of groaning women, as my father finally arrived to pace in the waiting room, Ann was seriously uncomfortable. She called the nurse over, expecting drugs. In the 1950s, American women were typically knocked unconscious and presented with their bundle when they woke up. But her chart had been mismarked “Natural Childbirth.” Staying awake and breathing through labor pains was a radical new idea then, and completely unknown to my mother. When the smiling nurse told her that it was certainly “time to do your wonderful breathing exercises,” Ann was flattered. Oh, well, of course, they know I’m a singer, she preened. She started blasting the scales, trills, and arpeggios that had wowed her coach.
Meanwhile, on Bank Street, Annie and John Frydel had the keys to our apartment. Everyone was jazzed on opening nights, and no one, happy and hungry, intended to let my arrival cancel the party. The Frydels unlocked our door, and John mixed his lethal Manhattans. None of them could cook, but they sure could party. (Several years later, Annie Frydel would hustle Irene and me out of 4B as party guests laughed hysterically: Larry and John were freeing soused love-makers who’d gotten wedged into the bathtub.)
As Ann sang me to life, the cast lit our rickety stove and attempted dinner. The nurse rushed in as the phone rang in the labor room. “Could we speak with Ann Florio, please?” slurred a voice on the phone. The nurse heard voices in the background saying, “Where does she keep the pepper?” and “Ask her how long the chicken bakes.”
The nurse threw up her hands and wheeled Ann’s gurney to the phone. “Talk to them, get them off the phone, and then please shut up. This place sounds like Bellevue.”
The cast got dinner, Ann got drugs, and Larry got a standing ovation when he came home at 4 a.m.
• • •
I toddled around a warm backstage world of Egyptian slaves, French courtesans, and Spanish gypsies. Women in thick white nylon panties and pointy cone bras smiled as they patted on pancake makeup, and then sat me carefully on their costumes, whispering Dr. Seuss and fairy tales as we turned the pages together. “Don’t be scared. It’s only make-believe,” I reassured friends in the audience. I’d learned that lesson out front when Mommy/Madame Butterfly stabbed herself and fell over dead. I screamed myself onto the stage as she scrambled back to life and took her bows with me crying into her kimono.
I made my debut at four, as the love child of Sally’s Madame Butterfly. Everyone fussed as they dressed me in a kimono and flip-flops, telling me that I was the most important part of the show. When Butterfly’s maid took my hand, we walked onstage to Sally, who beamed and held her arms open. There is nothing for the child to sing, but that didn’t matter. Sally, her black wig sparkling with jewels, was a queen, and I was her princess. I felt the hushed attention of the audience as Sally cupped my face and sang her love for me. My parents came onstage, clapping and yelling “Brava!” when I held Sally’s hand and took my first bow at the end of the show. They coaxed me into a snowsuit when we left, but I wouldn’t relinquish the flip-flops, so Dad carried me home with his scarf wrapped around my feet. Opera folks were special magic people, and now I was enchanted too, a tiny planet circling two blazing stars.
• • •
Singing in the children’s choruses in operas came when I was five. Opera is hard work for kids, although no one thought to mention it. Singers have to memorize every note and perform while moving around on cue and in character, under hot lights, wearing costumes that can weigh fifty pounds. I was allowed to rehearse with a score in hand only for a brief period. I was expected to memorize fast and to make note of the interpretations that each conductor gives to a score. Tony Amato was charming, but if I missed the downbeat a third time, he’d bang on the podium and I’d cower. When Mom and I moved from Amato to the Metropolitan Opera, the stakes were far higher, but the rules were exactly the same. If Leonard Bernstein wanted a legato here or a forte there, I had to memorize his wishes, and fast.
In addition to the conductor there was the stage director. The director told me how (running, sneaking, marching) and where (stage left, stage right, or in position before curtain) my character entered the scene and what I did as I sang. If my role called for using props, like tearing the Hansel and Gretel gingerbread witch into pieces, I had to have the right prop at exactly the right musical moment. If I had to change costumes too fast to reach a dressing room, I had to wriggle out of one and into the next in the wings. And whether I was dancing, fighting, or climbing a ladder, I had to watch the conductor’s baton as if it were the eye of God.
La Bohème, a perennial favorite, involved a crowd scene and was relatively easy because chorus ladies usually held us in place and sang with us. Tosca was harder. We were altar boys with a priest who had his own music to sing while we skipped around. Carmen was the hardest opera for me. I had to spit staccato French lyrics, usually at breakneck tempo, while marching in a crowd. I often stomped on someone’s foot or got my own shins kicked. But I had to stay in character and keep going, even if the scenery fell on me. I didn’t mind. My parents were right to be theater snobs, I thought. Nothing felt as alive as being onstage.
There is an offstage child shepherd’s solo in Tosca. A solo is another universe. No hiding behind others if you go off pitch or muff the lyrics. I was deemed ready at seven at the Amato. The shepherd’s aria is a soft, plaintive poem to the dawn. It was my own golden moment, just Tony and me, face to face in the tiny orchestra pit. A flute and oboe played quietly, letting my voice glide above them. I remembered Mom’s instructions. Breathe deeply. Get onto the first note right away. Hit the descending line just so. Hold the final note until he moves his baton sideways and cuts it off. When the audience applauded and Tony bowed to me from the podium, I felt like a queen. Backstage, my parents hugged me with tears in their eyes.
In addition to working at the Amatos’, Dad went on road tours with other companies when I was little. One morning I ran into the living room, thrilled that Dad had come home during the night. A Chatty Cathy doll, my biggest wish, sat in our yellow butterfly chair, and my parents smiled sleepily as I grabbed her and climbed into their sleeper couch. I bragged for days that he’d remembered his special girl on tour until Mom snapped, “Please. I got that doll in Macy’s.”
• • •
Two huge changes came in 1963, when I was seven: Mom’s dad died, and Grandma moved into apartment 1A of 63 Bank Street. Her presence allowed Mom to audition for the Metropolitan Opera chorus, performing their final seasons in their original theater on West Thirty-Ninth Street. The old Met was to be demolished and the company moved to a new theater in Lincoln Center in 1966. They were accepting girls in their children’s chorus for the first time that year. I passed an audition, and I too joined the Met. My parents were proud and happy and therefore so was I, although I didn’t know that my cozy theater world had just turned upside down.
At first I was scared to death. The old Met had been built in 1898. Backstage looked like a haunted house that went on forever. I was afraid I’d get lost and no one would find me. It was all dusty carved wood and splintered floors, a rabbit warren of lopsided steps with cast-iron banisters leading to dimly lit corridors and strange, hidden rooms. Thick metal pipes ran everywhere: in dressing rooms, through rehearsal halls, and high above audience view onstage. Roman soldiers lumbered by, checking the Daily News for the racing results at Belmont.
The chorus women were in a communal dressing room at the top of worn wooden stairs by stage left. Mirrors were ringed with tiny light bulbs in metal cages. Chipped coffee mugs held eyeliners and grease sticks. Wiry old Rosie, one of the ladies’ dressers, had been a circus trapeze artist. She coached me through skin-the-cat on a costume bar while the chorus was onstage. The ladies had photos and cards tucked into their mirrors. “See?” Mom pointed to my Kodak picture, missing front teeth and all. “I always have my little girl.”
Since I had to wait for Mom to go home, I sat at her
