Word: scotty
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Passing through the Metropolitan's narrow stage door Scotti managed a smile for photographers who waylaid him. He shook hands gravely with hulking Giulio Gatti-Casazza who had made his debut as manager of the Scala in Milan the night Scotti first sang there 34 years ago. Then he went upsteps to a dingy dressing-room, locked the door, took pictures of his long-dead father and mother from the little black bag and sat them down before a mirror. Slowly he smeared his face with yellow paint, donned a snakey-cued China-man's wig. For that...
...Boheme was given first. Scotti paced the floor, adjusted his wig, peered closely into the mirror. The makeup concealed the signs of his 67 years, the pouches under his eyes, the two deeply chiseled lines which, under the paint, linked his beaklike nose with the corners of his tired mouth...
Intermission came with its clutter and shuffle of scenery. While he waited for the callboy's knock, Scotti tried to smoke one of his long, monogrammed cigarets, but his mouth was too parched. He had never been so nervous, he decided, not even on that first night in Malta 43 years ago when it had seemed fantastic that he, son of a Neapolitan grocer, intended for the priesthood, should be singing in opera. Finally the knock came...
...curtain went up on a twisted street in San Francisco's Chinatown. Scotti slunk down the steps from a rickety frame house and the performance could have stopped then & there. People started cheering. Orchestra musicians rose to their feet. Scotti, who through all his long career has remained an artist, took one brief, graceful bow, reverted quickly to Chim-Fen, the opium dealer. People forgot that the dark hollow voice was only a shell of what it used to be. Chim-Fen's sinister shadow filled the stage while he crept up on the child he wanted...
When Caruso sang in La Juive in December 1920, no one knew he was giving his farewell performance. He became fatally ill with pleurisy immediately afterward and Scotti nursed him. leaving him only when he had to sing at the Opera House, returning to him often with his make-up still on. When he sails for Naples Scotti will carry by hand Caruso's photograph and the little bronze head. In Naples, where Caruso is buried. Scotti will pass the rest of his life, simply, now that the stockmarket crash has taken most of his earnings. But he will...