(Article below is one of the essays in the forthcoming book, ENCOUNTERS IN THE ARTS by Pablo Tariman.
To reserve copies, call 09065104270 or email: artsnewsservice@gmail.com)
To what extent will music lovers go to show their appreciation, nay, adoration for their favorite artists?
An incident during the first performance of a Filipino version of “La Traviata” in 1990 provides some indication. As I recall it clearly even now, it was a sight that by turns jolted, shocked and stunned the audience at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP).
Shortly after the heroine Violetta cried “Ogioia” on a high B flat and fell lifeless on the floor, shouts of “Brava!” filled the air.
Then from the audience arose a bespectacled man in a plain shirt and dark pants. He dashed to the stage through the side stairs and offered the diva a bouquet of flowers. And, in an act that must have startled even the soprano, the man fell on his knees and bent to kiss the hemline of her gown, much the way that religious devotees would rub their cheek on a religious icon’s habiliment.
I heard varied reactions. “Crazy,” muttered the matron behind me. “Que horror!” gasped another. “Uncalled for,” added a schoolmarm type.
I myself was momentary shocked. I am a fanatic music lover myself, but I would not dare kiss the hemline of Cecile Licad’s gown after a performance in full view of the audience.
The man who pulled off that seemingly mindless act wasn’t a theater outsider. He was a writer and actor of consequence and in that scene, he was perhaps acting out a fleeting performance art version of Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot.”
Well, to make the story short, he was none other than Rolando Tinio, the opera’s translator and director, and the diva to whom he paid such effusive tribute was Maria Anna Zappola, who sang the role of Violetta in “La Traviata.” The late Tinio must have felt that the singer transcended all his mortal expectations and after that performance, the soprano — in his eyes — became a goddess of music fit for worship during the curtain call.
He never showed any sign of remorse or embarrassment. In fact, his countenance bore a dignified, if sullen, expression that seemed to say: “My singer did well and she deserves more than applause and a standing ovation. I only did what many of you would have wanted but don’t have the guts to do. I did it for you and for my art.”
That gesture, it seemed to me, symbolized the height to which opera fans would go over artists who surpass human expectations.
When the late Maria Callas was at the peak of her singing career, the most unusual compliment didn’t come from the reviews but from backstage talk of how world celebrities themselves had gotten beyond kissing hands to pay tribute to the Goddess of the Opera.
I recall a dear departed friend who flew from Manila to San Francisco, and on to New York, Milan, Paris, and London, to follow the foreign engagements of the world-acclaimed diva, who happened to be my favorite singer as well. On coming home, he’d gift me with tapes of her performances, complete with his breathing, the remarks of seatmates and the audience’s euphoria during the curtain call. Somehow, he managed to tape the performances with his mini-cassette recorder without the knowledge of the theater management.
I also remember rushing backstage after the great Maya Plisetskaya did her first Dying Swan in Manila in the early 80s. On the way to the dressing room, I overheard a matron saying, “She did very well, but her attire was awful.” As soon as I got Plisetskaya’s autograph, I set out looking for the matron who made that comment to give her a piece of my mind. But someone told me to take it easy because the matron was the top official of a ballet society and a few years later, became CCP president.
I know of someone who guards his collection of old souvenir programs with his life for one reason: they carry the signatures of Renata Tebaldi, Placido Domingo, Teresa Stratas, Eva Marton and the imprint of the world’s greatest pianists from Horowitz to Licad.
In the latest Licad concerts, there were admirers who booked flights from Palawan and Bacolod just to watch her perform in Manila. One pediatrician fan cancelled her consultation days at the PGH to be with the pianist, not just in Manila but as far as Nueva Ecija and Cavite. In Noveleta, Cavite, the pediatrician became my stage manager and official photographer, and she asked for nothing. She did everything out of pure love and admiration for the pianist.
And speaking of excessive adoration for artists, a promising singer actually worked as secretary to Pavarotti just so she could be close to her idol and be coached by him while she worked. In the tenor’s bestselling autobiography, Madelyn Renee, the singer turned secretary, wrote of the tenor’s staggering fan mail:
“A lot of letters are so touching they must be answered individually. It’s amazing. People wrote telling how Luciano’s singing lifted them from despair. Some of those letters imply that Luciano saved their lives. Then there are all the gifts. People go to such trouble to make him things and articles of clothing, drawings of Luciano, figurines, sculptured heads. He’s received enough bent nails [the tenor’s lucky charm] to build a crooked house. It amazes me the way fans send him things to eat. I know that they do it out of affection, but it is incredibly thoughtless. Doesn’t everyone know he is struggling so hard to lose weight?”
Soprano Beverly Sills, who sang in Manila in 1969, wrote of the fanaticism of Italian opera lovers in her autobiography. “Beverly.”
“When I’d done “La Traviata” at San Carlo, the production had become a rage of Italy. I am not being immodest when I tell you that people were coming to Venice from all over the country and were literally fighting over the tickets to see me at La Fenice. I don’t think Italians are necessarily more knowledgeable about opera than American audiences, but they certainly are more passionate. At the end of the performances, a woman seated near the stage tearfully called out: “Che bella morte? (What a beautiful death!)
For their idols, or the objects of the adulation, such efforts and gestures do not go unnoticed or unrewarded.
Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya (the ex-wife of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich), in her bestselling autobiography, wrote lovingly of her opera fans who are known in Russia as “admirers.”
“I had many admirers who stood by me from the very outset of my career at the Bolshoi. And it was they, unafraid of being recognized by the KGB agents, who came to see me off at the airport when I was leaving Russia. There were times when I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to sing, but if I knew that one of my admirers had flown to Moscow that day, having spent her last kopeck on a plane ticket, and would skip dinner to buy flowers for me, I would crawl out of bed, force myself to get ready, and go and do the performance for her. Had it not been for such admirers, the Bolshoi would have been a dead place. They made up our genuine public.”
If my “momentary shock” at witnessing that unlikely scene at the Traviata curtain call in 1990 was disconcerting, I realized soon enough that it was because it recalled familiar impulses I myself was capable of as a fan.
At the Manila Metropolitan Theater on the day of my “debut” as impresario, I carried a diva’s thermos bottle and jars of tea and honey from her car to the dressing room, to the chagrin of Boy Abunda, who was then working for the late Tita Conching Sunico.
I recall staying up late with a pianist rehearsing from midnight to seven in the morning and guarding her from unlikely callers even from colleagues from the media.
As I contemplate the act of worship which shocked the CCP audience on the last night of Traviata, I re-read what my former magazine editor wrote in another magazine.
It was a blind item in the cultural scene: “The man is clearly enamored of, gripped by, exceedingly hung-up, on “kulchoor.” He is known to mysteriously disappear from his office, only to reappear, according to an impeachable source, at the airport, worshipping the very ground that the divine Alicia Alonso of Cuba, emerging from her plane, stepped on. He is amazed that one is not moved to shriek “Bravo!” at a cassette tape of Luciano Pavarotti. He is observed nightly at all three nights of Maniya Barredo’s latest Philippine engagement, astounded, agape, seeing new magic in each new performance. Still, one is invariably exasperated to find out that he would, in fact, unhesitatingly jump into a cab at rush-hour traffic, fast meter or no, to catch the tail-end of a press gathering for a visiting artist.”
The magazine editor was describing me as a ballet and opera fan.
Indeed, there are ballet fans, opera fans and music fans. And as I once more contemplate the sight of that man kissing the edge of the diva’s gown, it becomes clear to me that the sheer power of art brings out the best in an audience even the most embarrassing reaction from admirers.
A classic case of unthinkable adoration for sopranos is that scene from the French film “Diva.” A youthful motorcycle-riding letter-carrier surreptitiously records the performance highlighted by the black diva singing an aria from Catalani’s “La Wally.” Later, he goes to the dressing room to ask for the diva’s autograph and surreptitiously steals her gown then hops on his motorbike in ecstasy. In the dead of night, he caresses the diva’s gown as he replays Calatani’s aria full of sentiments on loving and dying.
(I was with the late soprano Lilia Reyes when “Diva” had its Manila premiere. As that scene was playing out, photographer Bullit Marquez of Associated Press shouted to an amused audience, “Naku, si Tariman lang ang makakagawa niyan!”)
Isn’t it comforting that at this time when people are obsessed with political wranglings and assorted scams, there are people who can live and “die” a seemingly embarrassing “death” for their art?
As Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya would describe us: “Admirers deeply experience an artist’s troubles and joys, and after a successful performance, they are the happiest people on earth.”