Singing, with Love & Garlic

Opera singers, like athletes, are nuts for conditioning--only nuttier. Where Mickey Mantle may shag a few fly balls, Baritone Robert Merrill stands on his head. Where Mickey Wright will hit a few off the practice tee, Mezzo-Soprano Rosalind Elias gargles champagne and does a belly dance. And for a preperformance pick-me-up, singers will have none of that sissy business of pep talks. They eat garlic.

The cult of the opera singer, in fact, is spiced with more fads, phobias and superstitions than are found in most primitive cultures. The most persistent myth is that girth somehow determines worth, a legend that one doctor says stems from the fact that many of the early Italian singers seemed to be congenitally fat. Today, however, with the emphasis on realistic drama and the lure of TV and films, the net weight of the singers has dropped a ton or two since the early 1900s. Still, most of them are not exactly skinny. Singing opera is extremely demanding physically; and generally, the heartier the singer, the heartier the singing. Some fans of Maria Callas contend that she sang much better 13 years ago, when she was a puffy 215 and ate whole roast chickens between acts, than she did after she slimmed down to a svelte 135.

As physiques have dwindled, psyches have flourished. With so much riding on every note, singers today tend to treat their voices like some strange visitor who, if not properly managed, will suddenly desert them. Birgit Nilsson lubricates her pipes with beer, Eileen Farrell quaffs warm Coca-Cola and follows it with burping exercises, Gwyneth Jones takes hot and cold showers and yawns a lot. The rage for eating raw garlic is so popular among German tenors (a cashew-sized sliver two hours before performing is supposed to strengthen the heart) that one indignant Italian soprano recently went onstage with an aerosol can of deodorant. Tenor Franco Corelli thoughtfully combines his raw-meat and garlic diet with nibbles on a bouquet of parsley between scenes.

Sneaky Beer. Many singers continue their eating and drinking while performing, following the tradition of Soprano Giulia Grisi, who, whenever she had to fall onstage, always landed near a trap door so that a stagehand could sneak her a glass of beer. In the Metropolitan Opera's current production of Electra, Birgit Nilsson's search for Agamemnon's ax is really a quest for a ginger ale stashed under a rock.

Some singers purge themselves with doses of castor oil, others prime themselves with such elixirs as raw eggs, whisky with sugar, iodine in milk, quinine pills, or stiff injections of vitamin C. Also popular are small doses of strychnine, which, according to one doctor, "tunes the vocal cords like violin strings." Says Dr. Geraldo de Marco, house physician at Milan's La Scala Opera: "We give so many shots that occasionally we run out and just give injections of water. The singers never know the difference, and afterward they always say how wonderfully they sang."

Bloodshot Eyes. Not surprisingly, the sexual practices of singers are as odd as their gastronomic habits. Musicologist Henry Pleasants, whose new book The Great Singers, will be published this month, reports that Tenor Jean de Reszke (1850-1925) favored continence for male singers for two or three days before a performance. Should women indulge? a pupil asked. "Not," replied De Reszke, "while onstage."

Most singers seem to agree that men, especially tenors, ought to eschew sex before performing, but that it does a world of good for the girls' voices. One Metropolitan Opera tenor is said to abstain for ten days prior to and ten days after each performance; his distraught wife says he sings every ten days. Ezio Pinza, on the other hand, held the belief that "the night before, it's terrible, but just before going onstage, it's wonderful." Others, like Tenor Giuseppe di Stefano, follow no regimen. Says he: "If I don't make love regularly, I get bad-tempered, my voice gets heavy and my eyes bloodshot. If I do overdo it, however, my high C sharps run the risk of finishing up as C naturals." Tenor Ramon Vinay claims that during one long period of deprivation in South America, his high tenor turned into a deep baritone.

For Art's Sake. Opera lore is rife with stories about sopranos whose contracts provide for dressing-room lovers --a stagehand, perhaps, or a house fireman who donates his services for art's sake. Soprano Gemma Bellincioni made no secret of the fact that she made love in her dressing room right before a performance. If she ran overtime--and she often did--her understanding Italian audiences waited patiently. One shapely U.S. lyric soprano was notorious in the 1940s for sabotaging her leading man by seducing him shortly before going onstage; audiences loved her, hated him.

To all this, La Scala's Dr. de Marco replies that the singers could get the same effect with a tranquilizer.

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