Murder at the Opera - Margaret Truman [1]
So, in reality, this book is about the Washington National Opera specifically, rather than the world of opera in general.
My decision to have people murdered at the Washington National Opera does not reflect actual events there. Of course, many great operas that have graced the stage of the Kennedy Center Opera House present murder in its most dramatic form, death throes onstage as long and lingering as the musical score calls for. But any relationship between the murdered and the murderers in this book, and those real people who make the Washington National Opera the actual, splendid institution that it is, is happily, purely coincidental.
Finally, my hat is off to those at the Washington National Opera who made the courageous decision to ignore the protests of curmudgeonly purists, and to use English supertitles to translate operas at the Kennedy Center. English supertitles, or surtitles, came into popular use in the early 1980s and have been instrumental in widening the audience for opera. They’ve also tempered the temptation to present foreign operas in English, as grievous a sin as belatedly coloring classic black-and-white motion pictures. As H. L. Mencken once said, “Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian
Or, as Sir Edward Appleton wrote in The Observer in 1955, “I do not mind what language opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don’t understand.”
Margaret Truman
New York
2006
Prologue
She died quickly and with a modicum of suffering.
This came as no surprise. Unlike so-called crimes of passion which are invariably messy, drawn out, and painful, I’d planned her death.
She had to be eliminated because she knew something that I preferred she not know, which raised the possibility that she would pass it along to others. I couldn’t allow that.
Had knowing the victim made it easier or more difficult for me? Of course, having known her cast me as a suspect, along with dozens of others. Murderers who are strangers to their victims invariably stand a better chance of getting away with it. There was a brief temptation to enlist the aid of another person, someone outside our circle of acquaintances, but I quickly ruled that out. The fewer people who know about a murder, the better.
That the murder took place onstage at the Kennedy Center Opera House would lead one to believe that I have a flair for the dramatic. But that was not the reason the area was chosen as the place to ensure her silence. I’d considered a number of settings—her apartment, on the street, or in a secluded room in the Opera company’s rehearsal space at Takoma Park. She provided the answer by insisting that we meet on the stage that night, actually in the early morning hours, long after everyone was gone for the evening except perhaps for a couple of Kennedy Center security guards, who wouldn’t come into the theater unless given reason to, which I certainly didn’t intend to provide.
It should also be pointed out that my choice of a weapon had nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with the fact that the encounter took place on the Opera House’s main stage, where the Washington National Opera would soon present the latest production of Puccini’s warhorse, Tosca. Moments before dealing the fatal blow, I thought of the justified murder of the cruel, lecherous Scarpia in Tosca’s Act II. The major difference was that this slaying was committed in shadows and without onlookers, while Tosca’s stabbing of the cruel chief of the secret police would take place before thousands bearing witness to her defensible action. Of course, Tosca’s dramatic killing of Scarpia is make-believe. This one was very real; I did not break into the aria “Vissi D’arte” before completing the act, as Madame Tosca has done thousand of nights on grand stages around the globe.
The victim was eventually found, of course, although it took almost a full day. I’d placed the body in such a location where few would have reason to go under ordinary circumstances. When her body was discovered, there was a flurry of media