Prima Donna at Large by Barbara Paul Page A

“You’re right,” I said. “He’s a monster.”
    She knew right off whom I meant. “What did he do?”
    So I told her everything that had happened at rehearsal—Duchon’s demand that a door be installed upstage center, his insulting suggestion about my breath control, his walking out of rehearsal. I even told her my own imprudent remark about Duchon’s wanting Gatti-Casazza’s job.
    â€œYou know, I was wondering about that,” Emmy said. “Duchon is so overbearing—he just has to run things. He is not a man to take the loss of his own opera house lying down.”
    â€œYou think I’m right, then?”
    â€œProbably.” She giggled. “You may have sabotaged him a little, though, bringing it out into the open like that. He truly did just walk out of rehearsal?”
    â€œHe truly did.”
    â€œSure of himself, isn’t he? One performance in this country, and already he is dictating terms.”
    â€œWell, he thinks he has Gatti over a barrel. As long as Pasquale Amato is out, Duchon can pretty much do as he pleases.”
    â€œHe must not know about Jimmy Freeman, then.”
    â€œAh, but he does!” I told her about our encounter with Jimmy in Delmonico’s.
    â€œYou’ve had a busy day,” Emmy remarked.
    When I’d hung up, I sat and thought about Philippe Duchon. At the time we left the restaurant, we’d been friendly if not actual friends. But that was over now, little as it was. Now we were all going to have to go into our next performance with a baritone who refused to rehearse and with all the ill-will such presumptuousness generated. The man’s behavior was unpardonable. Duchon seemed to have forgotten that Carmen was the woman’s opera; he should have taken his cue from me .
    I called Scotti and told him I was going to need some unusually sympathetic company that evening.

5
    â€œAt least Tiffany’s does not change,” Caruso said, looking around with an appreciative sigh. “Everything else in the world changes, but not Tiffany’s.”
    â€œIt’s only been here ten years, Rico,” I remarked. Caruso had come along to help me pick out a silver jewel box I wanted to give my mother for her birthday. It was the kind of shopping expedition Jimmy Freeman usually accompanied me on, but I hadn’t seen the angry young baritone for more than a week.
    â€œLook at Fifth Avenue!” Caruso went on plaintively. “It turns into the street of commerce! And the lobster palaces, they close down. Rector’s, Shanley’s—gone, gone!”
    Restaurants were important to the tenor. “I miss Rector’s too,” I admitted. “It was a good place to be seen.”
    â€œLobster Newburg and White Seal champagne,” he sighed. “Venison chops. Lynnhaven oysters. The Café de l’Opéra, it is gone too. And this year they make Hammerstein’s Victoria into motion picture house!” He made a gesture of disgust. “Motion pictures—pah!”
    â€œYou’re getting old, Rico,” I laughed. “I remember a time when you were delighted by everything new. It didn’t matter what it was, just so long as it was new! Besides, aren’t you being a little hard on the motion pictures?”
    â€œBut they have no sound!” he cried. “How can you have opera without singing?”
    He was thinking of my acceptance of Mr. de Mille’s invitation to go to California in the summer and make a film version of Carmen . “Don’t think of it as opera,” I said. “Think of it as something different.”
    Just then the Tiffany’s assistant who was helping us and his assistant came back with four silver jewel boxes, which they placed ceremoniously on the velvet-covered table where Caruso and I were sitting. The tenor immediately went into a paroxysm of ecstasy; he loved objets d’art and couldn’t keep