Read Online Prima Donna at Large by Barbara Paul - Free Book Online

rushed on, “I’ve got to tell you, it was, oh, it was an experience for me tonight!”
    â€œAn experience,” Phoebe nodded.
    I really liked this part of it; Mildredandphoebe could always be counted on to provide me the opportunity to play Queen Geraldine, graciously acknowledging the adulation of a grateful public. It was fun. I assumed my most regal manner and chatted with them a while (Scotti says I put on a British accent for such occasions). One of the other gerryflappers had cornered Toscanini, who was looking around desperately for an escape route. He was not very good at small talk.
    â€œHowja like the Frenchman?” Mildred wanted to know.
    â€œMonsieur Duchon?” I said. “I think he made a most auspicious Metropolitan début and I look forward to singing with him again.” Mildredandphoebe scribbled in the notebooks they carried with them everywhere, an item for the next newsletter.
    â€œI die!” Caruso cried.
    I laughed and told the gerryflappers we had to go. “Thank you all for coming, all of you, thank you. But we’re tired and we’re hungry, and we want to get something to eat.”
    â€œWhere are you going?” Mildredandphoebe asked. They wanted to know everything about me.
    That traitorous Emmy Destinn ended up siding with the men and I was overwhelmingly outvoted. We went to Del Pezzo’s.

4
    It was my manager, Morris Gest, who brought me the bad news about Pasquale Amato.
    â€œDoc Curtis says bronchitis,” Morris told me. “But I think it’s pneumonia.”
    That was Morris, all right—a know-everything. “What makes you think that?” I asked.
    â€œThe way the doc talked. He seemed more worried than you’d think he’d be, over just a case of bronchitis.”
    â€œThere’s no such thing as ‘just’ a case of bronchitis for a singer,” I said sharply. But pneumonia or bronchitis, it was still bad news. Amato would be out longer than anyone had counted on. Poor Pasquale. Poor us.
    â€œGatti-Casazza doesn’t have all the schedule worked out yet,” Morris went on, “but I think you’d better get used to the idea of singing Madame Sans-Gêne with a house baritone. Duchon won’t learn the role. Gatti said so himself.”
    I can’t say I was surprised. Madame Sans-Gêne is the soprano’s opera, with all the other parts more or less orbiting around her role. Amato was amiable enough and secure enough to sing the baritone part without fearing loss of stature, but I didn’t think Duchon was cut from the same cloth. He was too used to being center stage; even Escamillo in Carmen was a lesser effort for him.
    â€œSorry I missed your Carmen the other night,” Morris said sheepishly. “Everybody’s saying it was great. But the Old Man had scheduled a family gathering that night and, well, you know how it is.”
    I knew. Morris was a little intimidated by his father-in-law—whom he never referred to by name, only as the Old Man. Morris Gest had been my manager for some years now; he was an aggressive man who’d started out as a ticket scalper and then gone on to bigger and better things. Morris had one of those rubbery faces that can be absolutely trustworthy one minute and downright conniving the next. But as long as his conniving face was put on in the service of my career, I didn’t mind. He took a little getting used to, but he was a good manager. I think he was afraid of nothing at all in the world except possibly the aforementioned father-in-law, a soft-spoken man who loved controlling other people, including Morris Gest. Interesting relationship there.
    Morris had come to my apartment to work out some details of a Friday morning musicale at the Biltmore he’d scheduled me into, but the mention of Duchon had set him thinking. “What do you know about that tour the Frenchman’s come for? Where does he go from