and after spending twenty years under Ada’s watchful eye, I suppose I appeared to qualify. She hadn’t been careful with Sara, because Sara’s voice is low and easy, waves against a boat and wine dripping down the neck of a bottle. But my voice is limoncello, steam from a kettle, flint. It can be dangerous if you turn your back on it, and Ada knew better than to make that mistake again.
The first day of rehearsal was a disaster. Or at least it started out that way. I’d been working over the role phrase by phrase, picking it apart with Baba Ada in our living room, while outside the snow melted and then froze back up in rigid bulges. We could have worked in my mother’s empty room—had, in fact, intended to turn it into a studio. But that didn’t pan out. Her absence shuddered through it, always. When I crossed the threshold I couldn’tsustain notes and started breaking out in nervous sweats. My throat closed up, growing thicker and thicker from the inside, and I swallowed with great glottal gulps until Ada couldn’t take it anymore and swatted my bottom. I felt smoke rising behind my eyes. So we moved back into the living room.
I stood onstage at the Lyric beside the piano and drummed it with the pads of my fingers. The pianist gave me a dirty look—I was nowhere near the tempo of the section we were rehearsing. Pelléas et Mélisande has no real arias, but there are two brief solos and one of them belongs to Mélisande. A foundling from the woods, she marries a prince and falls in love with his brother but is too stupid to understand quite what she’s done. Her song from the tower is all about her long and long-suffering hair—shades of Rapunzel—very waiflike and full of dull quavering. That was what we were starting our day with. I tapped out the rhythm but sped it up to triple the appropriate pace. In my rehearsals with Ada, I’d sprinted through the song to keep myself motivated, and it left us both rolling on the floor with tears in our eyes. My long hair awaits you in the tower —it sounds much better frantic, as maniacal as its meaning.
“Ehm, I think we should get started,” said Rick. These days, I’ve come to love Rick. I love that his name sounds like it should belong to a bricklayer instead of an accompanist. And that he can hold a casual conversation while playing Tchaikovsky’s first concerto. But that morning I did not love him yet.
“I am started,” I snapped at him. “All warmed up and nowhere to go.”
“Whatever.” Rick yawned. He’s used to dealing with divas, actual divas. I barely weighed enough to legally give blood.
“All right,” said the director, Martin. He was parked in the fifth row—not the house’s best seats but close enough to be audible when he wanted to start dissecting our work. Beside himsat Philippe, who was overseeing the whole season, and looked crassly intimidating in a black mock turtleneck and blazer. It was unusual for Philippe to attend a first run-through, and I pushed away the feeling that perhaps his presence had to do with me. The feeling that this was perhaps a test.
“From the beginning. We’ll run through the tower song a few times at least so we can”—he waved a hand above his head—“get calibrated, really make sure Mélisande feels right. She’s the key to setting the tone here. Remember”—Martin swiveled to face me directly—“in her head, she’s still lost in the woods, even though technically speaking she’s up in the castle. And she’s about to get a lot more lost, though she doesn’t know it yet.”
He leaned over and whispered something to Philippe and then settled back in his seat, hitching one ankle over his knee.
“Okay, Mellie, let’s take her for a ride,” said Rick. I glared at him but said nothing, just curled my fingernails up into my palm so I wouldn’t be tempted to tap them on the piano shell. I rested my other hand briefly on my stomach, checking my own posture since there was no ruler here to
The first day of rehearsal was a disaster. Or at least it started out that way. I’d been working over the role phrase by phrase, picking it apart with Baba Ada in our living room, while outside the snow melted and then froze back up in rigid bulges. We could have worked in my mother’s empty room—had, in fact, intended to turn it into a studio. But that didn’t pan out. Her absence shuddered through it, always. When I crossed the threshold I couldn’tsustain notes and started breaking out in nervous sweats. My throat closed up, growing thicker and thicker from the inside, and I swallowed with great glottal gulps until Ada couldn’t take it anymore and swatted my bottom. I felt smoke rising behind my eyes. So we moved back into the living room.
I stood onstage at the Lyric beside the piano and drummed it with the pads of my fingers. The pianist gave me a dirty look—I was nowhere near the tempo of the section we were rehearsing. Pelléas et Mélisande has no real arias, but there are two brief solos and one of them belongs to Mélisande. A foundling from the woods, she marries a prince and falls in love with his brother but is too stupid to understand quite what she’s done. Her song from the tower is all about her long and long-suffering hair—shades of Rapunzel—very waiflike and full of dull quavering. That was what we were starting our day with. I tapped out the rhythm but sped it up to triple the appropriate pace. In my rehearsals with Ada, I’d sprinted through the song to keep myself motivated, and it left us both rolling on the floor with tears in our eyes. My long hair awaits you in the tower —it sounds much better frantic, as maniacal as its meaning.
“Ehm, I think we should get started,” said Rick. These days, I’ve come to love Rick. I love that his name sounds like it should belong to a bricklayer instead of an accompanist. And that he can hold a casual conversation while playing Tchaikovsky’s first concerto. But that morning I did not love him yet.
“I am started,” I snapped at him. “All warmed up and nowhere to go.”
“Whatever.” Rick yawned. He’s used to dealing with divas, actual divas. I barely weighed enough to legally give blood.
“All right,” said the director, Martin. He was parked in the fifth row—not the house’s best seats but close enough to be audible when he wanted to start dissecting our work. Beside himsat Philippe, who was overseeing the whole season, and looked crassly intimidating in a black mock turtleneck and blazer. It was unusual for Philippe to attend a first run-through, and I pushed away the feeling that perhaps his presence had to do with me. The feeling that this was perhaps a test.
“From the beginning. We’ll run through the tower song a few times at least so we can”—he waved a hand above his head—“get calibrated, really make sure Mélisande feels right. She’s the key to setting the tone here. Remember”—Martin swiveled to face me directly—“in her head, she’s still lost in the woods, even though technically speaking she’s up in the castle. And she’s about to get a lot more lost, though she doesn’t know it yet.”
He leaned over and whispered something to Philippe and then settled back in his seat, hitching one ankle over his knee.
“Okay, Mellie, let’s take her for a ride,” said Rick. I glared at him but said nothing, just curled my fingernails up into my palm so I wouldn’t be tempted to tap them on the piano shell. I rested my other hand briefly on my stomach, checking my own posture since there was no ruler here to
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