I knew I would have to write about opera today for several reasons. It’s the birthday of my best friend, Marshall Anderson, who is my chief partner in all operatic matters. It’s the birthday of Richard Strauss, who composed several of my favorite operas: Salome, Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier. And today would have been the 100th birthday of Rise Stevens, one of the biggest opera stars of her generation – who was especially beloved after appearing opposite Bing Crosby in the film “Going My Way.” For all of those reasons, this has to be Opera Day!
But on top of all that, I also find myself thinking about Bruno Bartoletti, an integral part of the Lyric Opera of Chicago for fifty years, who passed away the day before yesterday at the age of 86. Hearing the news got me thinking about my time at the Lyric back in 1985-86, when I was part of the so-called Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, their highly regarded apprentice program. At the time, Maestro Bartoletti was artistic director of the Lyric, so his day-to-day dealings with those of us in the Center were quite minimal. But he and Ardis Krainik (the general director) were two of the jurists at the final auditions who decided which 12 young singers would be part of the program…. out of more than 500 who auditioned from across the country…. so in a very real sense we owed our presence at the Lyric at least in part to Maestro Bartoletti and the fact that he must have liked something about us. And those of us who were newcomers to the Center were told in no uncertain terms that whenever we encountered him anywhere in or out of the opera house, we were to address him as “Maestro,” as is the tradition in all Italian opera houses. (And that was so drummed into me that I have addressed most conductors that way in the years since.) But although we addressed him with that kind of formality, there was nothing grand or imposing about his persona. He was a small man who was always smiling …. and with the young woman of the Center, he was charming and flirtatious. What was imposing about him was when you thought about the cavalcade of legendary singers he had conducted over the years, including Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Leontyne Price, and Joan Sutherland – and the kind of difference he could make if he liked you. Knowing all that, it was hard not to genuflect in his presence!
And then I began to hear dissident voices from some of the singers in the chorus, with whom I sang in Otello, Samson, and Die Meistersinger that season. I especially remember some of the withering comments of a guy named Terry whose dressing table was right next to mine. He thought that Maestro Bartoletti was an absolute fraud- and that’s exactly the term he used. It was his opinion that Maestro Baroletti did nothing more than beat time up on the podium – and not all that well, either – and when he conducted, what actually kept everyone together was the consummate skills of both the orchestra and singers. I vividly remember the first time I recounted those comments to a couple of my colleagues in the Opera Center. We were in the hallways of the opera house at the time, and the way they urgently shushed me made me feel like I was living somewhere behind the Iron Curtain, where one simply did not voice such opinions. The other criticism I heard more than once about Maestro Bartoletti was that he loved to hide behind the facade of a transplanted Italian if it suited his purposes- such as uncomfortable conversations that he wanted to cut short. He would suddenly begin to not understand anything you were saying, and then walk away while apologizing for his poor facility with English, when in fact he understood and spoke it with ease. I never was witness to any such escapades, but I do remember watching his limp, sometimes all-but-motionless conducting and wondering if Terry and other complainers in the chorus might be right. I never did fully resolve that question to my full satisfaction- but I have come to appreciate what a mistake it is to expect all conductors to look alike. They come in all shapes and sizes and flavors, and some of the best actually seem to do very little on the podium. The most famous conductor of them all, Arturo Toscanini, exerted much more physical energy in rehearsal than in performance – so that when the actual performance occurred, everything was in place and he had relatively little to do. Bruno Bartoletti was no Arturo Toscanini, I can assure you, but maybe he resembled him in this regard.
Two quick stories: My two worst moments while at the Lyric, bar none, came at the first musical run-through of Puccini’s La Rondine, in which I sang one solitary line in the last act. I still remember the words: “desidera che a veta la signore.” (I may be spelling things wrong.) I had been thoroughly coached on the line and was excited at the prospect of finally getting to sing it in front of the cast (including Ileana Cotrubas) and Maestro Bartoletti. But the run-through was by no means a straight run through; there were all kinds of stops along the way and many passages were sung three, four and even five times. It meant that by the time we got to the break between acts two and three, there was scarcely twenty minutes left before we were scheduled to be done with the rehearsal. So I walked up to Maestro Bartoletti during that second break and politely asked him if he thought we were going to get to my one line in act three and whether or not it made sense for me to stay. It felt like the fairest of questions and I asked it with very little hesitancy. Imagine my horror when the normally genial Maestro Bartoletti looked at me with utter contempt and asked “are you a member of this cast or aren’t you, Mr. Berg?” Until that moment, I wondered if he even knew my name without looking at a score card. Yes he did, as it turned out. I slunk back to my seat, wanting to die a thousand deaths and hoping that no one else in the cast had overheard our exchange.
And then, just when I didn’t think it could get any worse, we got to that point in act three when I sing my paltry little line, and I was so brain dead from boredom yet frazzled from stress that I completely botched my entrance. And that entrance is the simplest thing possible …. four F major chords, blump blump blump blump, leading me right into my entrance. BABY simple. And I completely botched it. And Maestro Bartoletti gave me a look of complete exasperation that a teacher would give to the biggest screw-up in the room. When one sings little roles, the best thing you can do is just do them correctly the first time so no valuable time is expended on them. To screw up something so simple and inconsequential was the most terrible sin one could commit, short of burning the opera house down. What kept me from running out of the room, out the door and around the corner to jump off the bridge into the Chicago River I do not know.
I think what that little story demonstrated was that I wasn’t mature enough or savvy enough to realize that I had to care about what I was doing at the Lyric even when what I was doing felt completely inconsequential … such as singing one line in La Rondine or one single word in Madame Butterfly. I suppose it’s a bit like being third string quarterback on a football time, where the only on-field action you get is in holding the ball for field goal attempts. In the grand scheme of things it might seem like a minor matter, but that doesn’t mean you get to act like it is – even if your primary motivation is a misplaced sense of humility, of not wanting to act more important than I knew I was. Towards that end, I also created some waves when I asked to be excused from bowing at the end of La Rondine. By the end of the show, there are the four principal singers- and me. And I felt completely stupid standing out there and bowing with the rest, knowing full well that nobody cared in the slightest whether or not I was there. At the time it seemed like a perfectly understandable and even commendable request to make; in retrospect, I think making that request came off as a sign of arrogance rather than humility. And I wish I could take back the request…. especially because they ended up turning me down.
My second Bruno Bartoletti story has less to do with me and more to do with the high-stakes world of grand opera. A day or two after my embarrassing debacle, I arrived earlier than usual for an act three staging rehearsal. As I walked on the stage, I heard the sound of singing from behind a curtain and momentarily feared that I was late. No, a stage hand told me reassuringly, that was just Madame Cotrubas being coached by Maestro Bartoletti. And as I tiptoed closer, I could hear from the other side her singing a couple of the highest phrases of her big aria, and obviously having some trouble making it sound free and beautiful. At that point, someone from the opera center stepped next to me and whispered something about how the soprano had been feeling increasingly uneasy about the aria and had scheduled a special coaching with Maestro Bartoletti to work on it. There was something very poignant about this renowned but aging soprano’s struggles with what was a brand new role for her. It underscored for me that none of this was a game; the stakes were high and the pressures and stresses could be enormous, and one of the most important roles of a conductor like Maestro Bartoletti was to shepherd singers through the exacting gauntlet of grand opera and to help them if and when things began to go wrong.
Bruno Bartoletti did that for more than 50 fifty years. And he did it with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes. He will be missed, even by those of us who inadvertently gave him cause to frown a time or two.
pictured above: I took this picture backstage after a recent Lyric performance which Marshall and I attended. Maestro Bartoletti is posing with our good friend Laura Deming, who has played cello in the Lyric orchestra for over thirty years.