Murder at the Opera - Margaret Truman [5]
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WNO had leased the former industrial building in the late 90s, renovated it, and opened its doors in 2000. With three separate rehearsal rooms, each the size of the Kennedy Center’s main stage, multiple productions could be in rehearsal simultaneously, a distinct advantage. The building also housed the company’s vast costume design, manufacture and storage areas, wig collection, and the offices of the Washington National Opera Center for Education and Training. This was the home of the world-renowned Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program that brought many of the most promising singers, pianists, and directors from around the globe to Washington for intensive one-on-one training. On this afternoon, fourteen talented young men and women were immersed in a two-hour Italian lesson. The majority were American; since 9/11, obtaining visas for future opera stars from overseas had become torturous, causing the program’s administrators to concentrate on homegrown talent. But this crop did include a South Korean, two Canadians, and a Spanish baritone.
The instructor surveyed the class over half-glasses. “We’re missing someone,” he said. “Where is Ms. Lee?”
Shrugs all around.
Charise Lee, a promising soprano from Toronto, was not in her usual seat.
“Is she ill?” asked the instructor.
“I haven’t seen her all day,” another student replied, echoed by others.
The instructor wrote Lee’s name on a slip of paper, which he would turn in to the office following class. Unexcused absences were not taken lightly, although they happened with considerable frequency, particularly with the singers in the group.
“She told me yesterday that she was getting a cold,” a stage director offered.
The instructor smiled. Opera singers were always on the verge of getting colds, or so it seemed to them. “The voice,” they would say, referring to themselves, never “my voice,” as though it was an entity outside themselves. Someone should write an aria about hypochondria, he mused as he began the lesson, focusing on Italian words that were easy to sing, whose consonants didn’t pop, and whose vowels could be crooned.
In another part of the building, the company’s wardrobe director, Harriet McKay, who’d been with the company for fifteen years, was busy scheduling fittings for the cast, chorus, and supers who were to appear in Tosca. The soprano playing Tosca in the production was scheduled to fly in to Washington from Argentina the following day, her arrival preceded by a reputation for being late and especially demanding about what she was to wear onstage. And, Harriet knew, for good reason. Tosca’s costumes were heavy and confining, and seemed to gain weight, and heat, as the production proceeded. Ill-fitting gowns would only add to the soprano’s discomfort, which could manifest itself in a less than sterling performance. Besides, the perfect costume would help ensure her immersion into the role of Tosca. She had a right to be exacting, and Harriet McKay never resented being on the receiving end of what might seem to outsiders nothing more than the unreasonable whims of a persnickety diva.
Harriet and two of the costume department’s thirty volunteers sat at a desk in a corner of the wig room and went over the day’s schedule. Mackensie Smith and the president of George Washington University were slated to be fitted at four. An hour later, Christopher Warren—a pianist from Toronto—and the soprano Charise Lee, students from the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, were penciled in for fittings. They’d been pressed into service as supers for Tosca’s opening night due to a scheduling conflict with two of the regular supers that evening. Because the ranks of supernumeraries included men and women from all walks of life, many of them in demanding professions, such conflicts of timing were not uncommon, much to the chagrin of the woman in charge of finding—and keeping—the right bodies for each production’s run. The director of this production, Anthony Zambrano, was particularly