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Mac spent the next few hours fine-tuning a lecture on habeas corpus he would deliver that afternoon, taking a break from time to time to think about less solemn subjects, namely A
Although they’d structured their married life to maximize time alone together, they were wise enough to know that too much togetherness could prove to be detrimental, and so they pursued the things they loved aside from each other, she her gallery and participation in a few selected arts institutions, he his te
The Washington National Opera was A
Mac was pleased with his wife’s commitment and offered his steady encouragement. Of course, A
“You love the recorded music,” A
“Why not enjoy it in person?”
“Maybe next year,” he would say.
And she would say, “You said that last year.”
This was this year, and he would finally be going to the opera, not in black tie but in a costume of sorts, and makeup, onstage, for the world to see, including his students, fellow faculty members, and close friends. The thought made him wince and sent him back to the more pleasant and not quite unrelated topic of habeas corpus.
THREE
As eighteen GW law students listened to Professor Smith explore the subtleties of unlawful restraint and the use of writs of habeas corpus to prevent it, a class of a different sort of confinement was in session at the rehearsal facilities of the Washington National Opera Studio in Takoma Park, a funky suburban village straddling the upper northwest boundaries of D.C., and Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.
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 Ke
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 concerned that Harriet provide all female supers with flat shoes consistent with the era, recounting for her the horror of a production he’d once seen of Tosca in which one of the female supers wore spiked heels and took a tumble down a set of stairs, disrupting the entire performance.