Free A Cadenza for Caruso by Barbara Paul

stagehands alike kept coming up to him, patting him on the shoulder, trying to reassure him. O’Halloran was impressed in spite of himself.
    The curtains opened. Shortly thereafter Caruso made his entrance, and that famous golden voice suddenly filled the opera house. O’Halloran worked his way around the obstacle course backstage, trying to stay out of the way. The opera moved along like an electric charge. Caruso brought down the house with Vesti la giubba and then hurried off the stage to make a costume change. This time O’Halloran didn’t follow him up to the dressing room; it was obvious the tenor had no intention of taking it on the lam.
    O’Halloran made his way over to the other side of the stage; Gatti-Casazza was there, watching from the wings. Then Caruso was on the stage again, wearing his clown costume and sweating heavily and singing his heart out. By then O’Halloran was feeling quite bad about having detained the tenor so long at the station house.
    â€œMr. Gatti-Casazza,” he said in an attempt to atone, “I’m sorry about that unpleasant business this afternoon. I didn’t mean to make things difficult for Mr. Caruso. It was just—”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” Gatti-Casazza interrupted happily. “Tonight is the greatest Pagliacci he has ever sung!”
    The audience agreed. Caruso took nineteen curtain calls.

5
    Caruso awoke the next morning feeling marvelous.
    And why not? He’d scored a triumph the night before—his best Pagliacci ever. The audience had gone wild. And that ugly scene he’d walked in on yesterday afternoon had turned out to have a happy ending; the great Puccini was no longer in the grip of a blackmailer. And that detective lieutenant, O’Halloran, had even let him know—in a roundabout way—that he did not consider Caruso a suspect.
    And to top it all off, today was the day he got to try on his cowboy suit!
    â€œMartino! My bath! This morning—lily of the valley.”
    Poor Luigi Davila , Caruso thought dutifully, not really meaning it. But someone ought to mourn his passing. Caruso wondered if anyone in the world had loved the man, if there were anyone who would miss him. He thought it unlikely.
    In his bath he started making the mental transition from I Pagliacci to La Fanciulla del West . He sang a little of the love duet from Act II to get himself in the mood, but his thoughts kept straying to his costume. A real six-shooter!
    Mario came in carrying the morning newspapers, with their rave reviews of Caruso’s Pagliacci . Caruso read them aloud as he ate his breakfast, translating into Italian those parts Martino and Mario could not follow. He was interrupted frequently by congratulatory telephone calls; even Puccini called. When he had finished reading the reviews, he went back and read them again. The tenor looked around. “Where’s Ugo?”
    â€œIn his room,” said Mario.
    â€œPouting,” Martino added.
    Caruso put down the papers. “ Now what’s the matter?”
    The two valets just shook their heads; they hadn’t asked.
    Caruso decided he wouldn’t ask either. Ugo got these moods sometimes.
    Martino and Mario accompanied the tenor to the opera house, Martino to make any little adjustments Caruso’s new costume might need and Mario to carry back the mail. As they waited on the corner of Thirty-ninth Street for the traffic light to change, Caruso looked across Broadway at the main entrance of the Metropolitan. The place didn’t look like a yellow brick brewery to him; he wished people wouldn’t call it that.
    A horn sounded, and Caruso heard his name called out. A motor-car driver—whom he did not know—was leaning out the window and waving. Caruso smiled and waved back, and thoughtfully watched the black Hupmobile coupé whiz away. About eleven hundred dollars , Caruso thought. But he liked the limousines