Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva (20 page)

We were rehearsing in the basement, on the C-level, three floors underneath the Met stage, and it was like being in a dungeon. There was no air in the room and it had crappy lighting so everyone always had a headache by the end of the day because it was so stifling and we’re all squinting. New productions always rehearsed there because the area is the exact size of the Met stage; also, a mock-up of the set is usually provided, or at least the floors will be taped to show the edges of platforms and scenery.

Plácido walked into rehearsal a few days later than the rest of us, like most of those famous tenors did—that was usual. He looked handsome, he smelled great, and he had no entourage. He went out of his way to show everyone he was one of the gang and, just like Phebe promised, he fumbled just like the rest of us, too.

His English was fluent but his German, not so much. I don’t speak German well, either, but I’ve always had a voice that was more naturally placed to sing German music—it’s a brighter, more forward sound. Plácido’s is rounder, more Italian, so getting those German words out is harder for him.

During rehearsal, he’d forget words or stumble, but he always stayed calm, and his difficulty endeared him to me. He was both sweetly apologetic and complimentary as we worked together, saying: “Debbbbeeee . . . that phrase . . . your phrase, she is beautiful. . . . Please, excuse my mistakes.”

He had a very quiet spirit about him—unlike me, who wanted to crawl into a corner and roll up in a little ball if I made a mistake or couldn’t remember the words.

All my life, except for my childhood musical period, I’ve had trouble memorizing, and I’ve always been very, very good at procrastinating. The combination is not so convenient for someone whose job it is to memorize three-hour-long operas in several foreign languages. When prepping for a new role, the usual routine is
to start rehearsing on your own, weeks or months in advance, but I agonize at the thought of it, worried
it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be boring, it’s going to take so much time.

Once I finally get my ass on the piano bench and concentrate, I’m always surprised how not difficult it is and even enjoyable. It’s my pattern, and after years of trying to improve it, one of my coaches finally said to me, “Debbie, you’ve been doing it this way all your life. What makes you think you can change now?”

I try not to beat myself up about it and accept the fact that I’ll usually arrive at the first rehearsals feeling woefully unprepared and filled with angst.

Not Plácido. He was always in good cheer, knowing he’ll get it done somehow. It’s one of the things I loved best about him—he didn’t let any mishaps faze him. He doesn’t complain, he doesn’t cry (like me) if he screws up a word; he sings that messed-up word with conviction, beauty, and passion and he sells out the house.

I loved playing Sieglinde with Plácido.

As my career progressed, I was beginning to understand and respect these women I played onstage, especially Sieglinde in
Die Walküre
. She was sad but gutsy—a lot like me, I think. As I’ve said, I wasn’t a born opera fan, but I did love playing these great, passionate women.

In the story, Sieglinde is taken by a man from a warring tribe, a man she doesn’t love, and, forced to basically be this man’s slave, she lives in constant sadness and despair. She’s a woman living in an unenlightened era, what’s she going to do? Where is she going to go? How would she survive on her own? I could relate to her sadness; it touched something deep inside me. She’s trapped and isolated, which is how I’ve often felt. And yet, in the core of her being Sieglinde is hopeful—she doesn’t give up hoping that something better will come along.

When I sing her, I get choked up at the words and I have to remind myself to act it, not really feel it myself, or the emotions will
clog up my vocal cords. Actors onstage or on film can afford to feel the emotions their characters are experiencing because they don’t have to belt out a Wagnerian aria at the same time. But an opera singer has to act it on the surface without feeling it too much or they won’t be able to sing. With Sieglinde, especially, I sometimes catch myself holding my breath from the emotions, robbing myself of oxygen I’m going to need. I have to pull myself out of her sadness so that I can do my job. I can’t let myself get carried away.

It wasn’t too difficult to pull myself out of Sieglinde’s melancholy when I was playing opposite Plácido.

One of the greatest memories I have with him is when we walked out onstage after the first act of
Die Walküre
. I knew it had gone well, the chemistry between us was palpable. There’s a scene where Sieglinde passes out and Siegmund must hold me in his arms—Plácido is so romantic and tender in the scene, gently stroking my face and hair. He makes you feel so present in the moment, because he is.

When we went out for that first curtain call it was like the breath being knocked out of us. The energy that poured out of that audience and the way they applauded and yelled . . . it was astounding. It was applause for Plácido, but I realized it was for Debbie, too. I was very proud of myself—especially because four weeks earlier, I had felt so intimidated.

THE REVIEWER FOR
the
New York Times
wrote:

And if all that wasn’t enough, I also had The Kiss.

There’s a moment in the opera where our two characters kiss, and every beat of our acting is timed perfectly to Wagner’s music: the orchestra ascends, then it settles on a chord, and then . . . The Kiss. On the night of our first kiss, as I watched him move toward me, I was jolted out of character and thought to myself:
Oh my God. I am onstage, singing with Plácido Domingo! How did this happen? In what universe and with what luck did I end up here?

I wanted to laugh. True, it was a “stage” kiss, but there was definitely lip-on-lip contact for several seconds, and it was magic. In that moment, I wasn’t Sieglinde anymore. I was Debbie Voigt from Wheeling, Illinois, onstage in front of thousands of people, being kissed by Plácido Domingo.

It was real, and it was spectacular.

I FELT THE
sharp edge of Mitch’s hard boot smash against my browbone, barely missing my left eye. Mitch and I were having one of our take-no-prisoners arguments and this time it had gotten physical and I was left bloodied and bruised.

I was staying with him in Miami in 1999 while singing the role of Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s
Macbeth
at the Florida Grand Opera, a character known for her bloody motives and morbid end. The drama offstage between Mitch and me was just as fiery as that between the Scottish king and his queen.

We’d got into some big argument—I’m sure we were both drunk at the time—and we were sitting by a big glass coffee table. We were both ready to explode. I was getting up from the couch, and at that same moment, Mitch, who was standing, moved to give the coffee table a swift kick—his steel-toed boot landing full force above my eye instead, nearly knocking me out cold. It was an accident, but the reality of how serious it could have been stared back at me when I looked in the mirror minutes later and saw my eye turning purple.

I’d been with Mitch for over three years now (too long), and gone were the days of roses, chair pulling, and him paying for things. And that diamond he had so ceremoniously given me at the airport in Lisbon, which I had made into a necklace? It was now
an instrument of warfare. On at least three separate occasions when he’d gotten angry he’d ripped it off my neck. (I found out later that the diamond had belonged to a guy who owed Mitch money and that he’d pried the stone out of his wife’s engagement ring to pay the debt.) My therapist warned me that if I didn’t leave him, I’d end up seriously hurt.

I had begun to see a therapist to talk about my food and weight issues: I was gorging and topping the scales again since my beloved fen-phen had been yanked off the market after giving people heart-valve problems. Inevitably, our therapy sessions about emotional eating quickly led to talk of the men in my life, and the therapist warned me that my way of dealing with men, specifically Mitch, was more dangerous for me—emotionally, physically, financially, and mentally—than my uncontrollable eating and obesity, and that’s saying a lot. Mitch had acted as my “assistant” for a few months while I was looking for a new one, and he’d racked up $20,000 in restaurant and strip-bar bills in two months with his no-goodnik buddies. When I saw the credit-card bill, I was shocked and took the card away from him. After that, he turned mean and drank more. The more he drank, the meaner he got.

After he kicked me, I grabbed my keys and purse and ran out of the apartment. But I’d left one very crucial item behind—the new antidepressant I’d been prescribed to elevate my lows and soften my anxieties. Those pills had been keeping me sane during the last stages of my so-called romance with Mitch, and they were sitting on the kitchen counter. I parked across the street, waiting to see if Mitch would leave so I could go back in and get my meds, and called my therapist for advice.

“Do not go back in there,” the doctor told me. “I’ll give you a new prescription.” But I also didn’t have the clothes I needed for rehearsal the next day. By this time, my eye was swelling up so much it was nearly shut. I waited for a while more, then took a chance and slipped back in. He had ransacked the place and gone through my
drawers looking for money. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he’d taken my antidepressants, just to hurt me. And if there was a time this woman needed her antidepressants, it was now.

At rehearsal the next day the makeup artist was able to cover my bruising (I told him I’d slipped and conked my head on the nightstand, and he bought it), but when the manager of the opera house saw me after I’d washed it off, he made me go see a doctor, who confirmed a hairline fracture.

And still I went back to Mitch. We dragged each other into the new millennium together, kicking and drinking.

IN JANUARY 2001
, I took the stage again with the world’s most famous tenor, Luciano Pavarotti. We were singing Verdi’s
Aida
together at the Met, and he arrived like a star, with an entourage of a dozen and an endless supply of white silk scarves. You could never get Luciano alone, he was constantly surrounded. He was like Elvis, and his “people” encircled him like Elvis’s Memphis Mafia. Mr. Volpe was always in Luciano’s dressing room, too—to make sure he made it onstage.

You never knew nightly whether he’d be feeling up to performing or not. He was getting older and it was difficult for him to move around. Every night, until he got onstage, the management was nervous. When Luciano sang, the house sold out. It was in everyone’s interest to do whatever it took to get him out there: it proved to be a big group effort.

I remember when he would leave his dressing room to walk to the stage he’d walk behind his dresser, Bill Malloy (now head of costumes at the Met), and rest one hand on Bill’s shoulder for support. En route, Luciano had a little superstitious ritual he liked to observe. As he walked, he always looked for a bent nail on the floor left by stagehands, and he’d keep them as good luck charms. If he spotted one, he’d stop, slowly bend down and pick it up, then hand it to Bill with a big smile on his face.

I’d already experienced Luciano’s disappearing act when we worked together a few years back, in
Ballo
. I kept in mind this time that when you worked with him, the usual staging rules didn’t apply. For instance, he always wanted to stand behind me, no matter what the scene, even if it called for him—
needed
for him—to be in front. I think it was his way of trying to hide his size a bit, thinking it made him look smaller. I could relate, of course. I would have liked to have done the same thing! But Luciano got first dibs on that move, and every night he’d rearrange the blocking to suit him.

He did this with others, too, and I know it annoyed some singers. In his final years, though, how he positioned himself became more about simply supporting himself. If you were singing a scene with him, he’d hold on to you a bit as you moved across the stage together, making you his human walker. I didn’t mind at all. And the audience was so delirious to hear him sing, they didn’t care how he managed to stay on his feet, or if he acted well or not—they just wanted him to open his mouth and sing, live and in the flesh. There were moments, though, when I panicked and was sincerely worried for him.

We were doing a Saturday-afternoon radio broadcast, and at the end of the opera, our characters, Aida and Radames, end up entombed so they can suffocate and die together. Romantic, I know. Luciano and I were singing the final duet when suddenly Luciano clutches his chest and starts making choking sounds.

Oh my God, he’s having a heart attack!

And then I nearly laughed out loud because my second thought—just for a split second, mind you—was imagining the future trivia “question” on
Jeopardy!
: “The soprano in whose arms Luciano Pavarotti died onstage at the Metropolitan Opera.” How sick am I? I know, pretty twisted. My third thought, a better one, was to inch toward him in the tomb and whisper:

“Luciano, are you okay?
Luciano?
”

He opens one eye, and he’s dripping with sweat.

“
Sì, sì
, baby. I’m acting, baby. I’m acting!”

He’s acting, he says. Now, he hadn’t really flexed his acting muscles in any performance thus far—not that it mattered. But here he was, giving his all—
for the radio broadcast?
You had to love him.

At another performance it really was a near tragedy. One of the big technical marvels of the Met stage is how it can function as an elevator, rising up or sinking down to reveal or hide an entirely different stage and set underneath. In one scene, the stage was rigged to descend and give the illusion of our being buried alive. On this night, Luciano was sitting on a prop rock with his legs dangling across the gap between the moveable part of the stage and the part that stays stationary. At any moment the stage section where he was sitting would start to move downward, I knew. But his legs and feet, draped across the non-moving part of the stage, would not.