Bloody Battle at the Met.

: prima
donna / chief female singer in
opera; temperamentally selfimportant person
PETERPRINGLE
Thursday17February1994

No difficult diva has ever been dismissed in quite such terse and
uncompromising language. Kathleen Battle, the statement from New
York's Metropolitan Opera said, had engaged in 'unprofessional actions'
that were 'profoundly detrimental to the artistic collaboration among all
cast members'.

&

Not even Nellie Melba, who declared her Covent

Garden dressing room off-limits even when she wasn't in
England, nor Maria Callas, who was fired by the Met in 1958
because she didn't like one of their productions, nor any
other opera star, male or female, who was famous for a fiery
temperament and terrible tantrums caused their masters to
be so harsh. Never before had there been such a public
chastisement.
It was an astonishing and also a deeply sad moment for the
beautiful black woman from Portsmouth, Ohio, an
elementary schoolteacher whom everyone had once loved
and who had risen from nothing, or not very much, through
the bitchy world of insufferable egos to become one of its
superstars.
Those who followed Kathleen Battle's advance through this
overwhelmingly white domain marvelled at how she had

done it - as they admired the rise to stardom of other black

singers such as Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman. In the
beginning, Battle was much beloved because her singing was
so fresh and clear and wholesome. They admired her artistry,
and they loved her, too - but only in the beginning.
By the time the announcement was made last week to the
Met's cast for Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment, there was not
a drop of sympathy left; only rejoicing. A great cheer echoed
round the empty opera house at the Lincoln Centre. Kathleen
Battle, who has one of the loveliest voices in opera today but
who off-stage had rocked the forces of decorum and rectitude
at the Met for more than a decade, had been banished.
Out came the stories of how Ms Battle had taken to stardom which was not very well as it turned out. In the manner of
some who get a special lift in life from an innate advantage, a
guardian angel, a stroke of good fortune, or simply hard
work, Ms Battle was swept away by the pomposity and
grandeur of it all and forgot even those who had helped her
to climb the last and most difficult steps near the top. 'The
people who do the hardest work in our business,' said the
head of one big city opera company (not the Met), 'the makeup people, the stage hands, they hate her. They don't just
dislike her, they hate her.'
If even one of the stories about her is true, it's easy to see
why these small people turned against her - and then how
the enmity spread upward to the management of the Met.
The stories are all so juicy, it's hard to choose which one to
tell first. Should it be the one about how, in 1985, she threw
the soprano Carol Vaness's clothes out of Dressing Room No
1, which she wanted for herself, during the Met's production
of Le Nozze di Figaro?
Or that while touring she constantly switches hotel rooms,

seeking another view or another colour combination? Or that

before opening night with the Boston Symphony Orchestra
in 1992 she demanded to change hotels because the one she
was in put peas in her pasta?
Or should it be the time when, feeling chilly while riding in
an air-conditioned limousine in southern California, she
used the cellular phone to call her management company (or,
as also reported, her dressmaker), to get them to call the
limousine service to tell the driver to turn down the air
conditioning?
Or, the wildest of them all, when she held up the release of a
record for six months because she didn't like the way her
breasts looked on the cover. It cost the record company
dollars 50,000, a sum that a frustrated executive observed
would have been enough to have them surgically lifted and
attached to her ears.
Ms Battle, on the advice of her agent, is saying nothing about
the firing, but others cannot keep their mouths shut. 'It was,'
whispered one of several anonymous Met sources to emerge
in recent days, 'a succession of events - she came late to
rehearsals, left others early, asked several people who had
legitimate cause to be at the rehearsals to leave, had her
usual fits, was rude to everybody.' After appearances in San
Francisco this season, the backstage crew sported T-shirts
that read: 'I Survived The Battle'.
No one seems to know for sure which of these stories are true
and which made up to fit the stereotype of a successful black
woman in a white person's world. Backstage at the Met, so
they say, Ms Battle was known by some as the 'UN', or
'uppity nigger'.
Upset the underlings and embarrass the hand that feeds you

and, however good you are, you are vulnerable. It is not

possible to run an opera production that depends on 500
people around the whims of one artist, no matter how good
that artist is. Even so, this was an agonising dismissal for the
Metropolitan Opera, the nation's grandest opera company,
and a gentlemanly organisation. Born in 1883, its
performances are traditional for the most part and its
permanent fans are some of the most sophisticated in the
world. The management shuns open controversy in favour of
patrician diplomacy. Veteran critics, like Tim Page of New
York's Newsday, long for more adventurous productions and
something beyond the showcase of proven masters and
masterworks - such as, perhaps, 'the spirit of the ENO and
the Welsh National Opera, where things are out there and
exciting'.
For the mercurial Battle the line was crossed, apparently, in
January last year during a rehearsal for the Met's Der
Rosenkavalier, in which she was singing with Pavarotti. She
withdrew from rehearsals only days before it was due to open
in New York because she was upset with the leadership of the
young German conductor Christian Thielemann. Battle
demanded that the Met's general manager, Joseph Volpe,
report to her immediately in her dressing room, but Volpe
took his time - and then backed Thielemann. It took many
hours of backstage diplomacy to persuade Ms Battle to
return, and the Met endured her shenanigans only because
the company had already sold all the tickets for a Japanese
tour.
From that day, however, it was only a matter of time before
Ms Battle was fired, the experts say. The moment arrived
when she was rehearsing the part of Marie, the young orphan
adopted by a French regiment in Donizetti's opera. Her
treatment of the cast was the same as ever. Battle reportedly

turned up two-and-a-half hours late for a three-hour

rehearsal that had already been rearranged to accommodate
her. At one point she is said to have complained about
another singer 'looking at my mouth'.
In one scene Marie is being coached to sing by the Marquise
of Berkenfield, played by Rosalind Elias, who is 64 and a
locally beloved mezzo. Elias plays the piano on stage, but her
touch was not to Battle's liking. The diva wanted the music
played in the orchestra pit. 'Enough is enough,' said Volpe,
and fired her.
At 45, Battle is perhaps more beautiful than ever, but past
her prime as a singer of the ingenue roles she mastered. She
is still a major talent, however: her records sell in vast
numbers and she now has a public reputation that only adds
excitement for many lovers of the grand old art. When her
replacement, Harolyn Blackwell, sang on Monday night to
lukewarm reviews, some missed the tension as much as
Battle's music. Like Callas, she may well return in triumph.
As one fan put it: 'Who cares if she's nasty?'