The King and I: The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti's Rise to Fame by His Manager, Friend and Sometime Adversary - Herbert H. Breslin - Paperback

Chapter I FROM CHRYSLER TO CARNEGIE HALL Midlife Crisis: My Start in the Business Here's how not to begin your brilliant professional career. In 1957, I was thirty-three years old. I was married, with a child on the way. And I was working as a speechwriter for the Chrysler Corporation. In Detroit, Michigan. Detroit, Michigan. Who would even want to think about it? Misery. People suppose that to succeed in the classical music business you should be very highly directed. You should have experience as a performer, so you know what it's like on the other side of the footlights. You should get your foot in the door early and work in a number of different areas so you get to know all sides of the performing arts. Ultimately, you'll gather the experience you need to set up your own company and manage top-level artists. Well, that's all bullshit. I came out of nowhere. I was smart. I was full of energy. And I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. All I knew was that I loved music. How much did I love music? I'd been obsessed with opera since I was eight years old. The beauty, the glamour, the excitement, and the tremendous voices pulled me into another world. I had a huge collection of records I listened to constantly. I had scrapbooks of the performances I'd seen and the artists I loved. Whatever else was going on around me, opera served as my own private support system and gave me tremendous sustenance. So much sustenance, in fact, that it became my life. The problem I had when I was thirty-three was that it had nothing to do with my life. Especially not my life in Detroit. There's a little bit of music in Detroit, but nothing you would really want to seriously consider. I'm a New Yorker. I was starved for opera. I would get the New York Times and wistfully scan the cast lists at the Metropolitan Opera, which the Times used to print every Monday, for the two weeks ahead. One week I saw that Renata Tebaldi was scheduled to sing Tosca, and I couldn't help myself. Tebaldi was one of the greatest sopranos singing. People portrayed her as a rival of Maria Callas: Tebaldi's pure vocal beauty against Callas's dramatic brilliance. Myself, I liked Callas fine, but I was a fierce fan of Renata Tebaldi. Intoxicating things happened when the woman opened her mouth. It was enough to make you fly to New York. I said to my wife, Carol, "We're going to see that Tosca," and I bought tickets. Carol is a New Yorker, too, so she was game for a weekend in the city. She herself was prone to making dramatic pronouncements that she didn't want our first child to be born in Detroit. She was no happier living there than I was. She didn't completely share my passion for opera, but she was certainly happy to go, especially to see a performance as great as I promised her this one was going to be. By the time we walked into the old Met on Thirty-ninth Street, I was beside myself with excitement. Imagine my feelings when I saw a notice in the lobby announcing that Madame Tebaldi was indisposed. Tosca would be sung by Antoinette Stella. I went cold with disappointment. By today's standards, Antoinette Stella is nothing to sneeze at; but I hadn't flown in all the way from Detroit to hear Antoinette Stella sing Tosca. I couldn't believe my plans had been thwarted so cruelly, and I didn't want to accept it. I completely lost my temper. I said, "I do not want to hear this performance." Opera houses, of course, don't refund a patron's ticket money if an artist cancels. Cancelations are practically part of opera routine. A singer's instrument--as any singer will be the first to tell you, and the second to tell you, and the last to tell you, so often do they reiterate it--is extremely fragile. A mild cold, a touch of allergies, a dry hotel room: any one of these things, and a thousand more, can keep them offstage.Midgette, Anne is the author of 'The King and I: The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti's Rise to Fame by His Manager, Friend and Sometime Adversary - Herbert H. Breslin - Paperback' with ISBN 9780767915083 and ISBN 0767915089.