Can you play the harp?

Mary’s in the opera business, in case you came in late. She is a pianist for the Dortmund Opera in the Ruhr Valley of Germany. She’s been in Germany since 1984, thanks to winning Fulbright grants two years in a row, after which she was hired to accompany rehearsals and coach singers.

While we were together this summer, she told us stories, many relating to what happens when singers miss a performance. Being there on time, and in good health – these are hallmarks of any professional, whether you’re a pilot, a judge, a teacher, or a performer. Believe me, punctuality means everything to Germans, and canceling is unthinkable.

Mary went to see a memorable “Madame Butterfly” in Gelsenkirchen where she used to work. Goro, a tenor, is a matchmaker who is trying to hook up Butterfly with Yamadori after Pinkerton leaves. The singer inexplicably misses a whole scene with Suzuki, Butterfly’s maid. She has to chase nothing around the stage, beating nothing with a stick, and at the end, pours a bucket of water over the missing Goro.

The tenor/Goro claims he was stuck in the elevator. (It's actually against house rules to take the elevator before your entrance.)

Verdi's “Forza del Destino” had an afternoon performance in Hagen, and Mary went to hear a friend of hers, a bass from Dortmund, who was doing his first of several guest performances there. The soprano, also from Dortmund, jumped in with only one day's notice. The tenor, also not from the house but hired for the series, called in sick in the morning and there was no time to find a substitute.

So every time the tenor was supposed to sing, they stopped and spoke the story. Must have been very disconcerting, especially for the soprano, who had to skip a duet as well.

“La Wally” by Cilea is a little-done verismo, or “realistic,” opera. (Never heard of it myself.) The tenor cancelled the night before, and the only person they could find to sing didn't know the role by memory.

Instead of sticking him in the pit or on the side, Mary said, they opted for having him walk on stage, carrying his own music stand.

First scene: Tenor gets in an argument and strikes La Wally's father. The poor guy playing the father had to fall over on his own. Wally's question afterwards – “Who dared to hit my father?" – was amusing, because at that point, the tenor was doing nothing but turning his page. Later, fortunately, during a dance scene, he did get to stand, with his stand, on the side, and a dancer did the movements. At the end of the opera, when he’s supposed to fall into an abyss during an avalanche, he simply walked off stage.

“Less funny, for me,” Mary wrote, “in Dortmund, we were doing ‘Tannhäuser.’ I'm sitting in the tone studio, waiting to give cues for various taped sounds – distant women's chorus, cow bells, extra trumpets. The stage manager calls up and asks if I can play the harp. “I laugh, and he says, I'm serious, come down to the stage right away. So I hurry down to find they had already shoved an upright piano into the orchestra pit. The harpist hadn't come and, because he was often quite late, they didn't notice it until the conductor was just about to start the overture. ‘Tannhäuser’ is full of big harp solos and all the main characters are singers who ‘accompany’ themselves with a harp.

“There are pages with no orchestra at all, other places where they accompany the harp. In any case, very exposed. I played from the piano score, which fortunately I knew pretty well. Because it was a holiday weekend when traditionally big harp operas like ‘Parsifal’ and ‘Tannhäuser’ appear, they couldn't find a single person to come play, and I had to go back in for the next two acts.

“A representative of the theater came out during the first break, and had the gall to say, ‘I'm sure many of you didn't even notice that we are missing a harp today,’ and the audience is yelling back, ‘Doch!’ meaning, ‘Of course, we noticed!’

“The conductor was furious. He wanted a tape of the performance for his agent. Me, I’m playing a barely-in-tune Yamaha and, since I was blocking the path of a few people like the timpanists, who always get up and leave when they don't have to play, I had to keep standing up and pulling my chair forward.”

A baritone friend of Mary’s told her about singing “Die Walküre” with Placido Domingo in the role of Siegmund, the only character able to pull a magic sword out of an oak tree. When Domingo pulled it out, it was bent 45 degrees. He threw it on the floor and jumped up and down on it to straighten it out.

When “Walküre” played in Dortmund, during the dress rehearsal, the tenor couldn't get the sword out of the tree. Finally, a hand from the side reached around to get it out. During the premiere, everything worked OK, except that the lighting was delayed. Siegmund sang, "What is shimmering?” and the tree and the sword were completely in the dark for 10 minutes.

In Bonn, a tenor from Dortmund was “guesting” for Verdi’s “La Traviata.” During the first act, he leaves the stage, falls, and twists his ankle. So they get the house tenor out of bed, and he does the acting while John sings from the side. He knew a tenor friend had come to see the opera, and since he was in agony (the ankle later required surgery), he got him out of the audience to sing the second half. “...Anyway, got to practice,” Mary writes. “Big Siegfried rehearsal coming up.”

That’s my girl, ready for anything.