The Man of Feeling Read Free Page B

organizers (that is, by the impresarios, by the contracting party who pretend to have invited us). All the honors and almost all the niceties end there, because from the next day onwards we begin a period of one or two or even three weeks during which we have strict obligations to fulfill, and all we do is rehearse, snack, rehearse and sleep, barely departing from the route taken between hotel and rehearsal hall or, if making a recording, the studio. Bearing in mind that impresarios always judge that they are doing us a great favor by arranging for the two places to be close to each other, the routes we take through the cities we visit are often only a few hundred yards long (unless the existence of an old friend in the locality causes us to deviate or if, out of rebelliousness or curiosity, we propose other routes). I am not a conformist, but, rather, an exception, for I have colleagues for whom an immense city with thousands of inhabitants consists of one or two or three streets which they travel only on foot. When you go to a place to work, you don't feel like visiting it; on the contrary, what we opera singers try to do is forget that we are in a different place from the one we've just been to, in the hope that we will avoid a geographical (as well as, in our case, linguistic) schizophrenia, which could lead us to the same crazed, criminal or suicidal end as that of so many traveling salesmen. To the great good fortune of most of us singers, one luxury hotel is always much like any other luxury hotel, and one recording studio or rehearsal hall is much like any other recording studio or rehearsal hall, and, ultimately, one cheering, applauding audience is much like any other audience who respond in more or less the same way, so much so that many of my colleagues manage to persuade themselves—intermittently—that every time they leave home and go off to work in another country or another town, the country or town in question does not vary, but is always the same. By means of this fiction, they try to convince themselves that they are not completely abnormal, itinerant people, that they are no different, for example, from university teachers who live in a capital city but teach in a provincial town, cramming all their classes into two days, or soccer players, who are only away on Saturdays and Sundays (and international soccer players on occasional Wednesdays), but that they are, on the other hand, quite different from professional golfers and lecturers, tennis champions, bullfighters during the season, and traveling salesmen.
    When we stay in cities, therefore, we generally try—and even if we didn't, things couldn't easily be different—to deal only with those in our own profession: the other performers in the opera in which we are going to appear, the members of the chorus (if there is one), the extras, and the orchestra, all of whom are sufficiently much of a muchness everywhere for them likewise not to underline for us the unfortunate and troubling fact that we find ourselves in a place which is not at all the same place we were in a few days ago or even a few weeks or months or years ago. But the problem with carrying this illusion through to its logical consequences lies in the fact that, were the place really the same on all occasions (as we try to pretend in our conscious mind), we would surely, in that case, have made friends there, and would feel as if it were our second home; more than that, we would actually have a second home there and would not be staying in a hotel. But since this is not the case, our lives, despite all the efforts of our imagination and all the conveniences, despite all the money we earn, despite the bouquets, the applause, the ovations and the acclaim, are ultimately just like those of traveling salesmen—who, however, are becoming extinct—at least during each of our sad and solitary sojourns in the great capitals of the world. And our lives are one long sojourn.
    But I am not like