestro von Blindt shifted his weight and angrily glared at the man sitting behind the desk. How could Gelfand say such things about the greatest opera house in the world?

“At present, the financial condition of this company is so precarious that I’m considering reducing the length of next year’s season. Although we’re constantly struggling to raise money, for the past few years I’ve suspected that the enemy we face may well be within us,” continued Drew.

“We all know people who live and breathe opera 24 hours a day: the hardcore group which believes that, somehow or other, Maria Callas is going to rise from the grave and singlehandedly bring this art form back to what it was in the golden days before jet travel. Well, that’s not about to happen and, if we don’t start making some drastic changes in the way this company functions, each and every one of us could work himself out of a job sooner than we think.”

Even as he tried to digest what Drew was saying, Frank O’Connor’s intuition told him that the worst was yet to come. Drew continued to speak.

“Last week, I had lunch with the Marketing Director of the New York City Opera who told me that he’s getting substantial numbers of new subscribers who have canceled their Met subscriptions and moved their money across the plaza. I’ve given this matter a lot of thought, have discussed it at length with members of the board’s Executive Committee, and they’ve all agreed to let me make some crucial changes in the Met’s artistic policy before this organization self-destructs. I’m sorry, gang, but no matter how well-informed we’d like to think our audiences might be, we can no longer afford to operate this company as some kind of elitist museum. So, I’d suggest you brace yourselves for what you’re about to hear.”

Picking up a pen from his desk and rolling it around in his fingers, Drew addressed the three people sitting in his office. “Last week I commissioned a translation of Lucrezia Borgia from the man who writes the Supertitles for the Houston Grand Opera. I’ve ordered a computer and lighting setup identical to the one used in Houston’s new opera house and expect to have it installed and on-line within two weeks.”

Gelfand pointed his pen toward the Met’s Director of Marketing and Public Relations. “Frank, I want you to get the word out to the media that, beginning with our production of this rarely-performed Donizetti opera, the Met is going to experiment with English-language Supertitles. The official line is that our audience’s total lack of familiarity with Lucrezia Borgia -- coupled with the fact that the Met hasn’t performed this opera since 1904 -- affords us the perfect opportunity to make a trial run with Supertitles. The unofficial line -- and this news is not to leave my office -- is that without some kind of face-saving gesture, this company is dead in the water.”

Drew next aimed his pen at the Met’s Director of Development.

“Nan, I want you to start finding people who will underwrite the cost of commissioning translations for all of next season’s repertoire. Back in 1983, when City Opera started using titles, Beverly Sills struck paydirt with Manufacturer's Hanover Trust. Our translations are going to have to be better than those currently used in any of the regional houses and there’s no reason why the Met can’t find some corporation to underwrite this project. I’m sure that, with the April 15th tax deadline approaching, you’re going to have to kiss a lot more ass than usual, but I expect to see some big results within two or three weeks. I know you can do it, Nan.”

Drew then turned his attention to the Met’s Music Director.

“Erich, I’ve gone over the casting for next season and, with the dollar continuing to lose strength against the Japanese yen and other foreign currencies, I expect we’ll be seeing a string of cancellations as some of our better paid European singers become overwhelmed by their unbelievable sense of greed. Therefore, I want you to prepare a list of solid American artists who are either making a name for themselves in regional opera companies or have had a healthy amount of media visibility. You’re to be ready to get on the phone to their managers the minute any of our big names start grumbling about the possibility of an inner ear infection which might prevent them from flying across the Atlantic.”

“One more thing, Maestro. During August, when we’re rehearsing for our fall season, I want you to attend as many performances at City Opera as possible so that you can see the difference in audience reaction I’m talking about. And while you’re there, you’d better scout out any singers we might want to bring to the Met for a sudden, unscheduled debut.”

Von Blindt was horrified by Drew’s instructions. In all his years as a conductor at the Met, he had never been ordered to attend performances by a company he considered to be of less than international stature.

But Drew Gelfand wasn’t finished giving orders. Not by a long shot.

“Let’s get back to you, Frank. Since marketing is your jurisdiction, I want you to keep a close eye on subscription renewals. I’m anticipating some major financial cutbacks which are going to take a big chunk out of your advertising budget. You’d better start looking for new ways to get free publicity because I suspect that next season you’re going to be asked to deliver 10% more in both subscription and single ticket sales with a budget that’s at least 15% smaller than this year’s. Better start getting creative.”

Throwing his pen down on the desk, Drew pushed his chair back and smiled long enough for everyone to know that the meeting was officially over.

“That’s it, folks. Since this opera company is one of the largest nonprofit arts institutions in the world, I expect nothing less than a miracle from each and every one of you. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Manuel and I have some work to do.”

As Drew had predicted, von Blindt was the first to react. Rising from his chair like a wounded bull, the Maestro stormed out of Gelfand’s office in a rage. “This is scandalous,” shouted von Blindt. “What kind of an opera house do you think this is?”

By contrast, the Met’s Director of Development was surprisingly soft spoken. As she rose to leave the room, Nan McFarlane addressed her boss in an unusually flat voice.

“Listen, Drew, I don’t know what kind of an ego trip that speech offered you, but the way you treated the three of us just now was totally uncalled for. I can’t speak for Frank and Erich, but ever since Labor Day I’ve been working 12- to 16-hour days, six days a week. In case you can’t tell -- or are just too fucking insensitive to notice -- I’m pretty damn tired these days. During the first week of April, I’m supposed to deliver the keynote speech at the annual meeting of the National Association of Female Executives, be a guest speaker at the American Arts Alliance’s advocacy conference in Washington, and then go to Miami to attend an executive retreat for the nation’s leading fundraisers. The following week, I’m visiting my parents in North Carolina and, on my way back to New York, plan to stop in Cincinnati to share some time with a very dear friend who I haven’t seen in six years.”

“I need some time to prepare for these speeches and conferences and am looking forward to the stroking I get from making those appearances,” she added. “I’ve given many years of blood, sweat and tears to this organization. But this is one time in my life that the Metropolitan Opera -- and the dashingly handsome Drew Gelfand -- can fucking well wait until I get back to town before I lift a finger to help pay for your Supertitles.”

Nan looked at her boss with a combination of fatigue, helplessness and loathing.

“If you think, for one lousy minute, that that assinine little pep talk you just delivered -- which ranks as the biggest heap of macho executive bullshit I’ve heard in years -- is going to cause me to change any part of my plans, then you’ve got your head screwed on backwards.”

Nan closed the door behind her and disappeared from sight, leaving Drew and Frank facing each other in silence. The Met’s Marketing Director spoke first.

“We have to talk,” he said. “I need to know what the bottom line is.”

Drew Gelfand looked up from his desk and stared into O’Connor’s weary face. He knew that, after several years of working in the corporate world, Frank was having trouble readjusting to the nonprofit environment. But at the same time, O’Connor’s knowledge of business as it was conducted outside the arts might be just the thing that could save the Met

“Okay, you asked for it,” he sighed.

“Yesterday, the heads of Lincoln Center’s cluster of arts organizations had lunch at Gracie Mansion with the Mayor. During the meal, Hizzoner dropped a bomb in our laps whose contents were not very pretty. Although what the Mayor said won’t become public knowledge for a few more days, as soon as it does your office is going to be bombarded with calls from the media. Here’s the inside dirt.”





Next: Whose Opera Is It, Anyway?

Bitch Fight

As soon as the old diva disappeared behind the Met’s curtain, Wayne DiStefano flicked off the light in the prompter’s box and dashed to the men’s room. The excitement of the way Elvira had just delivered Gioconda’s Act IV aria, “Suicidio!” -- combined with the diuretic effect of his blood pressure medications -- was wreaking havoc on his bladder. It had been a long evening of work and Wayne desperately needed relief. As he stood in front of the urinal, he could feel his body slumping with exhaustion.

Meanwhile, having returned to her dressing room, Elvira was seated in front of a large, brightly lit mirror as Barry Russell worked to remove her wig. The Met’s chief makeup artist for the past twenty years, Russell had served as a confidant to some of the world’s greatest singers. Unfortunately, his progressive alcoholism had taken a profound toll on the man’s once beautiful complexion and, at the relatively young age of 43, Barry’s face was covered with red splotches.

Russell’s fading beauty and increasing drunkenness had made it extremely difficult for him to get laid during the era of safe sex. To make matters worse, years of psychological abuse from narcissistic divas like Colombo had only added to his misery. In recent months, several singers had complained to the Met’s management about his constant nastinesss. One soprano had instructed Russell not to step foot in her dressing room unless he was sober. Rumor had it that another artist had complained to Drew Gelfand about Russell’s constant use of racial epithets.

The animosity which simmered between Barry Russell and Elvira Colombo had quite a long and colorful history. Many years ago, when La Strega was in her prime, she had asked the then-young makeup artist to scout out a straight stagehand who could fuck her during the 30-minute intermission of Cherubini's Medea. When Barry protested, Colombo threatened to have him fired and refused to go on with the performance until he delivered a male stud to her dressing room.

Russell had never forgiven the old witch for the humiliation he felt while pimping for her among his coworkers. Although he had spent many a night dreaming of revenge, the most he ever dared to do was take a few well-aimed jabs at Elvira’s fragile ego. Noticing that she seemed a bit more vulnerable tonight than usual, Barry was paying extra special attention to the old woman in the hope that she would leave herself open to attack.

The sound of someone knocking at the door, however, interrupted his vengeful thoughts and, a moment later, Wayne DiStefano entered the dressing room. Melodramatically kneeling at Elvira’s feet, the prompter grasped her left hand and sighed, “You were magnificent tonight, my love. You sang Gioconda’s last aria with more truth and artistry than anyone has shown here all season. I really can’t begin to tell you how thrilling it was for me to be in the prompter’s box tonight.”

“Stop acting so silly, Wayne,” giggled Elvira. “You say that to me after every performance!”

“But I mean it, my love. If you only knew what it’s like to work with these insipid young singers, you’d understand what a thrill it is to have someone on that stage who actually understands what opera’s all about. You are a true artist -- and there are very few women to whom I can say that anymore.”

Their conversation was interrupted as Drew Gelfand entered the dressing room with Mr. and Mrs. Howlett in tow. Although Elvira’s childhood years in the Bronx had given her a healthy set of street smarts, her public relations people had done such a thorough job of rewriting history that everyone believed the world-famous soprano came from a remote wine-growing province of Northern Italy.

Over the years, Drew and Elvira had practiced their post-performance fundraising routine until they had honed it to perfection. And although tonight the two were re-enacting their little charade by rote, as far as the Howletts could tell, every statement uttered in Elvira’s dressing room seemed totally spontaneous.

“Darling, you were simply sensational tonight. Why, I haven’t seen a performance like that in years!” Drew gushed as he leaned over and gave Elvira a well-aimed kiss on the cheek.

“And now, my pet, I want you to meet the lovely couple from Demarest who have been my guests for tonight’s performance. John, Cheryl, let me introduce you to the one and only Elvira Colombo, the last of the Met’s great divas. Elvira, darling, I want you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Howlett from New Jersey.”

The old woman’s rubbery face broke into an aristocratic and strangely sadistic grin as she adapted her best Italian accent for tonight’s scam. “Ciao, Meester and Meesus Howl-eet. You are so wonnerful, sotch sweet peepul, to come-a backstage and vees-it wid me when I know you have-a to get up so early in da morning to go-a to work. Singers, hah! We stay up da whole night because our, er -- how you say, My-ess-troh? Our adrenaline, she’s a real killer. You sing a performance like I sing-a dis evening and you stay up all-a night long, pacin’ da room. Back and forth. Back and forth. All-a night long. But our art? Dat’s-a what we live for. Ain’t dat so, Drew?”

Gelfand nodded on cue.

When confronted with a genuine superstar, John Howlett was absolutely tongue-tied. His wife, however, seized the opportunity to make polite conversation.

“Oh, Mrs. Colombo, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful and so touching as when you dropped dead tonight,” she gushed. “It was really a very meaningful experience for me.”

“Grazie, grazie,” cooed Elvira, her eyes flashing with mischief. “But ees-a no Meesus Colombo, eh? My music, she’s-a very jealous and possessive, you know? She gets in the way of my love life.”

Elvira beckoned for Cheryl Howlett to come closer. “You very beautiful woman. Bellissima! You gotta nice husband? Maybe even got some kids, eh? Then God, he’s-a been kind to you. He no torture you with a great talent like he torture Elvira Colombo.”

Turning around in her chair, she grabbed Drew’s hand. “My-ess-troh! Ain’t you gonna take these people out on the big stage to show-a dem what it really looks like? Show-a dem where Elvira just sang. Ciao, darlings. Come-a back and see me again next time you’re at the Met. Hokay?”

Elvira waved gleefully as the Howletts, Drew Gelfand and Wayne DiStefano left her dressing room. Then she turned around in her chair and stared at the image in the mirror as her fake smile disappeared. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she muttered as Barry Russell combed out her hair. “Did you get a load of the diamond ring on that cunt’s finger?”

Once she had finished trying to figure out how much Mr. and Mrs. Howlett were worth in cold cash, Elvira began to speculate about who would be waiting outside her dressing room to greet her tonight. Probably some aging gay men from out of town and that toothless old crone whose brains were so fried that she had even starting asking the ushers and security guards for autographs.

The regulars would all be over at Carnegie Hall listening to that pretty young Cormorant girl from Salt Lake City who was performing in a concert version of Handel's Ariodante. Boring music which, as far as Elvira was concerned, could put anyone to sleep in five minutes. But she had heard that this new soprano was a real comer and, whether or not she could admit it to herself, La Strega’s instincts told her that Elvira Colombo was old news.

“Do your stuff, Barry,” she whispered. “Make me look beautiful. I’m feeling my age tonight.”

As he fluffed her curls, Barry Russell leaned forward and hissed, “I feel like an old woman, too, but I think it’s my responsibility to tell you the facts of life, Elvira. It took God seven days and seven nights to create the world. All I’m working on here is union time.”

“That’s the problem with you people in America. There’s no respect anymore for your elders; no respect for the grand traditions of this art form,” snarled Elvira.

“There’s plenty of respect for tradition, Madam. But this profession is filled to the rafters with oversized egos and too much vanity,” replied Barry.

“Now, I can do just so much to make you look presentable before I walk out of your dressing room but the rest of the job belongs to the folks at Lourdes. Believe me, it’s going to take much more than a miracle to keep you looking young. And if you’re thinking of getting a face-lift before next week’s performance of Gioconda, I’d advise you to change your mind. Every big construction crane in the city is booked solid for the next two months.”

Elvira rose from her chair and looked at Barry with the kind of melodramatic loathing she usually saved for characters like Scarpia or Klytemnestra. “Get out of my dressing room, you disgusting man. Sexual impotence is no excuse for bad manners and you, of all people, should know better than to treat me with so little respect.”

Grabbing Elvira’s wig in one hand and his hair brush in another, Barry crossed the room and reached for the doorknob. “Respect, my dear, is for ladies. And that’s only one of the reasons why you haven’t had any in years. The other reasons are fairly complex and I wouldn’t want to bother you with all of the ugly details. Ciao, darling. See you next week.”

As he slammed the door behind him, Barry knew that he had hurt Elvira. He savored the triumph of revenge and only wished that he could watch the mascara run down La Strega’s cheeks as she sat before her dressing room mirror, sobbing with self-pity.

“Coming through,” he announced as he pushed several of Elvira’s fans out of the way. “Watch out. Wigs coming through.”

When Elvira emerged from her dressing room ten minutes later she was dressed in a full-length black fur coat and wide-brimmed hat whose veil covered her bloodshot eyes.

“No autographs tonight,” she whispered to her fans. “I’m very sorry.”

Waving aside the handful of people who had patiently waited for her outside the dressing room door, she slowly, silently, and melodramatically stalked down the long hallway which led to the stage entrance. Only the short, bespectacled woman with grey hair suspected that something could be wrong.

Even though she had no way of knowing what might have transpired in the star’s dressing room after the final curtain, in nearly three decades of going backstage to collect autographs Edith had never seen La Strega acting so subdued after a performance.





Next:Thursday, March 5th

Midnight Draws Near

At 11:48 p.m., as the principals were taking their curtain calls, the Howletts got a good taste of what grand opera is all about. Earlier that evening, the tenor, Mauricio Biancomono, had received prolonged applause for his stunning rendition of Enzo Grimaldi’s Act II aria, “Cielo e mar.” Biancomono was clearly an audience favorite and, as Drew Gelfand had explained to them during one of the intermissions, the Met had great things in store for him.

What the company’s General Director did not explain to the Howletts, however, were the peculiar circumstances which kept tonight’s principals appearing onstage together so frequently. As most people in the professional music world knew, Mauricio Biancomono had been a house tenor with a provincial Italian opera company until he was discovered by the legendary Elvira Colombo. Since then, Colombo had insisted on having Biancomono as her leading man because, with her shrewd survival instincts, she knew that he was good -- but not good enough to steal her thunder.

In the five years during which the two artists had been singing together, familiarity had bred contempt. The Italian tenor hated Elvira’s guts but understood that during this crucial stage of his career he would have to continue singing with her in order to get reviewed in the musical press. Confident that his voice was reaching the point where he could break free from Colombo’s grasp and make it on his own, Biancomono had recently switched management as the first step toward distancing himself from Elvira.

Unbeknownst to the aging diva who had discovered him, the tenor was also being groomed by the Met’s artistic staff to become the next Pavarotti; a fact which made it easier for him to tolerate the old windbag’s shamelessly egocentric shenanigans. With the applause still ringing in his ears, Biancomono blew a kiss to the audience and disappeared behind the Met’s great gold curtain.

Moments later, he was replaced by Maryjane Montgomery, the mezzo-soprano who had sung the role of Laura in that evening’s performance and who always seemed to sing opposite Mauricio Biancomono.

A professional do-gooder, Maryjane Montgomery was known among her colleagues as a bland but reliable artist. It was certainly no secret that whenever the tenor’s wife remained at home in Italy to raise his four children, Maryjane (a woman whose tepid presence onstage was a far cry from her passionate lovemaking) took her place beside Biancomono in bed.

By now, Maryjane was sick and tired of belonging to the great Colombo’s traveling road show. She knew all too well that if Mauricio could clear the next big hurdle in his career, his fees would skyrocket so quickly that he could divorce his wife, marry Maryjane, and free the two singers from their slave-like devotion to the despicable Elvira Colombo.

As she bowed before the footlights, acknowledging the audience’s polite applause, her view was suddenly blocked by a mass of shiny fabric as the evening’s star swooped out in front of her. With clinical precision, Colombo had brought the mezzo-soprano’s curtain call to an untimely halt.

Furious at Elvira’s selfishness, Maryjane walked off into the wings, leaving the megalomaniacal diva to indulge herself in front of the footlights. Left to her wicked wiles, Elvira didn’t hesitate for one second to milk every possible bit of applause from the Met’s audience.

Stooping to pick up the train of her costume, she paraded across the footlights, gaily waving to her fans at the top of the Family Circle and blowing a kiss to Wayne DiStefano in the prompter's box. Returning to downstage left, the soprano sank to the floor in a mock regal curtsey and held her bow for as long as the audience would keep clapping. As soon as the applause began to ebb, she rose to her feet, slowly bowed her head and then crossed her hands over her heart in a meticulously calculated (but utterly false) gesture of humility.

At 62, Elvira was the last of the opera world’s great divas -- an artist who insisted on bringing a certain air of “dramatic verisimilitude” to each of her roles – and yet a pathetically egocentric woman. At this late stage of her career she still employed such outrageously overdone acting techniques that she had become a professional anachronism. Having made life miserable for anyone and everyone who ever crossed her path, La Strega (as she was known to one and all) had carved out a highly controversial career by singing opera’s most venomously difficult roles -- characters like Lady Macbeth, Salome, Elektra, and Medea -- while incorporating the worst parts of their personalities into her private life.

Although Elvira’s heyday had long since come and gone, like her rivals Leyla Gencer, Magda Olivero, and Leonie_Rysanek, she still had a loyal following which would cheer her wildly if she did so much as read from the telephone book. Their blind devotion and Elvira’s oversized ego had, for many years, conspired to prevent the old woman from retiring and making a graceful exit from her profession.

In an era when audiences looked forward to live telecasts featuring younger and more photogenic singers, the sight of Elvira’s wrinkled face and outrageous histrionics transformed her into an operatic dinosaur. As the soprano’s vocal condition continued to deteriorate, her diva antics became more and more outrageous.

Even though key moments in Elvira’s performances could still generate a genuine sense of excitement, in recent years La Strega had begun to suspect that audiences were actually laughing at her. Her ego, mixed with every artist’s acute sense of paranoia, forced Elvira to keep trying to prove to everyone that she still had the goods. Even on a night like tonight, when Colombo’s voice was somewhat under control, the results were not always pretty.

Waving to the audience as she reluctantly made her way offstage, Elvira finally disappeared from sight as the house lights came up. The soprano’s extended curtain call had been a totally shameless display of ego. Nan McFarlane knew that, as did many others in the audience.

But to the Howletts, Colombo’s self-indulgent tricks were total theatrical magic. They couldn’t wait to meet her backstage.




Next: Bitch Fight

Fresh Meat

At exactly 7:58 that evening, Nan McFarlane stepped into the General Manager’s box on the Parterre level of the Metropolitan Opera House. The company’s guest that night was a young tycoon who had made a small fortune for himself in the computer industry. As the Met’s Director of Development, Nan had a special project in mind which she just knew Fred Howlett’s corporation would be eager to underwrite. And whatever amount of money Nan McFarlane decided to coax from a potential donor, she usually got.

Like many professional fundraisers, Nan had an uncanny talent for socializing with people who were much richer than she could ever hope to be. Her clothing, though stark and simple, had an understated elegance. Her long, blond hair and lean jogger’s body (complemented by an exquisite set of high cheekbones) could weaken the defenses of the mightiest CEO.

If Nan’s friends and colleagues jokingly referred to her as the most expensive lunch in Manhattan, it was partly because in recent years her physical beauty, social skills, and superior intelligence had been honed into a financially devastating weapon. Armed with enough facts and figures about the Metropolitan Opera to make anyone’s head reel, Nan was particularly good at buttering up the nouveau riches in the Met’s audience (those middle-aged people who had made their fortunes in real estate, oil, the stock market, or cocaine but still took pride in the idea that they had "enquiring minds").

It didn’t take more than a few seconds for Nan to size up tonight’s prospective donor. Although, as he sat in the company box, Fred Howlett was meticulously dressed for success, during his college years he had probably been the kind of good-natured fraternity jock who got through school by paying his classmates to write term papers for him while he was out getting drunk. Nan was even willing to give Howlett the benefit of the doubt. Occasionally, the well-heeled grunt might have read the CliffsNotes to some of Shakespeare’s plays.

Howlett’s wife (who was dressed in a backless gold lame gown with her dark hair swept into a bun) looked like the kind of Jewish-American princess who, once upon a time, had pursued a completely useless degree in art history. Nan guessed that by now the woman had matured into a spoiled suburban housewife whose intellect was being fed by a steady diet of All My Children and Hollywood Squares.

Whether or not the little lady also sold real estate didn’t matter much to Nan. Howlett’s business was booming and both he and his corporation had money to burn.

The kind of money which the Met desperately needed.

The kind of money which Nan wanted.

The kind of money which could buy the Howletts access (if not to New York’s old-line society, then at least to today’s in crowd of Yuppie ass-kissers who liked to claim that they lived near Manhattan in order to take advantage of its cultural attractions but, in all truth, hadn’t the slightest desire to step foot in Lincoln Center for any purpose other than networking and name-dropping).

Middle-aged businessmen like Fred Howlett were easy prey for Nan McFarlane. She could pump up their egos by making them feel cultured, wealthy, sexy, and important.

She could give them the impression that they were participating in a noble American cause by sponsoring some minor project at the Met.

She could get them to write large checks.

At the same time, she could give their wives an excuse to go shopping for new clothes. And if Nan understood one thing about nouveau riche heterosexual couples from suburbia, it was that these people all craved an opportunity to tell their friends that they had sat in the General Manager’s box at the Metropolitan Opera House and gone backstage to meet superstars like Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo.

Of course, there was a price to pay for such petty snobbery – a price which usually ran into six figures. But that’s what tax deductions are all about, Nan reminded herself, as she leaned forward to shake hands with Mr. Howlett and purred "It’s so nice to have you as our guest tonight. Drew Gelfand is all tied up backstage, but I’m sure he’ll be stopping by during intermission to say hello. Did you or your wife have any questions about tonight’s cast? I mean, I just know you two have been to the opera so many times that there’s absolutely no need for me to tell you the story of La Gioconda."

What Nan really knew was that the Howletts (who had had several drinks with their very expensive meal) were not stupid enough to reveal their total ignorance by asking her for a plot synopsis. After listening to the couple rave about their dinner and thank her profusely for inviting them to the Met, Nan settled back in her chair and waited for the performance to begin.

As the house lights dimmed and the Met’s magnificent crystal chandeliers slowly rose toward the ceiling, she discreetly gave Cheryl Howlett the once-over. Not a bad-looking woman, Nan thought. I wonder what it would take to punch her buttons?



Next: Midnight Draws Near

A Classical Ken Doll

Kevin Whitcomb saw the bright red message light flashing on his answering machine as he entered his apartment on West 99th Street. Dropping his gym bag on the floor, he walked across the room, reached down to the machine, and pressed the button marked "Play." As he wriggled out of his dark brown bomber jacket, the blond-haired, blue-eyed young man listened to the machine’s beeping sounds, which were followed by an oddly mechanical voice.

"Hello. You have one message."

There was a short whirring noise as the machine rewound its message tape and then played another set of beeps. After several seconds, the familiar voice of Eddie Katzman filled the room.

"So, hello, gorgeous. Have I got a job for you! It’s the simply fabulous Mrs. Fitzwater in Apartment 23-F -- as in "Fuck me, fuck me Daddy" -- of Lincoln Luxury Towers. The old cow has tickets to Saturday night’s performance of Das Rheingold and she’s been sitting home all alone -- chewing her cud while smothered in diamonds and mink -- and just hoping and praying that that sweet little thing named Lance the Dyke will accompany her to the Metropolitan Opera."

Kevin had to laugh. Eddie couldn’t clean up his act if he tried.

"Here’s the dirt, pumpkin. You’re supposed to knock on Lally’s door at 7:15 Saturday night looking like a virgin from Bumfuck, Iowa who knows everything about opera and just can’t get enough Wagner. You don’t have to screw the old windbag, but you do have to wear a tux. And, just once in your life, try to pretend that you’re a class act. Think you can pull it off? Oh, I just know you can, you big, throbbing hunk of man meat! Now, here’s what you have to do. As soon as you get home, I want you to haul that old penguin suit I bought you out of the closet, make sure it’s free of any wrinkles or cum stains, and then call me. Speak to you later, stud. Ciao!"

Kevin pushed another button and, as he kicked off his shoes, heard the machine announce "That was your last message. I will save your messages."

So Saturday night was Lally Fitzwater’s subscription series at the Met!

Grabbing a soda from the fridge, Kevin walked into the bedroom to hang up his jacket, chuckling quietly to himself as he opened the door to his walk-in closet. Neatly suspended on wooden hangers were all sorts of costumes: sailor suits in blue and white, his black leather chaps, a policeman's costume, some blue surgical scrubs and, of course, the tuxedo Eddie had given him two years ago. On the back wall of the closet hung a bright yellow construction helmet, a top hat, a black leather motorcycle cap, and a gas mask (everything a 25-year-old, All-American Rent-A-Ken Doll would ever need to make people happy).

Kevin was always amused by the fact that, in the midst of pursuing his graduate degree at Columbia, he was supporting himself by something as unscholarly as being a high-class whore. Back in his undergraduate days his roommate, Eddie Katzman, had lured him into working for an escort service in order to acquire some extra spending money. At first, Kevin had been a bit uncomfortable about visiting complete strangers in their apartments to sell sexual favors. But, as he soon learned, more often than not his clients were very lonely people who just wanted someone to smile at them and add a little light to their lives.

Sometimes the work got a bit weird -- like the time an extremely masochistic client asked Kevin to dress up as a locomotive engineer, wrap some piano wire around the man’s testicles and then hook him up to the transformer on the antique set of model trains which filled half the living room. But on most occasions Kevin’s house calls boiled down to fairly routine stuff. He’d let the client explain his fantasy, allow the man to feel him up, talk dirty for twenty minutes and then shoot his wad wherever the customer wanted it. After shamelessly flattering the client and complimenting him on his sexual prowess, Kevin would then take the money and run.

His early days as a call boy had been great fun. But in the past few years, Kevin’s clientele had changed dramatically. The AIDS epidemic had forced many gay men to cut back on their kinkiness and, with his unerring business skills, Eddie Katzman had wormed his way into a new and extremely lucrative market: lonely, rich widows who needed someone to take them to the theatre, the opera, a fundraiser or some other event.

Eddie and Kevin made quite a team. Eddie knew how to charm the pants off the old women over the phone while Kevin’s basic Midwestern boy-next-door looks (combined with his solid background in classical music) made him the perfect candidate for the agency’s Lincoln Center beat. Old dowagers loved gossiping over the phone with Eddie and treated Kevin like their long lost son. It was a great setup which, for a grad student who was on a limited income, allowed Kevin to be paid for the outrageous privilege of attending all kinds of performances he could never afford to purchase tickets to on his own!

When push came to shove, the dashing young Mr. Whitcomb had to admit that the widows he escorted around town were much easier to please than some of the men who requested his services. Although the old women never stopped fishing for compliments, at least they didn’t get shit-faced, abusive, or insist on having sex. In fact, with many of his elderly clients, a cup of coffee after the performance, some decent conversation, and a simple good night kiss from a handsome, clean-cut young man was enough to keep them floating on air for a month.

The setup was flawless. Because most gay men didn’t want to go out dancing until after midnight, on weekends Kevin could take a client to a performance, kiss the old biddy goodnight and then, if he felt restless, still have plenty of time to hit the bars and drag someone home for the remainder of the evening.

This Saturday would be no different, especially with the curtain coming down before 11:00 p.m.

"We aim to please," Eddie had always told their clients.

And so, if Lally Fitzwater (who knew Whitcomb by his professional name: Lance van Dyke) wanted to take the young man to an all-star performance of Das Rheingold, that was just peachy keen with Kevin. After all, who was he to turn down the chance to enjoy an evening’s worth of good music, good conversation, and box seats at the Metropolitan Opera House while earning a quick and easy hundred bucks?

Shit. Hustling was far less exhausting than waiting tables and -- as Eddie never failed to remind him -- the pay was better than anything Kevin could ever hope to get working at McDonald’s. Being an escort was infinitely more fun than cleaning apartments!




Next: Fresh Meat

Sister Act

Returning to his office at 11:45 a.m., Brad Carson took one look at the pile of papers on his desk and wondered if police work was really worth all the trouble. As a detective, he was eternally grateful for the fact that he did not have to wear a uniform. However, all too often, the 6'2" star of the Midtown North Precinct’s basketball team felt as if he would spend the remainder of his professional career drowning in paperwork.

Carson was typical of many policemen in that he preferred action to filling out multi-copy forms.
An avid sports fan who liked to shoot baskets with his fellow cops each weekend, he looked upon the ritual of filling out case reports as the ultimate form of bureaucratic torture. Although most of his precinct’s records were now computerized, there were still some parts of his job which seemed unnecessarily bogged down in the tedious process of documentation. After each case was solved, Brad was forced to spend nearly a week completing report forms.

He had learned to hate paperwork with a passion.

Settling his lithe, muscular body into the metal chair behind his desk, the detective wondered what he had ever done to deserve being cooped up indoors. He belonged out on the streets, looking for trouble, instead of sharing some shitty office with a room full of civil service dorks. Even though he hated spending time indoors, Brad had to confess that the people in his division weren’t all that bad.

His professional colleagues admired Carson for his sound instincts and a solid track record in solving difficult cases. They liked the detective’s easy sense of humor. Even though they knew Brad could beat the shit out of anyone in the room, most of the people who worked with him were awed by Carson’s unique sexual charisma.

It was a strange form of animal magnetism which allowed Brad to wheedle valuable information out of the suspects he was forced to interrogate. Although women responded to him on an obviously sexual level, the handsome 35-year-old Sergeant also seemed to have a curious way of enchanting men with his laid-back masculinity.

As macho as Brad may have seemed to most people, his coworkers all knew the detective’s one weak spot. Big, black Sergeant Carson could never refuse a request from his younger sister, Vanessa (an extremely pretty woman who, after becoming an investment banker on Wall Street, had grown into a tough little cookie). With one simple sentence, Vanessa could wrap Brad around her little finger and leave him dangling there; hopeless and helpless.

Everyone in Brad’s department knew what to expect whenever Vanessa called. After a few minutes on the phone, the tough, macho detective with whom they worked would turn into a stammering fool. Vanessa never failed to get what she wanted. Therefore, it came as no surprise on this Wednesday morning that the people in Brad’s office started chuckling as soon as they heard a voice on the intercom announce "Telephone call for Sergeant Carson on Line 4. It’s your sister, big boy."

"Stand your ground, Carson," yelled Sergeant O’Malley.

"We’re ready with reinforcements, fella," added Lieutenant Kincaid.

Brad waved his middle finger at them, loosened his tie and reached for the phone on his desk (knowing all too well that the only reason Vanessa ever called him at work was because she wanted a favor).

"Hi, honey. What’s happening?" he asked.

"I need some of your time this weekend, Brad. Under normal circumstances, I would never ask you to do this for me. But Peter’s away in Tokyo finishing off some business deal and Saturday night is our subscription series at the Met," she cooed.

"What does that have to do with me? You know I hate opera," groaned Brad.

"It has everything to do with you, you big clown. I need a date for Saturday night and you’re my last hope. I can’t go to the Met unless I have someone tall and goodlooking who can escort me to my box."

"Well then, for Chrissake’s, why don’t you take your friend, Alexandra?" snickered Brad.

"Alexandra’s eight months pregnant!" replied Vanessa. "She’s carrying the baby so low she could drop it on the Grand Staircase in the middle of an intermission. And the rest of our friends all have tickets to Saturday’s ballroom dancing contest -- that big charity event for SWYSH."

Immediately, Brad tensed. He had never let on to his kid sister that he was bisexual and, even if she did suspect that he swung both ways, Vanessa should have known better than to tease him with a word like that. "What in the fucking hell is SWYSH?" he whispered, practically choking on his words.

"Society’s Watchful Yuppies Support the Homeless. It’s that group that’s been written up in the society pages for the past six months. Nearly all of our friends belong to it," explained Vanessa.

"Anyhow, benefitting SWYSH is not what’s important. What’s important is Saturday night. The bottom line is that I need you to go to the opera with me because no one else is available. And you’re not wheedling your way out of this one with any excuses about some big basketball game on TV."

"Oh, c’mon, Sis. You know I fall asleep every time I go to the Met with you," Brad pleaded.

"Who gives a flying fuck?" answered Vanessa. "It’s a one-act opera by Richard Wagner and half the audience will be sound asleep. All you have to do is meet me Saturday night at 7:30 near the fountain in Lincoln Center and promise that you’ll stay awake until five minutes after the house lights go down."

"C’mon, Vanessa. Do I have to go to the opera with you?" Brad whined.

As he dodged a spitball from Sergeant McKinney, a sudden burst of laughter caused Brad to look up from his desk. Across the room he could see Sergeant Norton, the department’s clown, placing a hand on one hip and hissing, "Oh, Vanessa, dahling. Do I have to go to the opera with you?"

Brad could tell that, by this point, everyone in the office had stopped work and was eavesdropping on his conversation. Meanwhile, Vanessa’s voice had taken on a decidedly meaner tone as she moved in for the kill.

"Listen, my big, butch brother. Before I cut your balls off and run them through my Cuisinart, perhaps I should inform you that if you don’t accompany me to the opera this Saturday night, you’re gonna be in some pretty deep shit the next time our family gets together for dinner at Momma’s house. Would you like me to refresh your memory about what happened the last time you stood me up when my hubby was out of town on business?"

"All right, all right. You win," moaned Brad. "I’ll see you Saturday night at 7:30."

Carson threw the phone back on its cradle and turned around just in time to see Norton, white handkerchief in hand, imitating Luciano Pavarotti.

"Are we working the Lincoln Center beat this weekend?" teased Norton.

"For someone whose brains are in his ass, you’re remarkably perceptive," snarled Brad. Then, raising his voice so that everyone in the room would be able to hear him, he fixed Norton with a look that could kill.

"Frank, old buddy, do you think you can do me a favor while I’m at the opera with my sister? Tell your wife that, due to circumstances beyond my control, I won’t be able to drop by and fuck her brains out this weekend while you’re busting your hump trying to earn enough overtime to pay for all the gifts she gave me last Christmas."

With a big smile on his face, Carson bowed to his co-workers and slammed the door behind him as he headed down the hallway to the men’s room.




Next: A Classical Ken Doll

Wednesday, March 4th

Lally Fitzwater lit a cigarette, inhaled slowly, and stared out the window. From her apartment on the 23rd floor of Lincoln Luxury Towers she enjoyed a magnificent view of the world’s most famous performing arts center. In the late morning, the Metropolitan Opera House's white marble arches dominated Lincoln Center Plaza. Even now, it seemed as if the building’s mighty glass facade dwarfed the group of tourists standing near the entrance to the Met’s north box office lobby.

Further to the west where, many years ago, Lally and her husband had disembarked from the Queen Mary after each of their European jaunts, she could see the Hudson River and New Jersey shore. Sadly, with the advent of jet travel, the grand old days of crossing the North Atlantic had faded into a distant memory. In so many ways, it seemed as if jet travel had single-handedly destroyed the age of graciousness, an era in which people traveled in style instead of being crammed into a metal container and hurled through the air in order to save time.

This morning, the sky over Manhattan was filled with ominous grey clouds. But at night, when the waters of Lincoln Center’s fountain were dancing in the light and the plaza’s theaters all aglow, the huge red and yellow Chagall murals which hung over the Metropolitan Opera’s Grand Tier restaurant added an exciting splash of color to Lally Fitzwater’s view of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Those Chagalls were what had finally sold her on the idea of leaving the suburbs and moving back into the city.

There was no denying that even now, at the ripe old age of 66, Lally Fitzwater was an extremely handsome woman. But, ever since that tragic day nine years ago when her husband, Matt, had died at his desk from a massive coronary, Lally had been left all alone.

Her daughter, June, had insisted on selling the family’s huge home in Westchester (the house that had been Matt’s pride and joy). When Lally first moved into Lincoln Luxury Towers, she had been positively giddy at the thought of being so close to New York’s museums, theaters and art galleries. Her mind had been chock-full of fantasies about making new friends.

Those foolish fantasies quickly evaporated into thin air for, as Lally soon learned, after each of their husbands had died, most of the women in their social circle had moved to Palm Beach or Tucson. Two years after Matt’s death, their daughter, June, had taken a job in Los Angeles – a move that left Lally high and dry on the 23rd floor of a brick tower in midtown Manhattan wishing that she could somehow turn the clock back to the days when a night at the Met meant seeing all of Matt’s business friends.

Back to a time when intermissions were filled with champagne, laughter, and excitement.

Now all of that gaiety was gone from her life. Lally no longer knew a soul in the Met’s audience. This season, it seemed as if whenever she went to the opera, she was surrounded by foreign tourists and suburban couples who looked middle-aged and middle-class. If nobody in the audience recognized Mrs. Fitzwater anymore, it was because Lally had become another one of New York’s aging society widows; a rich old dowager forced to hire young men to escort her around town whenever she ventured out of her apartment to attend a social function.

Although, during warmer weather, she enjoyed taking long walks up and down Columbus Avenue, on a day like today Lonely Lally (as she liked to call herself) felt like a prisoner in her two-bedroom luxury cell. Soon after moving into her high-rise building, she had come to the bitter realization that most of the people who lived near Lincoln Center were either professional musicians or just much younger than her. Living in an apartment building which had its own pool had done nothing to enhance Lally’s social life. The fact that she would never ever have to worry about money did little to alleviate the pain of knowing that she was also alone.

"Also alone" or "all so alone," Lally whispered to herself as she watched another plane pass behind the Metropolitan Opera House. This one was a United Airlines 727. Lally smiled and watched in silence as the aircraft headed upriver and moved out of sight. Flicking the ashes from her cigarette into the heavy crystal ashtray to her left, she waited for another plane to come into view: a Delta TriStar (no doubt arriving from Fort Lauderdale or someplace where the weather would be a lot warmer than it was in New York). When the wind was right, those planes seemed to fly north over the Hudson River like clockwork.

Next came a United 737.

Then, several minutes later, a Delta 767.

Since moving into her Manhattan apartment, Lally had become an expert at identifying each airplane as it made its approach to LaGuardia. In a way, this activity had become her own private little game -- an amusement (not unlike counting sheep) which could keep her occupied whenever she grew tired of reading or there were no more soap operas to watch on television.

For a brief moment, the old woman’s gaze was distracted by the traffic moving south along Broadway, where five, six... no, seven buses were scrambling across the intersection of Broadway, Columbus Avenue and West 65th Street. It must be cold down there, she thought. Bitter cold. Not that Lally really cared about the weather. Why should she? When you’re a lonely old woman who’s bored to tears, you don’t really give a damn about whether or not it’s cold outside.

What you really want is someone to talk to.

Whenever she got depressed like this, Lally wondered why she even bothered to step foot outside her building anymore. The newspaper was delivered to her door every morning. She could order her groceries by telephone and have them delivered within an hour. New Yorkers had finally gotten cable-TV, so there were plenty of interesting things to watch. If she wished, she could order the newest books by mail and lay at home, reading and rotting in her bed.

No one would ever know that Lally Fitzwater was all alone. Nor would they care.

For a moment, Lally’s loneliness became too painful to think about. Several months ago the old woman had promised herself that she would not become a hermit. But, deep in her heart, she knew that if she didn’t get up off her lonely old ass and do something, she would soon sink into a major depression.

A flash of silver caught Lally’s eye as an American Airlines jet came into sight. As the plane moved across her field of vision, Lally thanked God that her old friend, Louise, had given her the phone number of a reliable escort service before moving to Arizona. On those nights when Lally dared to go out of her apartment, even the company of some man who was young enough to be her grandson was better than braving the world alone. And occasionally, ordering a call boy had its peculiar rewards.

With only ten minutes left before her first soap opera came on the air, Lally knew that the time had come to make a decision. Even though she had tickets to the Met’s new production of Das Rheingold, she couldn’t seem to make up her mind whether or not she wanted to go to the opera this week. Although she had always loved Wagner’s music, she was having one hell of a time deciding whether it was worth the effort to attend this particular performance.

What really bothered her about Saturday night’s performance was that, since Das Rheingold was only a one-act opera, Lally wouldn’t even have the pleasure of watching the fashion parade which usually took place during intermissions. And without intermissions, a night at the opera just wasn’t all that appealing.

Besides, since Das Rheingold would be telecast as part of the Met’s Live From Lincoln Center series, if the weather remained as cold as it had been for the past few days, Lally could watch it, snuggled under her electric blanket in the coziness of her bedroom without ever having to step outdoors.

Flicking her cigarette ashes into the crystal dish, the old woman wondered why she was secretly looking forward to Saturday night. Was it because she liked the ritual of going to the Met? Was it because she still loved to hear music played by a live orchestra?

Or was it, in all honesty, because Lally Fitzwater was so bored, so desperate for any motivation to get dressed up, and so painfully lonely that she would almost do anything for some human contact? Her instincts told her that if she didn’t go to the opera this weekend she’d find some other excuse to stay home the next time she had tickets to a performance.

And the time after that as well.

Decisions, decisions.

Lally hated making decisions. And yet, if an evening at the opera could add a few hours of excitement to her life, why should she even care how much it cost? The tickets were already paid for and Lally could easily afford the escort service’s fee. Nor could she forget that, as she frequently told herself, she had precious little else to do with Matt’s money.

Stooping down to extinguish her cigarette, Lally went into the bedroom and retrieved a tiny pink address book from the top drawer of her night table. Flipping through the pages, she found the entry marked "Classical Chivalry," reached for the telephone resting on her night table, and dialed the number. After three rings, a man’s voice answered the phone.

"Hello, Edward? This is Mrs. Fitzwater. That’s right, Lally Fitzwater at Lincoln Luxury Towers. I wonder if you could help me with something. I have tickets to the Metropolitan on Saturday night and was hoping that that nice young man who knows so much about opera might be available," she crooned. "I believe his name is Lance."

There was a moment’s pause while Edward checked the agency’s schedule.

"You’re sure he’ll be able to join me for Das Rheingold? Oh, that makes me so very, very happy!" Lally gushed. After a moment of stillness while Edward read off the terms of their agreement, the old woman spoke again.

"Yes, Edward, I understand that the rates have gone up since New Year’s but that really doesn’t matter very much to me. You just bill everything to my American Express card, like we’ve done on previous occasions, and have that charming young man knock on my apartment door at 7:15 sharp."

As she hung up the phone and reached for the remote control to her television set, Lally couldn’t help chuckling to herself. The choices which confronted her these days were sometimes a bit cruel but, without Matt to give her his advice, she had tried to do the best she could. Oh, that Lance was so young and witty!

She was practically trembling with excitement at the thought of having him escort her through the crowd. To think that, for several hours on Saturday night, she would have Lance’s undivided attention!

For a brief moment, Lally thought about how much easier things had been when Matt was around to make all of the decisions in her life. But Matt was gone and Lally knew damned well what the alternatives were to paying a young man for the pleasure of his company. She could sit at home watching the opera on television.

Or spend another lonely evening counting the airplanes as they flew north over the Hudson River.





Next: Sister Act

Open Wide!

Late that afternoon, a taxi screeched to a halt in front of an old brownstone building on West 88th Street. After paying the driver, an immaculately dressed man wearing dark sunglasses rushed up the front stairs of the building and nervously rang the doorbell. As he stood on the front stoop, Drew Gelfand read the words which had been neatly stenciled on the glass window. “Harold Wang, D.D.S. Servicing Your Smile.”

As usual, Drew was running late. Nervously shifting his weight from one foot to another, he watched in silence as Dr. Wang’s receptionist ambled lazily down the hallway. As the man opened the front door and ushered Drew into the vestibule, Gelfand was quick to notice that, instead of wearing the traditionally starched medical whites, Dr. Wang’s receptionist was clad in a plaid flannel shirt which was open at the neck, a pair of faded jeans and wore a black leather wristband studded with shiny metal spikes. The young man’s dark brown eyes diverted the visitor’s attention, if only momentarily, from his carefully trimmed beard, the leather thong tied around his neck and the sharp contours of his flat-top haircut.

Ever since the onset of the AIDS epidemic, Drew Gelfand had been forced to be more careful about acting out his sexual fantasies. In fact, as soon as the Mine Shaft closed down, he had given a great deal of thought to restructuring what limited amounts of play time remained in his heavily-scheduled life.

Certain sexual activities had automatically been curtailed. In fact, most of Drew’s nastier fetishes had been put to rest as the growing health crisis forced him to seek out the city’s more creative sadists; co-conspirators in sexual fantasy whose imaginations went far beyond the tired old routine of “Beat me, whip me, tell me I’m a worthless piece of shit and then kick me out of your life.”

Last month, Drew’s friend Maurice had raved about a mysterious sadist named Dr. Wang, telling him that -- considering Drew’s morbid fear of dental drills -- a visit to Dr. Wang was probably what he had always longed for. However, an advance payment of $450 just to have his teeth cleaned seemed a bit exorbitant to a man whose professional responsibilities required him to find any possible way to cut costs. Still, Drew told himself, these days being referred by the right person was so important.

“Sorry I’m late,” he muttered, as the receptionist opened the door to Dr. Wang’s waiting room.

“That’s no one’s fault but your own,” replied the young man, “and I’ll just bet you’re gonna pay for it. I’m Dr. Wang’s assistant, Stan Owens, and if you behave yourself properly today, you might even earn the privilege of calling me by my first name.”

Drew didn’t like the young man’s attitude but figured that it was all a part of Dr. Wang’s routine. He watched quietly as the receptionist grabbed a clipboard off the shelf. “You can strip in here and hang your clothes on those hooks in the wall,” said Stan. “I’ll wait until you’re done just to make sure that you’re clean.”

Drew hesitated, wondering if the young man would at least allow him the courtesy of disrobing in private. His hopes were quickly shattered when the receptionist gave Drew’s ass a sharp slap with the clipboard.

“Better put a move on, stud. This is one dentist who doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Gelfand obediently removed his suit jacket and hung it on the wall. Silently undoing his tie, he stared at the bearded young fellow, searching for some clue as to what might happen next. Drew’s wavy blond hair, thick sexy moustache and trim, muscular body had always been able to disarm any guy he met in the bars. But the man who was now watching him had been through this routine far too many times to let down his guard. All week long he dealt with hot-shot lawyers and politicians who thought they could intimidate him.

“Step on it buddy,” he warned the patient. “Or your ass is grass.”

Standing on one leg at a time, Drew struggled to remove his shoes and socks. Unbuttoning his silk shirt, he carefully draped it over his suit jacket and then turned away from the young man’s intense gaze while loosening his belt. After stepping out of his trousers, he reached over to the wall and hung his pants on a hook. His Calvin Klein undershirt came off next, followed by a pair of light blue silk boxer shorts. As Drew turned around to face the receptionist, the young man caught sight of the two gold rings which pierced Drew’s nipples and the studded leather loop encircling the older man’s genitals.

“Well, well, well. It looks as if we’re all ready to play doctor today,” chuckled the receptionist. “This session might just turn out to be a lot of fun.”

Surveying Drew’s body, Stan thrust the clipboard and a ball point pen into the naked man’s hands. “You’ll need to fill out this form for our files. When you’re done, meet me in the room at the end of the hallway. Write nice and clear so’s I can read your handwriting.”

Drew stood in place, dumbly waiting for further instructions.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t take too long,” warned Stan.

As soon as the young man had left the room, Drew looked around for somewhere to sit down. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a piece of furniture in sight. Leaning against the wall, he held the clipboard in front of him and filled in the usual information about age, address, insurance coverage, and medical background. The two questions at the bottom of the form, however, gave the handsome, 52-year-old executive a rude shock.

Do Your Jaws Ever Get Tired?

With a smirk on his face, Drew wrote “Not unless they’re given cause to.”

Do You Have a Strong Gag Reflex?

In big block letters he scribbled “Try me,” and headed down the hallway.

As he entered the dental suite, Drew could see Stan hunched over the sink, fussing with some utensils. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable,” the young man suggested as he pointed toward a chair unlike anything Drew had ever seen in a dentist’s office. Its top tapered to a helmet-shaped insert for the patient’s head while its legs fanned out to form a giant Y. As Drew slowly eased his naked body into the seat he felt his legs spread out in such a way that his balls were left hanging loose. His head fit perfectly into position in the cup-like headrest.

“Put on this sleep mask, keep your mouth shut and try to relax,” ordered Stan. “All this does is cover your eyes so you can’t see what’s happening in here while I finish getting the room ready for your session.”

As Drew pulled the mask over his face, the glare from the dental lamp disappeared. Settling back in the chair, he discovered that the darkness felt strangely reassuring. Through the speakers in the helmet, he could hear a piano concerto coming over the sound system. In an odd sort of way, he felt as if he were in the driver’s seat of a custom-designed sports car.

His attention was suddenly diverted from the music by a whirring sound as he felt the chair tilt backward so that his head would be closer to the floor. A moment passed and then he could feel Stan’s breath beside his right ear.

“Once we get going, if you want us to stop you can always raise your right hand,” crooned the receptionist as he fastened the restraints on the chair’s arms and legs. “But I sincerely doubt you will.”

Stan pushed a switch and watched patiently as the legs of the dental chair began to rise and spread apart. “I’m going to clamp this thing over your face and position your head properly in the chair,” he told Drew. “The idea is for you to only breathe in through your nose. The longer you keep your mouth closed, the higher you’ll get. It’s a very pleasant way to get stoned and, after a while, you won’t feel uptight at all.”

There was a momentary hiss of gas before the rubber frame of the mask clamped shut around Drew’s nose. Soon, he began to feel light-headed, as if his fingers were tingling and parts of his body were separating and floating off into space. Through a haze he could hear Stan speaking to him.

“I’m going down the hall to get some tools and will be back in a few minutes. You just relax and try to stay calm. The gas will loosen your inhibitions and heighten the sensation of any outside stimuli.”

The young man tapped Drew on the chest to make sure he was listening. “I’d suggest you take deep breaths,” Stan hinted. “As if your life depended on it.”

As the gas continued to take effect, Drew began to feel heavy, yet weightless; alert, but numb. Whenever he tried to move his arms they felt like lead. He could barely feel his fingers, much less encourage them to fight against gravity. Meanwhile, the music seemed to be separating in his brain; the sound of the piano rushing off in one direction while the strings drifted in and out like waves hitting the shore. Each time Drew’s head began to feel warm, his toes would start to tingle.

The gas had him floating on a cloud. And yet, as lightheaded as he may have felt, Drew could also sense some changes happening around him. Someone had entered the room and placed a cold, metallic object on his chest. There was a sharp tug on each of his nipples and then a stabbing pain as both rings were pulled upwards. A deeper voice than Stan’s began to speak.

“Okay, schmuck, listen up. My name is Dr. Wang and the first thing we have to establish here today is who’s really in charge. Frankly, I don’t give a shit how important you are outside this office. I work on judges, bishops and policemen all week long. So the fact that you’re the General Director of the Metropolitan Opera isn’t worth a can of beans to me. When you come here to have your teeth cleaned, you do as I say. Is that understood?”

The patient gasped as the pain in his nipples increased.

“Am I making myself clear?” barked Dr. Wang.

“Y-y-yes,” Drew answered. “Yes, sir.”

“Very good,” chuckled the dentist. “At least we’re not going to have any problems establishing authority. Now, then. Stan, here, is going to attach a few gadgets to your body just to help us keep you in line. And, because you were late for your appointment this afternoon, we’re going to let you listen to something a little less soothing than Tchaikovsky while I work on your teeth. As a matter of fact, I’ve got a very special tape that I just know you’re going to enjoy.”

The mellow sounds of the piano concerto came to a sudden stop and, after several moments of silence, were replaced by a throbbing disco beat. Suddenly Drew heard a woman’s voice -- that woman’s voice -- bellowing in his ears. There was only one singer in the world who sounded so strident. Although most opera people had to admit that her voice was unique, few could tolerate listening to it for longer than ten seconds.

“There’s no business like show business,
Like no business I know!
Everything about it is appealing.
Everything the traffic will allow.
No where can you get that happy feeling
When you are stealing....”

Drew clenched his teeth at the sound of that horrible vibrato.

“Not too many people bought the Ethel Merman Disco Album, but I always had a sneaking suspicion that it would come in handy some day,” laughed Dr. Wang. “And since I don’t exactly admire a lot of your casting at the Met, I thought I should seize the opportunity to offer you a remedial course in what good diction is all about.”

The dentist increased the volume on the sound system until the music was just below Drew’s pain threshold. As the Merm kept singing about the joys of show business, the head of the Metropolitan Opera tossed and squirmed in the dental chair. However, with a full set of arm and leg restraints pinioning him in place, Drew quickly realized that he wasn’t about to escape. Beads of sweat gathered on his brow until, gasping for air, he begged the dentist to turn down the volume.

The music fell back to a reasonable level as Dr. Wang chuckled with glee. The dentist then gave a sharp tug on the metal chain connecting Drew’s tit rings. “Are we having fun yet?” he asked.

Drew kept gasping for breath.

“All right, Gelfand. It’s time to have a look around your mouth. Open up,” ordered Dr. Wang.

“Open wide!”

Drew felt the dentist’s hands forcing his jaws apart. A gentle touch was obviously not part of this man’s repertoire.

“That tartar near your gums looks mighty suspicious,” barked the dentist. “Have you been flossing like a good little boy?”

When Drew confessed that he hadn’t flossed in over a month, the dentist reached down and removed the sleep mask from his patient’s eyes. As Drew’s vision adjusted to the blinding glare of the dental lamp, he could see that Dr. Wang was a powerfully built man who had spent many hours at the gym.

The man standing before him was clad in a black leather harness which framed his smoothly-shaved chest and massive pectoral muscles. In addition to his black leather chaps, the dentist wore a studded codpiece. The size of Dr. Wang’s biceps was accentuated by his black leather armbands.

However, the most striking thing about Dr. Wang was that his head was completely shaved; an affectation which highlighted the gold ring he wore in his left ear and almost made him look like a sadistic version of Mr. Clean. As Drew looked up, he could see a dental probe hovering less than an inch away from his left eye. The dentist looked down at his patient and slowly ran his tongue across his lips before speaking again.

“We have a very special treatment in this office which teaches disobedient little pricks like you to respect what we tell them about the importance of flossing their teeth. I think I can guarantee that after you walk out of this office tonight, you’ll never again forget to floss,” he snarled.

“Hey Stan, would you hand me some of our extra special tooth cleanser?”

Dr. Wang’s dental assistant passed a small cup to his boss and an extremely anxious Drew Gelfand watched in silence as the dentist applied some powder to the tip of his drill. “Now I’m only going to explain this to you once,” he warned. “When we clean the teeth of our good patients, we use either an orange or mint-flavored cleanser. But for bad little boys like Drew Gelfand, we have a special dental powder which works wonders. Would you like to know why it’s so effective?”

Drew nodded his head obediently.

“That’s because it has a flavor resembling raw sea urchin. Now, in case you’ve never been a big sushi fan, let me tell you that you’re about to have yourself a tasty little treat!”

Drew could feel the blood draining from his face as the dentist’s drill moved between his lips. With the first taste of the bitter cleansing powder, he felt as if his entire mouth had been filled with the scum collected by the filter in a large aquarium.

Feeling no need to give his patient a break, Dr. Wang moved the drill back and forth over Drew’s teeth with clinical precision. While Drew salivated furiously in an effort to get rid of the acrid taste in his mouth, Stan suctioned off the liquid which kept gathering in the patient’s oral cavity. After two minutes of cleaning (which, to Drew Gelfand, felt like a lifetime in culinary hell), the dentist removed the drill and placed it in its holder. Drew let out a sigh of relief as Stan sprayed his mouth with water and gave him a chance to catch his breath.

“Now that your teeth look so nice and purty, I guess we can get down to the real business at hand,” said the dentist. “Stan and I like to think of ourselves as performance artists so, as you can imagine, we’re extremely honored to have someone from the Met joining us in our office today. After Stan finishes attaching a little gizmo to the tip of your dick, he’s going to demonstrate his skill with a paintbrush for you.”

When Drew felt a rubber cuff sliding down the length of his penis, he was a bit disappointed. He’d been through lots of sessions where they used an Accu-Jac; that was no big thrill anymore.

“Oh, come, come, Maestro Gelfand, I’m sure you know that protective devices are an important element of safe sex,” cautioned Dr. Wang. “The machine you’re about to get to know on a most intimate basis is no ordinary suction pump. Stan has hooked you up to an electronic milker similar to the kind they use on dairy farms. He’ll be monitoring its speed controls once we get going. However, in the meantime, my assistant’s going to put a thin coat of wintergreen oil on your testicles to get you in the mood for our festivities.”

Drew felt his scrotum being lifted, a slight tickling sensation near his perineum, and then a sudden wave of heat -- as if someone had stuck his balls into an electric socket. As the patient bucked and squirmed in his seat, Dr. Wang merely smiled, waiting until he could see drops of perspiration forming on Drew’s brow. The dentist then pushed a switch which caused the dental chair to tilt backward in such a way that the top of Drew’s head was nearly touching the floor.

Drew Gelfand was strapped tightly into the dental chair with no means of escape.

As he straddled Drew’s face, Dr. Wang unsnapped his leather codpiece, placed it on the shelf to his right and picked up a shiny foil packet. Unwrapping a fresh condom, he teased Drew as he rolled it onto his cock. The dentist then beckoned to his assistant and picked up a remote control switch.

While Dr. Wang stroked his organ into a semi-aroused state, Stan used a Q-tip to apply some fluid to the sheepskin condom on his boss’s rapidly hardening cock. The tall bald man smiled obscenely as he looked down and saw one of the most important people in the arts world lying helpless at his feet.

“Here comes the fun part, shithead. This device in my hand is sorta like the joystick on a video game. It’s linked to a computer which controls the movement of your chair’s helmet and, therefore, the movement of your head. If I want, I can make it perform a sudden 360-degree rotation which will break your neck. Got the picture?”

“Y-y-yes, sir,” Drew gasped.

“Now, since Stan has painted the condom on my dick with the fluid used to preserve some of most potent Jalapeno peppers in all of Mexico, all you have to do is deep throat this baby until the cows come home.” As he pressed a button, there was a whirring sound as Drew’s head began to rise toward the dentist’s crotch.

“Open wide, you worthless piece of scum. Say ‘Aaagh,’” laughed Dr. Wang.

Drew’s eyes widened in terror as the bald man’s cock passed between his lips. Seconds later, as he felt his throat catch on fire, he could hear Ethel Merman's voice, accompanied by that awful disco beat, blaring:

“You’re an old smoothie.
I’m an old softie.
I’m just like
putty in the hands
Of a boy like you!”

Next: Wednesday, March 4th

And Your Little Dog, Too!

If Axenbourg felt unnoticed and unappreciated as he stood by the curb waiting for a cab, his colleague, Ravenna McAfree, knew all too well that she was the center of attention in rehearsal room B of the Metropolitan Opera House. Ravenna was being read the riot act by the Met’s senior prompter and vocal coach, Wayne DiStefano.

Again.

Having just finished coaching the aria “Bevi, e fuggi, t’en prego” as part of her preparation for the Met’s new production of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, the soprano was being taken to task for what Wayne considered to be her habitual lack of attention to detail and drama. Of course, Ravenna had heard this speech many times before. But since she was pretty to look at and easy on the ears, DiStefano’s tiresome lectures about her responsibility to uphold a grand performing tradition never really hit their mark.

Ravenna knew that she would always get work and that there was precious little this pathetically frustrated, mean-spirited man could do to stop her career. Once upon a time -- like so many other voice teachers -- DiStefano might have had a promising career as a singer. But acute stage fright had made it impossible for him to get up the nerve to perform. In order to continue working in the music profession, Wayne had built himself a secondary career as a vocal coach.

Although he was well-known to music lovers across the nation for his witty remarks during the Texaco Opera Quiz (the Saturday afternoon intermission feature of the Met’s weekly radio broadcasts), the scathing insults and bullying techniques which Wayne unleashed on the Met’s singers during their coaching sessions never scorched the public’s ears.

Most of the people who worked at the Met respected DiStefano for his unerring musicianship and encyclopedic knowledge of operatic history. Many, however, also despised the man and saw him as the evil embodiment of the old saying: “Those who cannot sing, teach.”

Thus, it was the publicly charming and privately feared DiStefano who once told Montserrat Caballe that she reminded him of a manatee with a severe case of amnesia. It was the snake-tongued DiStefano who suggested to “Damn Dreary Te Kanawa” (as he liked to call one of the world’s most popular sopranos) that, while sipping coffee during the Marschallin’s Act I morning levee in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, she might like to give the audience some indication of having arisen from the pathetic somnambulism which had become her artistic trademark.

If the artists performing at the Met were willing to tolerate DiStefano’s humiliating diatribes, it was only because he inevitably coaxed the kind of results from them which no other vocal coach could achieve. Once Wayne established a working rapport with an artist he was able to pull the most miraculous performance from that person when the singer was musically unprepared or feeling under the weather. However, if the two became mortal enemies, the singer’s only line of defense was to caution Wayne about his dangerously high blood pressure.

From where she was standing, Ravenna McAfree could see that Wayne’s fingers were starting to shake; a sure sign that he was warming up for the kill. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Wayne bellowed. “Are you aware that this aria is being sung by a proud noblewoman, hated throughout Venice, who is desperately trying to save her son’s life? Do you understand that Donizetti wrote this music so that a soprano with a golden voice like yours could have an absolute field day with this aria? Because if you do, you’re not convincing me of that fact for one second! The way you just sang this aria makes me wonder if you’re completely whacked out on Quaaludes or if you actually prefer to deliver some of the most beautiful music ever written for the bel canto literature as if you were a mindless cow farting out a high E flat!”

Before her coaching session that afternoon, Ravenna had sworn that nothing DiStefano could say would upset her. “Oh, come on, Wayne,” she sighed. “Chill out. You know what the doctor said about your blood pressure.”

“Fuck my high blood pressure, you little tart,” roared DiStefano as he slammed both hands down on the keyboard. “I’ve been handed the unfortunate task of trying to squeeze a decent performance out of you and by the time the opening night of this production rolls around I’m damned well going to do it. This is the first time the Metropolitan Opera has performed Lucrezia Borgia since December 5th, 1904 and I am not about to let you walk out on that stage, all gussied up in some $20,000 costume, and make a total fool out of yourself simply because you’re content to perform some of Donizetti’s most intensely dramatic music as if you’d just had a designer label lobotomy.”

DiStefano’s contempt for the soprano knew no bounds. Here was someone who had been given a beautiful instrument to work with but who treated her voice as if it were an absolute joke. Like many of the successful new singers who had come to the Met in recent years, Ravenna McAfree struck DiStefano as a cold-blooded, materialistic little bitch who was only interested in cashing in on multimedia opportunities. The soprano’s enormous fees did not impress Wayne. Nor could he deny that the young woman was a magnificently photogenic creature.

However, what DiStefano simply could not tolerate was the fact that Ravenna McAfree’s filthy rich husband had hired the most expensive publicist in New York and told him to make his wife into an international superstar. Therefore, Ravenna really didn’t have to do anything to improve her singing. She was the kind of pretty, bland young artist who could be content to hit a few high notes, pick up her paycheck, and continue singing each role with the emotional involvement of a pencil eraser while her husband literally bought her an operatic career.

Having worked with all the great sopranos of the past quarter century -- legendary singers like Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Leontyne Price, Zinka Milanov and Licia Albanese -- Wayne was not about to call this operatic bimbo, this embarrassingly vapid cross between Pia Zadora and Kiri Te Kanawa, a diva.

No way.

Compared to any of the Met’s great artists, Ravenna McAfree was staggeringly dull. Oh, sure. She was a good looking young lady. But the mere fact that her face appeared regularly in all of the popular women’s magazines offered no excuse for Ravenna’s appalling lack of musicianship. Even in DiStefano’s wildest fantasies, the only reason he could imagine why the Met kept hiring Ravenna was because her steady presence on daytime talk shows had such a healthy effect on the box office.

Times were tough. He knew that. But, having just suffered through another lifeless rendition of Lucrezia’s Act I, Scene II aria, how could Wayne even begin to explain to Ravenna that her singing wasn’t worth shit?

How could he tell this woman -- this vocal trollop that the Met was pushing toward superstardom -- that if she didn’t start to pay attention to what the composer was saying through his music she’d be booed right off the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House on her opening night?

Before Wayne could launch into his stock lecture about the history of bel canto singing, he was interrupted by the appearance of a young man from the publicity department who rushed into the rehearsal room and informed Ravenna that she was late for her photo shoot. Once again, the soprano (who, by now, had grown quite accustomed to Wayne’s temper tantrums) was saved by the clock.

As she headed for the door, Ravenna put her hand on DiStefano’s shoulder and whispered to him in her sweetest, most soothing voice. “Look, Wayne. I understand how you feel about the death of a musical tradition and I want you to know that I have nothing against you, personally. But as far as I’m concerned, singing is just a job. Okay? I don’t harbor any illusions about becoming a great artist; I’m just here to make a lot of money with my voice.”

Ravenna could see Wayne’s fingers starting to tremble again and knew that his temper was close to erupting. But she wanted to make her feelings clear. “For most of the singers in my generation, the music business is exactly that. It’s a business, and that’s all it really is,” she stated.

“A new production of Lucrezia Borgia is a means of fundraising and getting publicity. It’s not supposed to become some kind of artistic monument to the world’s dead divas. Besides, there are only a handful of the old girls left who can sing this music the way you’d like to hear it. And I’ve got news for you, Wayne. Those ladies are all going to retire soon. So, as far as I’m concerned, you can take their old recordings and cram them up your oversensitive musicological ass!”

As she stood in the doorway, Ravenna blew a kiss to the irate man at the piano and flashed him one of her most dazzling photogenic smiles. “On that cheerful note,” she said, “you have a nice day. And one more thing, Wayne. Why don’t you just fuck art! You might live longer!”



Next: Open Wide!

Thank You For Flying Delta Today

At exactly 2:28 p.m. a Delta Airlines jet inbound from Cincinnati touched down at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and taxied to Gate 6. As soon as the jetway had been secured in place and the flight documents transferred from the cabin attendant to the gate supervisor, the first passenger to deplane was a tall, athletic man with raven black hair.

To the people gathered in the gate area awaiting the arrival of friends and relatives, John Axenbourg looked like any other traveling executive. His dark blue suit, yellow “power” tie and beige raincoat did little to make him stand out in a crowd. The tan attache case he carried in his left hand and the brown overnighter bag slung over his shoulder were the trademark of the investment banker, traveling salesman, or merger and acquisitions lawyer whose work transformed them into road warriors..

Axenbourg, however, did not work on Wall Street. Nor was he repping any product other than himself. One of America’s fastest rising operatic talents, he had given a glorious recital in Cincinnati’s historic Music Hall the previous night and, on Saturday evening, was scheduled to perform the role of Wotan in the Metropolitan Opera’s telecast of Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold

Despite anything that politicians and performers might say about how they crave anonymity, as he made his way through the passenger terminal John Axenbourg was desperately hoping that someone -- anyone -- would recognize his face and ask him for an autograph. In recent summers, the baritone from Omaha had developed an impressive following on Broadway by starring in limited run revivals of such popular old musicals as South Pacific , Man of La Mancha and Carousel.

During those carefully scheduled stints (which had been designed to capture the heart of New York’s tourist trade), Axenbourg had appeared on every local talk show, stopped to sign autographs after each performance, and taken advantage of every conceivable photo opportunity from appearing in the Statue of Liberty's 100th birthday celebration to singing the Star Spangled Banner at the Republican National Convention.

During the previous summer, the singer had taped a new recording of Man of La Mancha with the London Philharmonia Orchestra which became one of the best-selling gift albums of the Christmas season. His video of the musical’s hit song, "The Impossible Dream" was constantly being shown on MTV.

The 39-year-old singer had worked hard to transform himself into a household name and -- although maintaining a steady presence in the media may have cost him a cool $75,000 in public relations fees – as far as he was concerned, the investment of time and money had paid off handsomely. Now, with the telecast of Das Rheingold coming up on Saturday night, Axenbourg was convinced that his publicity people could position him as the most exciting new voice in German opera. Hell, they had spent the past six months hyping him as the greatest Wagnerian singer of his generation.

With enough money, anything could happen.

Anything, perhaps, except the spontaneous smile of recognition which the singer so desperately sought as he strode through LaGuardia’s crowded passenger terminal. As he traversed the distance from the jetway to the curb, passing one crowded gate area after another, not one person at LaGuardia Airport recognized Axenbourg. It was a peculiar kind of anonymity which felt like a crushing defeat.

That would all change – and change for the better -- the singer reassured himself as he patiently stood in line for a taxi. If everything his publicist had hinted would happen after Saturday night’s telecast really did come true, Axenbourg’s recognition factor -- even at LaGuardia -- was destined to undergo a sudden and dramatic transformation. As far as the baritone was concerned, that change could not happen soon enough.



Next: And Your Little Dog, Too!

Tuesday, March 3, 1987

It most definitely was not a dark and stormy night. The grey skies over Manhattan showed no sign of yielding to spring. New Yorkers were still wearing gloves, mufflers and earmuffs as they exited the subway, watching the warm moisture from people’s breath as it escaped from the mouths of strangers.

Having worked for the past thirty-four years at Columbia University, Edith Susnick was a familiar face to many people on campus. Short and thin, with closely-cropped grey hair, the soft-spoken librarian had steered countless students toward the information they needed for their research. Edith had always kept her part of the library functioning with pristine efficiency. Although she was extremely polite and attentive to their needs, Columbia’s students often wondered if Edith ever heard a single word anyone said to her. Many suspected she was tuned to some high-pitched frequency from an alien planet. Most people on campus assumed she was still a virgin.

The hard truth? Edith Susnick was a hopeless romantic who, when asked why she had never married, would quickly explain that her marital status had absolutely nothing to do with sexual preference. Several decades ago, Edith concluded that the social ritual of dating a man was such an intellectually stifling chore that it really wasn’t worth the effort. Given the choice between suffering through dinner with some arrogant boor who couldn’t control his ego or a good novel, she much preferred to pick up a book, turn on some classical music, and keep herself entertained in perfect solitude.

Susnick was what people of her generation liked to call "headstrong."

Throughout her long tenure at Columbia, Edith had made it clear to a string of chief librarians that as far as she was concerned, any work which did not require her presence in the main reading room could be accompanied by classical music. Thus, the radio in her tiny office was irrevocably tuned to WQXR-FM.

Students would often snicker when they encountered Edith in the stacks. On such occasions, as the librarian searched for a book, her left foot could be seen tapping in rhythm to the beat while, with her right hand, she absent-mindedly conducted symphonies which only Edith could hear. Although several members of Columbia’s faculty liked to tease the old woman -- calling her "The Walkman Librarian" -- she didn’t mind their jokes at all. With a Sony Walkman clamped to her belt and a set of earphones around her head, she was quite content.

Indeed, as long as she had her music and her books to keep her happy, Edith Susnick was more than satisfied.

Many people at Columbia imagine the librarian to be a hopelessly eccentric spinster who probably had no social life. And yet the object of their scorn had quite a reputation. In her own way, Edith was a minor celebrity, known throughout New York’s music world as the queen of the Met’s standees. Having attended several performances at the Metropolitan Opera each week since her eighteenth birthday, Edith knew hundreds of people who shared her love for opera and classical music.

Her intense passion for opera had caused Edith to memorize every fact about every artist who had ever sung at the Metropolitan Opera. At home, in her sprawling rent-controlled apartment on West End Avenue, she had dozens of cartons filled with autographed programs, newspaper clippings, and photographs dating back to 1950. Although some of the opera company’s administration hated her guts (many accused Susnick of leaking information to the press about future casts and productions), the singers all acknowledged Edith to be an extremely loyal fan who had been visiting them backstage and requesting autographs ever since their Metropolitan Opera debuts.

On the morning of March 3rd, Edith was midway through her coffee break when her boss, Harold Silverman, barged into her office, effectively shattering the beauty of Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik with his presence. Looking up from the New York Times crossword puzzle (Edith had been momentarily humbled by its request for the five-letter name of Cyzicus's wife in Greek legendry), the old woman laid her glasses on the desk and waited politely for Harold to tell her what was on his mind.

She knew he would.

The two librarians had established a working truce several months ago after Harold arrived from Chicago to take over Columbia’s library. Although Edith had been trained in the old school of library science, had tenure with the university, and could not be fired from her job, her casual rapport with the students irked Harold (who was at least fifteen years younger than Edith and anxious to establish himself in everyone’s mind as the university’s chief librarian).

The way Edith saw things, Harold was not only a pompous Yuppie obsessed with computer technology, he was also a dull techno-jackass filled with ridiculous ideas about how to apply a crazy new style of management to running the library. Harold’s newfangled ideas would have been all well and fine with Edith had she not been so suspicious of her boss’s lifestyle. For a professional librarian, Silverman seemed to be strangely lacking in curiosity. In fact, Edith doubted that he ever read a book in his spare time.

How could he if he was always hanging out in singles bars? It just didn’t make sense.

Although they worked together in what appeared to be professional harmony, there was no love lost between these two librarians. Since joining the faculty at Columbia, Harold had become convinced that Edith (who seemed to go to a concert or performance at Lincoln Center every night of the week) was both an absent-minded fool and a sexually frustrated old bitch. He did little to hide his disapproval of the music which could always be heard coming from Edith’s office. As far as Silverman was concerned, any music distracted people from doing their work. However, on this one particular morning, as he stood before his colleague, Harold was all smiles.

"Oh, Edith. I have a new cataloguing project," he announced, "and it’s the kind of job which only you would have the patience to tackle. We need to free up some space for the library’s new computer room. So I’ve decided to put all of those old masters’ theses which are stored in the basement onto microfilm. What I’d like you to do is assign call numbers to each thesis. It’s a job which will take at least three months. But, the way I figure it, you can do all of the work here in your office while listening to your trusty little radio. I’m sure nobody will want to bother you."

Edith was immediately on her guard.

Why, she wondered, was Harold being so solicitous? Did he want to keep her out of the main reading room in order to cut down on her contact with the students?

Or had everyone else on the library’s staff already turned down the job?

Edith knew that, on a good day, most of the people who worked in Columbia’s library had a maximum attention span of ten minutes. So perhaps she had been handed the job because of her sheer tenacity. Everyone who worked at Columbia knew that Edith found great pleasure in accumulating useless bits of information that no one else could possibly care about. Maybe Harold was playing with a full deck of cards this time.

"How many manuscripts are there?" she asked.

"God only knows," groaned Silverman as he reached for the doorknob. "There must be a quarter century’s worth of dissertations in those cartons downstairs. I’ll ask one of the aides to bring a few boxes up to your office so you can start in on them tomorrow morning."

Before leaving the room, Harold paused for a minute and fixed his gaze on Edith. "Just do me one favor, Susnick. One favor, only," he sneered. "Try not to read each and every manuscript. Okay?"

As Harold closed the door behind him, Edith weighed the pros and cons of her new assignment.

She resented the fact that this job would keep her out of circulation. After all, half the fun of library work was in helping people find information.

But, at the same time, she relished the idea of being left alone in her office for three solid months listening to WQXR. While this assignment could involve some fairly tedious work (Edith didn’t doubt for one second that plowing through all those manuscripts would take a lot of time), at least she might discover some interesting new facts to add to her collection of useless trivia.

And so, as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra began to play Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, Edith went back to work on the morning paper’s crossword puzzle. Now, if only she could think of a five-letter word for large gallinaceous birds of Central America!


Next: Thank You For Flying Delta Today

Dedication

If a person is genuinely lucky during the course of his life, he will encounter one or two people who help him to believe in himself and inspire him to keep working at whatever he has chosen to do. I was extremely fortunate to cross paths with three remarkable women at crucial turning points in my life.

During the late 1960s, while she was starring on Broadway in the hit musical Mame,I made the acquaintance of Angela Lansbury. Watching her perform the title role many, many times in Broadway's Winter Garden Theater (while managing to keep her performance fresh for each new audience) showed me what it meant to set high standards of professionalism and stick to them.

Offstage, Lansbury demonstrated to all who worked with her what it meant to be a good colleague and a hard worker. Angela and I began to correspond and, shortly after moving to San Francisco, I received a letter in which she wrote "With your talent, I have no doubt you will land on your feet."

Because her letter arrived at a particularly stressful time in my life, I remember being flabbergasted that a "big star" like Angela Lansbury could be generous enough to reach out and give a few simple words of encouragement to someone living in a world which must have been light years away from her daily reality. Her words bolstered my spirits during many emotionally tough moments and Angela has always been an inspiration to me: as a performer, as a professional, and as a human being. Here are two clips of Angela and George Hearn performing Stephen Sondheim's tongue-twisting lyrics from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Another key source of inspiration was soprano Beverly Sills. Watching Beverly perform helped me to understand the deeply personal joy of making music. Thanks to her drive to highlight the achievements of young American opera singers and focus attention on America's growing regional opera scene, I devoted much of my 15 years writing Tales of Tessi Tura to covering performances on opera stages throughout our nation, from Anchorage, Des Moines and San Diego to San Juan, St. Louis, and Santa Fe.

During my career as a freelance writer I gained a reputation as the only music critic to give serious attention to the growth of regional opera throughout the United States. That's not to say I didn't attend performances at the Met, New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago or any of the other "major" opera companies on a regular basis. But there were many nights when I was the only out-of-town critic showing any interest in what was happening at a regional American opera company. Here's a rare clip of Beverly as Cleopatra in Tito Capobianco's highly stylized production of Handel's Guilio Cesare -- the role which catapulted her to stardom in the fall of 1966.

And here's Beverly in one of her lighter landmark moments as one of America's great musical ambassadors -- and the woman who helped bring opera to the masses.

One of my most stalwart supporters in my operatic endeavors was Ava Jean Mears, who was then Public Relations Director and Archivist for the Houston Grand Opera. A woman with an incredible memory, Ava Jean is a writer's strongest ally (a colleague once opined that if he ever needed to find a one-legged albino dwarf who could swing upside down from a tree limb while singing all four parts of some obscure operatic ensemble in Swahili, that person probably went to school with Ava Jean).

The dozens of professional arts publicists who matured under Ava Jean's guidance learned how to be solicitous without being pushy, how to be concerned without being territorial and, above all, how to be fair when dealing with the press. When I became National Editor of Opera Monthly magazine and needed an additional pseudonym for my writing, Ava Jean's devoted golden retriever, B.J., was hauled into service. Numerous young American opera singers were subsequently interviewed by "B. J. Mears" and were grateful for the opportunity.

Ava Jean has always loves to tell the story of how one night, when she was visiting her neighbors, Inga and Bob, one of Inga's grandchildren noted that B.J. was "a very smart dog."

"He sure is," replied Ava Jean. "Why, he even wrote the cover story in this month's issue of Opera Monthly!"

"Don't be silly," the little girl groaned as she rolled her eyes. "He did no such thing! Or did you?" she asked as she looked B.J. in the face.

To Angela, Beverly, and Ava Jean my heartfelt thanks for your generosity, inspiration, and encouragement.

Foreword

For 25 years of my life, opera was an obsession. I was one of the lucky people who managed to turn my obsession into a professional lifestyle. After years of experiencing opera from the standing room sections of Lincoln Center's Metropolitan Opera House and New York State Theater, I was handed the golden opportunity to write an opera column in San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter (a local gay newspaper whose writers included a rising politician named Harvey Milk).

The editor at that time (1977) was a charming man named Paul Lorch, who admitted to knowing absolutely nothing about opera. But as someone tuned in to the pulse of the gay community, he knew that the two most popular topics of conversation in San Francisco's leather bars were an expensive new kitchen gadget called a Cuisinart and, of course, opera. Paul's roommate, Kristin Robert Bjornfeldt, was an aspiring tenor who sang in the San Francisco Opera chorus. When Bobby recommended me to Paul, he offered the following caveat: "All you need to know about George is that he travels all over the place to catch Beverly Sills in performance."

Since the B.A.R. offered no pay to arts writers at the time, I knew I would have to make do with whatever press seats I could scrounge from opera companies. Of greater value was the fact that I had the chance to experiment with an artistic soapbox. Writing a column is very different from merely reviewing performances. In launching Tales of Tessi Tura my gimmick was simple. I was the first music critic in the nation to write about opera from an openly gay standpoint. My goal was to try to reach gay readers who (a) knew nothing about opera, (b) were much more tuned into disco music, but (c) could pick up on the sense that the columnist really, really loved this bizarre 400-year-old art form. The fact that I had a fairly strong knowledge of the subject meant that I could include lots of "in" jokes for dedicated opera queens.

My hunch paid off in spades. Tales of Tessi Tura ran for 15 years and I acquired a reputation for saying -- in print -- some of the things that a lot of people in the opera world wished they had the courage to say out loud. Using street vernacular I managed to get away with murder in the stuffy world of classical music. I once titled a piece about the Houston Grand Opera's full-length revival of Gershwin's Porgy & Bess as "Big, Black and Uncut."

One afternoon, while enjoying lunch with two renowned music critics from Southern California, I was surprised to hear them express envy for the raunchy language I used so freely in my column. "With the strict editorial standards here at the Los Angeles Times, we could never get away with that," one of them sighed.

"Well, that's one of the perks of writing for a small gay newspaper," I chuckled. "We don't have any standards at all!"

My original attempt to name the column Tales of Tessitura was quickly sabotaged by the newspaper's publisher, a vicious opera queen who was also a key member of San Francisco's Imperial Court. Determined to give me a proper drag name, Bob Ross split the word "tessitura" into two words: "Tessi" and "Tura" (in its intended usage, tessitura is a musical term).

However, for those of you who don't know, Tessi Tura ("That's Ms. Tura to you!") is the name of the the lead stripper in the musical Gypsy. Attempting to combine her limited knowledge of classical ballet technique with the standard bumps and grinds of burlesque, Tessi Tura made Broadway history in 1959 when she introduced the song "You Gotta Have A Gimmick."









I still cherish the memory of Beverly Sills cheerfully introducing me to a colleague as "This is Tessi Tura!"

Sometime around 1990 I started to work on a murder mystery set at the Metropolitan Opera House. This was before the digital media explosion -- when very few people had access to the Internet. Upon showing the first 80 pages to a coloratura soprano whose opinions I respected, I was surprised to hear her gasp "George, I know these characters. I work with them!"

A financial crisis, followed soon after by a major career change, forced me to put the story on the back burner for nearly 15 years. However, by 2007, blogs had become a force to be reckoned with. While converting a textbook I had previously written (Dictation Therapy For Doctors) into blog format, I discovered a way to be surprisingly creative with today's new technology.

As I began to toy with the idea of revisiting my long-abandoned murder mystery (and, as the title states, transforming it into a "curiously cross-linked operatic adventure"), the ways in which today's technology changed the process of writing continually amazed me.

I also got some rather startling insights into how the cultural landscape had changed in the 30 years since my name first appeared in print. Because we live in an age dominated by electronic wizardry and laser technology, new inventions bombard us so quickly that last year's breakthroughs are easily forgotten.

"The further and faster the human race goes, the more difficult it becomes to remember its receding and ever-expanding past," claimed William Clay Ford. "To neglect that heritage is to risk a future in which young people find themselves without a means of building on the firm and reassuring foundation of the past."

Had it not been for the zeal with which Ford's grandfather, Henry Ford, collected traces of America's Industrial Revolution, there might be little left to remind us of our not too distant history. Their pattern of display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan is vastly different from that seen in most other science museums. In Dearborn, visitors can observe minute changes in technology and design. The evolution of dictating equipment proves fascinating when compared to the technology of today's electronic office.

An indicator of the breadth of Henry Ford's collection is to note that, during the first few years of the museum's life, nearly 80% of its visitors could recognize and identify most of the objects on display from their personal experience. At best, no more than 5% of today's visitors can readily identify the same objects.

In researching links for this blog, I soon realized that many corporate and cultural landmarks had disappeared in the past quarter century. Words which were once a common part of our vocabulary and fallen from use.

Perhaps, in order to understand where we are headed, we need to stop, take some time to reflect on recent changes in our lifestyles, and try to understand how the language we use in our daily lives has been affected by the changes in our culture. Thanks to Wikipedia and other online resources, readers of this blog can easily reacquaint themselves with the recent past.

They can also choose what kind of reading experience they wish to have:

Option #1: The Simple Approach (Entertainment):

If someone justs want to read the text of a novel, he can do that for the sheer fun of it.

Option #2: The Complex Approach (Edutainment):

If the reader is curious about certain terms or people with whom he is not familiar, by clicking on an embedded link he can instantly access a wealth of knowledge.

When I asked some friends for their reaction to the experience, I was surprised by what they had to say.

• One commented that this process was much more fun than reading academic footnotes.

• Another felt that, although it may have slowed down his reading a bit, the access to embedded links broadened his ability to see and experience the novel in a new way.

• As the author, I was floored by the reference materials that were just a click away (and were barely imaginable when I started attending opera).

• And as a web surfer, I learned a whole lot more than I expected to in the course of writing a novel.

Depending on your own reading habits, you may find it best to read the text of each page before going back and clicking on those links which interest you. If you are fascinated by etymology, you'll have yourself a grand old time. If you simply enjoy web-based wild goose chases, click away to your heart's content!

I am especially grateful to Armistead Maupin and David Perry for encouraging me to move forward with this new format. Here's hoping you enjoy the result!







Next: March 3rd

Why Should I Make A Donation?

In recent years, rising costs of paper, ink, and delivery have narrowed – if not totally destroyed – the profit margin on books which fail to become bestsellers. The amount of time and energy needed to get a book into the hands of its readers means that many works become obsolete by their date of publication. That all changes with electronic publishing. Not only can bloggers retain complete artistic control over their intellectual product, bloggers quickly bypass some of the traditional obstacles encountered when publishing a text in hard copy:

Cost considerations:

• Bloggers are not held hostage by variations in the prices of ink, postage, and/or paper.

• Bloggers don’t need to worry about physical restrictions imposed by page size, book size, shipping weight and/or availability of shelf space.

• Bloggers face no extra cost to add color to their presentations.

• Bloggers don’t need to worry about the high price of binding a book – or publishing a book whose binding eventually falls apart.

• Bloggers don’t need to budget for a sales/marketing campaign or particular size of print run.

• Bloggers don’t need to pay the costs of warehousing inventory which might end up being remaindered.
  
  

Strategic risks:

• Bloggers don’t need to compete against other titles in a publishing house's line of books.

• Bloggers don’t need to negotiate with publishers through agents.

• Bloggers don’t need to battle ridiculously outdated publishing concepts such as claims that "You can't have a murder mystery that's more than 225 pages....."

On the flip side, however, are the creative advantages:

• Bloggers can update their work at any time.

• By taking advantage of the hypertext links, bloggers can insert value-added reference links to intellectual content which is available to anyone on the Internet without any violation of copyright law.

• Bloggers can get direct feedback from their readers.
  
  

One of my favorite quotes comes from the final scene of Hello, Dolly! at the moment when most of the principal characters have gone upstairs to get their money out of Horace’s safe. Left alone in Vandergelder’s Hay & Feed Store, Dolly Levi lovingly wraps her arms around the cash register, turns to the audience, and utters Thornton Wilder’s famous words:

"Money, money, money, money, money -- it’s like the sun we walk under -- it can kill and it can cure. Horace Vandergelder never tires of saying that 99% of the people in this world are fools and, in a way, I suppose he’s right. We’re all fools. Himself, Irene, Cornelius, myself. We’re all fools – and we’re all in grave danger of destroying the world in our folly. Yet the surest way to keep us safe from harm is to give us those few things in life which will make us happy – and that takes a little bit of money!“Now, the difference between a little bit of money and no money at all is enormous – and it can shatter the world. And the difference between a little bit of money and an enormous amount of money is very slight. But that, too, can shatter the world. It’s all a question of how it’s used. As my late husband, Ephraim Levi, always used to say: Money -- you should pardon the expression -- is a little like manure. It doesn’t do anyone a bit of good unless it’s spread all around, encouraging young things to grow.”

A lot of hard work went into creating A Dying Art Form. If you enjoyed reading this blog and would like to make a donation to its author, please feel free to use one of the following options (the amount you donate is entirely your choice).

Online: You can make a donation via PayPal, credit card, or e-check, by clicking on the link in the right-hand column of your screen.

Snail Mail: You can send a donation via check or money order to the following address:

George Heymont

584 Castro Street, #275

San Francisco, California 94114

Please make checks payable to "George Heymont."

Thank you for supporting A Dying Art Form and spreading the word about it.
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About The Author

George Heymont graduated from Brooklyn College in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts in speech and theater history. After three years in Providence, Rhode Island, Mr. Heymont moved to San Francisco, where he entered the field of medical transcription and also transcribed for court reporters.

An impressive career as a freelance journalist has witnessed more than 1,000 of Mr. Heymont's articles published in over 100 magazines and newspapers including Opera News, The Advocate, GQ, and various inflight magazines. He has served as Fine Arts Editor for Bay Area Reporter, as National Editor for Opera Monthly, and been a Contributing Editor to PEOPLExpressions and Amtrak Express magazines. His opera column, "Tales of Tessi Tura" ran for 15 years in San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter and earned him three Cable Car Awards. He subsequently wrote the "Transcription Trends" column in For The Record Magazine from 1999-2003.

Mr. Heymont also has an extensive background as a motivational speaker. He has conducted master class seminars for apprentice programs at some of the nation's leading opera companies and been a guest speaker at conferences sponsored by the California Emergency Physicians Medical Group and the Northern California Podiatric Association. He is the author of Dictation Therapy For Doctors.