The Happy Scrappers

You're a bitchy witch, says he. You're a sniveling coward, says she. Oh yeah, says he, mind your lip or I'll button it permanently. Ha!, says she, you're not man enough.

Or so, in a free translation of the German, it sounded when Walter Berry and his wife Christa Ludwig went at it again last week, snapping and snarling at each other for everyone to hear. And those who did were delighted, for as the villainous Telramund and Ortrud in the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Lohengrin, their domestic-quarrel scene was an electric charge in an otherwise static drama. They did not merely rant and rage: they insinuated, they needled, they enticed. Both marvelous singer-actors, they bent and shaded their voices in a seemingly infinite variety of veiled sneers, smiling threats and choked curses. In duets, Ludwig's vibrant, richly textured mezzo-soprano enfolded Berry's robust, securely focused baritone like velvet over steel. A blend of poetry and power, their singing was eloquent proof that strife can be beautiful.

Walk-Off Roles. Berry and Ludwig have been scrapping at the Met for the past four months, beginning with Die Frau ohne Schatten, in which she was a shrewish wife trying to browbeat her husband into submission. Their portrayal achieved such success (TIME, Oct. 14) that, ever since, the Berrys have been the absolute berries with Met audiences and one of the most popular singing teams ever to command the Met stage.

They are also one of the very few successful married couples in opera. Destiny, they feel, had a hand in it. Berry, 36, an alumnus of the famed Vienna Boys Choir, studied engineering after World War II, moonlighted as a jazz pianist and singer in a Vienna cabaret with a combo called the Melodie Boys. He was hopelessly inept at engineering, so his professor agreed to pass him only if he promised to give up bridge building for music. He agreed, and after three years of singing what he calls "walk-off" roles, he landed his first major part at the Vienna State Opera in 1953.

Christa Ludwig, 32, daughter of German Tenor Anton Ludwig, also prepped as a cabaret singer during the hungry days after World War II, worked on the side as a seamstress (one of her more dubious creations: a red, white and black frock made out of an old Nazi flag). Her mezzo-soprano mother advised her "not to fall in love in a small opera house because then you may have to leave him behind when you go to a big house." Dutifully, Ludwig poured her heart into her art for nine years, finally graduated to the Vienna State Opera in 1955. It was a big house and she had big eyes for Berry, whom she met onstage during a 1957 performance of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. Their own marriage took place seven months later.

Angry Gods. In a twist on the temperamental tenors and sopranos who war offstage and woo onstage, the Berrys in private life seem like a hand-holding coosome. Though the profession is land-mined with problems for married singers, they have made a go of it because their careers progressed at the same pace. Today, they shuttle between Vienna, New York and their home in Lucerne (both are Swiss citizens) with their eight-year-old son Wolfgang, Christa's mother, a cook, a secretary and 27 pieces of luggage. They pick and choose their roles so that they can spend most of the year singing together at various opera houses. Wherever they are, they stake out "Christa's room" and "Walter's room" for private practice sessions; visits are allowed only for instant critiques. "We know each other's voices so well," says Christa, "that we can say 'Bad!', 'Good!', Too high!', Too low!' Our voices go together. We are like two married people who are beginning to look alike."

Last week the battling Berrys left Manhattan for their annual hitch at the Vienna State Opera. Met audiences consoled themselves with the knowledge that the couple will be back on stage next season in a new production of Wagner's Die Walkuere, which calls for them to square off and fight it out as a pair of unhappily married gods.

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