as an actress. The concept of not being at the Met was too strange for me to handle so I agreed.
The other extras fussed and preened before we went to be “auditioned.” In my mind, being lumped with them was being flung into mud. Singers were far above extras on the opera hierarchy, and I’d never bothered even chatting with any of them before. And calling this an audition was ridiculous, I snipped to myself. We weren’t singing! We were being looked over like pork chops.
As we sat on the steps of the Cavalleria set I pushed dental wax onto my new braces so they wouldn’t flash in the lights. Franco, a slim man in his forties, with graying blond hair, introduced himself in soft, accented, English. Then he looked us over, making comments to an assistant, who wrote them down. I saw him point to me, mimicking my long hair and nodding. And so, at age twelve, I landed a big role in Cavalleria Rusticana as a village virgin—past all doubt the only genuine one in the company.
Directors try to minimize staging complications for kids, but I was an adult now and Franco made me work like one in Cavalleria. I waved to a church procession from a balcony, then scrambled back to stage level down two backstage flights of dark, rickety stairs, unbuttoning my heavy floor-length dress as I ran. I had to be in my second outfit and back on stage to flirt by a fountain in eight minutes. Zeffirelli was also adamant that I wear a lace-up corset with painful metal rib that left welts. “You are an eighteenth-century Sicilian girl and you have to move like one,” he said when I complained. Between the stair runs, the frantic costume change, and the heat from the lights, I was soaked in sweat by the last scene, when I had to rush up the church steps, yelling that the tenor had been murdered, then collapse with grief as the soprano wailed, my face planted on the dirty painted canvas, until the curtain dropped. It never came down fast enough for me.
Puberty, already bewildering me in the Village, rocked my Met world as well. I had a role in Pagliacci too, and a circus fire-eater Zeffirelli had cast in it suggested that we sneak downstairs for a quickie. He choked on his kerosene when I snidely told him my age. I shoved a chorus man’s hand off my behind as we walked off stage. Curious, I let a young stagehand kiss me in the blackout curtains as I waited for a cue and he grabbed my breast. I ran on stage, shaking, and never kissed him again. Rick was fired when a chorus kid’s parents accused him of molesting their son. He was hardly the only Met predator in those dismally incorrect times, but he had no star power or allies on the board of directors. I tried to focus on homework in the chorus ladies’ lounge as a stagehand’s wife cried and begged a chorus woman to stop sleeping with her husband and send him home to her and their kids.
On Sundays, glad for a break, my parents and I piled in the car for a day at Jones Beach and then lobsters in Sheepshead Bay, tanned and happy. They had laughing canasta parties with the Frydels, the adults calling Irene and me when the pizzas arrived. We read The New York Times over bagels on Sundays and went to museums and Broadway shows. I sent them dancing at the Rainbow Room for their anniversary. We wanted to make each other happy. We just weren’t any good at it.
I lived on the right street, though. “How are Sally and Tony?” I asked Annie Frydel in her kitchen. The Amato Opera was marching on, as it did until 2009, when it closed its doors. “Fine, honey,” she replied as we peeled carrots. “Come by and say hello to them, anytime. Stay for dinner tonight. You always have the best jokes, you little sparkler.” I could go see what Yeffe Kimball, the Native American artist at 11 Bank, was up to, I thought. She had just had an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Or I could check to see if Al, the bon vivant artist in apartment 2A, was home. He’d listen to my adolescent dramas with quiet respect.
Maybe Billy Joyce, the retired dancer at 113–115 Bank, was having another wine and cheese party down at the pier. I could help him carry stuff while we gossiped. And if Marty or Roz Braverman from 75 Bank Street were out with their dog, I could tell them my PSAT scores. They were so proud of me for going to elite Stuyvesant High School that they’d told the whole block. I had a street full of supporters, young and old.
These Bank Streeters were my family, too. Much more so, in some ways. While there was occasional crabbiness, I hadn’t ruined their lives by being born, and so my existence was never thrown in my face. I was fine as I was. If one of them was sick, I ran errands and brought food. Neighbors sometimes found fault with my clothes, my hair, or my behavior, but their comments were gentle. I, in turn, could hear their opinions without throwing up a yelling, sarcastic shield, trying to hurt them into shutting up. Being an opera singer was fun, but the people on Bank Street, caring for and about each other, taught me what it means to be human.
3
The Frydels
Tiny Annie Frydel upstairs in 4B sneezed like a bull elephant. We yelled blessings up the alley shaft. And when my father’s sneezes shook the walls, Annie, her husband, John, and their daughter, Irene, returned the salute. The Frydels and the Florios have been blessing each other for more than sixty years.
Annie and her sisters, Sally and Margie, were born in 1920s Little Italy. The family moved to upstate New York in the 1930s, and the girls lost their Noo Yawk accents. Mama Bell later brought them back for Sally’s singing career, but Pop stayed upstate at his fabric-cutter job for the next fifty years. Mama Bell lived in the Village with her girls until Sally and Tony bought a house in the Bronx and took her along.
In 1948, Sally and Tony started the Amato Opera in a church basement several blocks from Bank Street.
Enter John Frydel in 1949. A handsome, smiling World War II veteran, and complete hayseed, he somehow found his way from rural Maine to opera. The GI Bill paid for his classes. He and Annie made eyes at each other at rehearsals, and a lifelong romance was born. The newlywed Frydels scraped up $40 a month for a walk-up on Commerce Street. The tub was in the kitchen, so drop-in guests waited in the hall if Annie was undressed. This formality was novel for the Village and wore off as the marriage went on. I just threw Annie a towel, looking away, if I’d barged in on her bath. It was years before I understood that not every American neighbor would cheerfully fix me a tuna sandwich in her underwear.
Baby Irene leaped onstage in 1954, arriving with a head of long, wild hair that stretched to her feet. I thought her baby photos were cute, like a baby Bride of Frankenstein, but apparently the effect was electrifying. People just stared, pop-eyed.
Money was always scarce for the Frydels, but the parties went on. When the young parents were close to broke yet again, they splurged on a bottle of gin and tucked it into Irene’s carriage for the haul upstairs.
Annie sang at Amato, but by day she kept the books for the realtors that managed 63 Bank Street. When two apartments became available in 1955, Annie took 4B and called her pregnant friend, Amato student Ann Florio. My parents’ studio apartment on West Twelfth Street was so small that they slept on a pull-out sofa with their feet under the piano keys. Ann waddled over and grabbed 2B.
The Frydels and the Florios confounded Bank Streeters for years. We had the same apartment two floors apart. Ann Florio and Annie Frydel were both petite, Italian American, brunette singers. Irene and I were one grade apart at St. Joseph’s School. Both couples and their kids worked at the Amato Opera for the first seven years of my life.
John Frydel also joined the Metropolitan Opera chorus, and the three of us walked back and forth to the subway together. In the summer, random combinations of adults and daughters trooped to the subway with towels and sand buckets, heading to Rockaway Beach. Either mom would call us in for dinner as we played on the sidewalk. During thunderstorms, I’d run up to 4B to see if Annie or Irene was home. John had to have company or he’d hide in the closet, wringing his hands and praying in Polish.
Once, a neighbor tentatively asked, “Which one, exactly, is your
