Murder at the Opera Read Free Page A

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.
    “They’re only appearing one night,” Harriet told the volunteers, referring to Warren and Charise. “We’ll need two extra costumes.”
    “What we put on them won’t do for the regulars when they perform?” a volunteer asked.
    “Afraid not,” Harriet said. “Better get with it. We’ll need the extra costumes by tomorrow morning.”
    “What’s new with Andrea Chénier ?” a volunteer asked. The Umberto Giordano opera was next on that season’s schedule.
    “We’re renting the costumes from the San Francisco production,” Harriet replied. “They should be here in a day or two.” She checked her watch and stood. “I’m late for a meeting with Anthony. He’s unhappy with the designer’s costume for Cavaradossi, keeps changing his mind, one day he likes it, the next he doesn’t. Maybe we’ll finally get a definitive decision from him. Ciao. Bless you both. This place would fall apart without you.”
     

     
    Mac Smith fielded questions during the last thirty minutes of his class. Most of them were intelligent and on-point, a few weren’t, especially the final one: “Are you really going to be in the opera at the Kennedy Center, Professor Smith?”
    “Where did you hear that?” Smith countered.
    “People are talking about it. You and President Burns.”
    “Well,” Smith said, “what you hear is correct. Yes, President Burns and I, along with professors from American University and Georgetown, will be supernumeraries in Tosca. That’s supernumerárius in Latin, but of course