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By Root 430 0

professional singing four years earlier, she now taught at Juilliard, which, as she liked to tell her friends, offered a “balance” that had been lacking in her career, allowing her to remain immersed in the opera but without the associated indignities. By this she did not mean the actual singing, which she would always miss. Even after she had appeared in most if not all of the major houses in the world (and often repeatedly), there was something astonishing to her not only about stepping out to perform in front of thousands but also the entire process leading up to these incredible nights, the theatrical alchemy by which it all came together—though inevitably at the last minute, and just when she would find herself on the verge of despair about some facet of a production—the backstage crew, who created the lighting and costumes and sets; the stage managers and directors, who dictated everything from the position of her hands to erupting walls of fire with the precision of army generals; the conductors and musicians—many of them musical prodigies in their own right—who immersed themselves in the scores of the (mostly) dead composers whose spirits seemed to hover in the theaters in which their works were performed.

It was rather other facets of the life, even beyond the expected pangs of loneliness—which had not failed to materialize but for which she learned to brace herself—that had increasingly tried her patience; the way management—and always after opening night, when she was most exhausted—required her to share a ten-course meal with the biggest patrons, who invariably liked to interrogate her about the most intimate details of her life; or how she couldn’t go outside—particularly in Europe—without sunglasses and a scarf over her head, unless she wanted to be accosted by an autograph hound or relentlessly subjected to the details of one of her past performances, as though she had not been there herself. These were not things that had bothered her in the beginning—to the contrary, she had been charmed the first hundred or so times she had been approached by a stranger—and she understood that such nuisances were inseparable from the kind of career she had always sought. Over time she began to understand why so many famous singers were notoriously “crazy,” and rather than succumb to the same impulse—and with her voice by this point showing some wear, as more than a few critics were eager to point out—she decided to walk away completely, knowing that, after more than a decade in the spotlight, she no longer had the same drive as she had ten or twenty or thirty years earlier. She was proud of her career; she still received her share of notes and letters, along with the occasional entreaty from an autograph seeker, but all in moderation, allowing her to respond with the patience and grace she felt the great majority of her fans deserved. Her students also inspired her; she worked hard to prepare them, both vocally and emotionally, for the future they so desperately wanted, even if they could barely explain why, which of course was just the way she had been at their age.

She was dropped downtown at the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial—a monolithic Beaux Arts auditorium designed to recall the tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus—where inside she was introduced to her fellow judges. As she took her seat, she contemplated the dusty, unused quality of the theater—as if it had spent the past seventy years in someone’s attic—and wished there could be a middle ground between the stifling and history-laden intransigence of Europe and the reactionary disregard for the same that seemed to be the rule in her adopted country. But one of life’s pleasures at fifty-seven was to have relinquished such epic battles: helping one of her students master a difficult passage, taking a twilight walk along Central Park, or (because she now collected them) finding a rare manuscript or painting—these were the smaller, more obtainable victories that satisfied her most.

THE COMPETITION BEGAN, with each singer taking a moment to shine—though some more brilliantly