Sour Notes

Hard nights at the opera

Actors have been known to go onstage with flu, fever, broken limbs. But they do not have to sing. When an opera star's voice goes, he might just aswell leave the stage. And that is precisely what two tenors did this month at two of the world's most prestigious companies, the Vienna State Opera and New York's Metropolitan, causing consternation on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Vienna, almost everyone who counted in music and the government had shown up for American Conductor Lorin Maazel's long-awaited first performance after taking over as director. Then, 35 minutes into Tannhauser, the lead tenor, East Germany's Reiner Goldberg, dropped his harp and mumbled, "My voice--I can't go on." He then disappeared into the wings, leaving a stunned Venus alone in her grotto.

The silence onstage was matched by that in the audience, but there was loud applause when an opera official announced that Bulgarian Spas Wenkoff would step into the role. Wenkoff had been hurriedly flown in that very day after Goldberg's cover caught the sniffles. When Wenkoff too seemed unsteady during the third act, the ailing understudy was summoned to the opera house. Nonetheless, Wenkoff made it to the end. It was just as well. "Three tenors in one performance" mused one dedicatee fan, "That would have been the end of the world."

In New York; Carlo Bini could be excused for believing it was. As the designated cover for Placido Domingo in Ponchielli's La Gioconda, Bini was sitting in the audience studying the production so that he could take the hero's role several days later. When Domingo withdrew with a cold after the first act, however, Bini was propelled onto the stage.

Trouble began when he attempted the opera's biggest aria, "Cielo e mar." His voice was ragged, and the audience booed. Poor Bini was so stunned that Mezzo-Soprano Mignon Dunn had to hold his hands. Said she: "I was afraid if I let him go, he would leave stage." By this time the audience was divided: some continued booing; others tried to stop them. In the balcony, rival factions smacked each other with programs. From the orchestra pit Conductor Giuseppe Patane, who was ill himself, pleaded with the audience to be quiet; eventually he too collapsed under the strain, and a substitute conductor had to finish the fiasco.

For Bini, the affair had an almost happy ending. Last week he sang the part of Enzo from beginning to end and received a good hand. But let the story end there. Or else Hollywood may make a movie of it: Bini, Bini II, Bini III. .

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