The World Turned Upside Down: #114

“The Axe Already Lies in the Roots”

Adam Joachim Goldmann



Bantcho Bantchevsky slept late on Saturdays. He would allow himself to rise at noon, having spent the nightlong dreaming of the opera he had seen the previous evening, and would awake, refreshed, to a morning ritual of coffee and the Arts & Leisure section of the Times.
The rarebit he usually made himself at midnight before retiring would aid the vividness of these reveries, which he considered as essential epilogues to the performances themselves. What’s more, these dreams had a corrective effect on the imperfections and kinks in the actual production, and would grant him an opportunity to experience as if anew the work in a flawless and perfectly realized incarnation. Every aspect was meticulously replicated: the most dazzling sets; the most powerful lyrical and dramatic singers.
As he rose to great the day, Batcho would relish the aesthetic experience possible only in the privacy of his unconscious. This gave him a certain degree of pride. He felt that few, if any, of the countless opera-lovers he knew were capable of such sheer, unadulterated artistic enjoyment. This is not to say that he often felt the performances he did attend almost ritualistically (had for the past 30 years been attending almost nightly) in any major way deficient. He knew well the opera houses of Europe from his travels before the war and had known all the great European singers of the day, many intimately. As much as he admired the artistry and integrity of the European tradition, he found himself at odds with the direction in which European opera had run in the wake of the Second World War. As much, his greatest admiration was reserved for the Met, and their unparalleled roster of talent, the sheer enormity of their stage and the delirious and unmatched spectacle they brought to him nightly.
Yet even these could not begin to compete with the nocturnal imaginings he experienced once he returned home, ate his rarebit and laid his head down on his feather pillow, his one material extravagance. He would then become the supreme artistic and musical director of the only opera house he praised and lauded without reservation, the one inside his own head. There the great singers of the past sang their roles with technical and expressive perfection. There one never had to worry about uneven tempi or overpowering brass: about awkward scenery or stiff acting. Every element was as it should be, the platonic ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk.
He knew that he would never die in his own bed, the theater of his grand operatic imagination. Though a widower and a private singing teacher, Bantcho was very much a public personality. And even if he hadn’t found the theatrical success that he’d expected to when he arrived in New York 35 years ago, he had still managed to hang out with the right crowd, the fashionable set of the New York classical music scene. Over the years he had secured invitations to parties, receptions and cocktail hours at some of the city’s most exclusive nightclubs, and had hobnobbed with Bernstein and Domingo (he kept a framed picture of himself and Domingo in his bathroom). He had lost precious little of his charm through the years. At 80, he was still as charismatic as when he’d arrived some 30 years ago, shortly after the war, those perhaps not so much as in his great performing days before the war.
Yes, he had hoped that New York would have been more willing to employ his talent. But he had arrived in the mid-1950s, a middle-aged man with a thick accent, no longer the youthful charlatan who had taken Sofia by storm a quarter century earlier. He knew well that he was charismatic, but he had not altogether succeeded in turning this talent into a sellable commodity. Still, he was loved and respected by his few pupils, friends at the opera who furnished him with free tickets and passes, and the four adorable grandchildren who wrote to him constantly from Bulgaria. All in all, he had few regrets and regarded his life as having been a triumph of some sort.
Up until a couple of years ago, Bantcho had been a perennial figure on the opera scene, which included performances and after parties. Wherever he went, he would regale those around him, becoming the focus of the party as he sang an aria or performed a Cossack dance. The unsupressable life of the party, he was forever devising new and ever-more-impressive party tricks. One day soon, he felt, he would unveil the party trick to end all party tricks.
But all that had changed abruptly two years ago, after Bantcho had suffered a minor stroke. The stroke caused little visible lasting damage. Out of embarrassment, he had kept the incident from his family and closest friends. Still, those closest to him noticed a dramatic change in his usually gay and exuberant demeanor. At 80, Bantcho was more seldom seen at the opera. His pupils felt that he was taking less interest in their affairs and treating the lessons in more business-like fashion. About half his students left him and Bantcho found himself with more and more free time on his hands. Then, two years later, around New Year’s 1988, he was gripped by a minor heart attack and spent about a week in hospital. After a long, healthy life, thought Bantcho, these ailments were more than fair.
Bantcho had been back from the hospital for about two weeks now. He hadn’t the energy or endurance return to the opera, where he was certain he was missed. His friend Luben had had helped Bantcho check out early of the Doctor’s Hospital, where Bantcho was dying of boredom. Since then, Luben rang several times a week. He had even offered Bantcho a ticket to the previous evening’s performance of Tristan, but Bantcho knew that his heart was not up to six hours of Wagnerian music drama (it could scarcely handle the three-minute walk to Lincoln Center).
Instead, he stayed at home and listened to the first two acts on a compact disc that he had recently received as a convalescence present. He slid the shiny discs into the new compact disc player that his daughter had mailed from Sofia for Christmas. Bantcho still preferred the wet sound of his old LPs and couldn’t quite get used to this new technology. Since his operation, however, he hadn’t the patience to fuss about with his poorly organized vinyl collection and his antique equipment. The compact disc player was so easy to use and its sound was a vast improvement over the audiotapes he sometimes listened to as he walked along the river during his very sporadic exercises.
He lay in bed that Friday night listening to Tristan and thought that hearing Jon Vickers and Brigit Nilsson not too poor a substitute for what he was missing at the Met. He dozed off somewhere into the second disc. When he awoke at 6am, the sun was not yet up and he had the unpleasant feeling that there was unfinished business to take care of. His dreams had been lacking. The closure that he was unable to find in real life had eluded him even in the dream state.
He awoke with the bitter recognition that he had failed himself, made melancholy by the unfulfilled dream of the night before. Though it was still early, he knew very well what he had to do. He went over to the bookshelf and removed the third compact disc from its case, slipped it into the player and turned the volume on full and crawled back into bed, hoping to recapture the sweet fulfillment that had been cruelly denied him by his physical ailments.
He knew that the music was blaring, but from his 26th floor apartment, it wouldn’t be bothering anybody except for his next-door neighbor Braulia, who, besides, was used to the noise from his pupils.
Isolde’s Liebestod concluded. He was in pain and cold not sleep. By now, the sun was on the rise, and Bantcho looked into the distance wistfully, full of admiration for the river view he so cherished. He rose to snatch the Times off his doormat, which read “Opera Fan.” The doctors had advised him to give up coffee entirely and he had laughed at such a preposterous suggestion.
He sat at the kitchen table and scanned page one. Then, as was his custom, he turned immediately to the obituary page, in part to make certain he didn’t see his name in print. More and more these days, he would open up the paper to be greeted with images of old friends and acquaintances from days gone by. Why, just a week ago he had read of the death of one of earliest friends, a minor British actress Lynn Callow, whose sexually-charged performances at the Old Vic had caused a minor-scandal in the 1920s. There was nothing that uncommon or remarkable about this natural death of a forgotten matinee idol, and the obit would have escaped Bantcho’s detection completely, had not Lynn played a sizable role in his aesthetic education.
Bantcho had gotten to know Lynn and her husband – an American industrialist whose name he couldn’t place – while they were honeymooning in Venice. The adolescent Bantcho was drifting about post-war Italy with his mother, searching for remains of her family and quite accidentally accumulating musical knowledge wherever he went.
His mother had deposited in Venice for a week on his own while she traveled on to Milan for some private and delicate business. At the age of 13, Bantcho was surprisingly independent and a shrewd judge of character. He used his charm to his advantage, making friends wherever he went and entertaining people with a song.
Lynn had seen him performing a Cossack dance along the Rialto one day and had taken a maternal interest in him. One evening, as she was exiting her hotel, Lynn found Bantcho seated by the edge of the water and invited him to join them at La Fenice that evening. Bantcho put on his finery and met Lynn and her husband in front of the opera house, where they were seeing Verdi’s Macbeth. Even at his early age, Bantcho could tell that such a worldly, young and beautiful wife did not belong with such an elderly, distinguished gentleman.
They sat in a box balcony center. Although this was his first experience with opera, Batcho knew that such luxury and extravagance must come with a hefty price tag. He remembered feeling very pampered and even uncomfortable about all the finery that surrounded him and with which these people aesthetcized and enriched their lives. Yet there was a seductive force to the whole affair that he had never before experienced, which both terrified and excited him. The drama, the tragedy, the music all came together in this atmosphere pregnant with elegance and ushered him into a world that he felt he simply had to gain access to or die, doomed to wander the earth deprived of its majesty.
At intermission, while Lynn husband stepped outside for a drink, Lynn and Bantcho remained inside the box talking. Bantcho was captivated by this enchanting creature. He must have amused her greatly, either by telling a joke or butchering the English language, for Lynn rather suddenly gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. He realized later that she must have meant in as a purely maternal gesture – he was in fact so young – but at the time, the contact of those soft, English lips against his untouched face was so overwhelming, so undeniably sensual, that he felt all the sudden dizzy and soon, his body was threatening to tip. Lynn had to grab him by his coattails to prevent him from hitting the banister or from a greater disaster.
That whole week long, Bantcho felt like the spoiled nephew or relations who rarely visited, but always did everything in style.
The Times ran a small obit a few days after Lynn died. Banthco recognized the old headshot that ran with the piece. He learnt that Lynn’s first husband had died quite suddenly in the early 1920s, just when his wife’s theatrical career was taking off. Though Lynn continued to haunt the London stage for the next thirty years, a conservative choice of reparatory and a hasty retirement ensured that her name was erased from public consciousness. Indeed, Bantcho was surprised both that she had lived so long and that the Times had thought her worthy of memorializing.
Bantcho made himself coffee and peeled apart the hefty paper section by section. There were maybe a dozen or so items of interest in the Arts and Leisure, but Bantcho had a difficult time focusing on even one for enough time to read more that the lead. This inability to concentrate was perhaps the single more detrimental aftereffect of his operation. In times past, he adored watching the PBS Great Performances broadcast from the Met. Now, however, he had enormous difficulty keeping his gaze focused on his 18-inch screen, even for a single aria. The only sections of the paper that he could digest were the color inserts. And so, Bantcho disinterestedly flipped through the advertisements for instant coffee, cereals and collector’s stamps.

At 10am, Bantcho began to get ready for the matinee performance of Verdi’s Macbeth. After a short bath, he shaved carefully for the first time that week. He removed a suit from his closet and unzipped the protective plastic around it. He draped it over his bed and inspected it looking for creases and other offenses. Finding none, he proceeded to dress. From his top drawer, he selected a gold silk bowtie. He wanted to look his finest for today: his first day back at the opera.
At 11:30, Braulia Serano received a knock on her door. She opened to find Bantcho, who looked primmer and more elegant than she could remember seeing him in some time. “Good morning, Madame,” he bowed courteously to the elderly lady. Braulia responded with a “Good Morning, maestro,” and held the door as he came inside. Bantcho asked the old women if she could possibly fix him some lunch. He had been in the hospital so recently and hadn’t gone grocery shopping in some time.
Braulia was excited by this unexpected visitation and hurried off to the kitchen to comply with her neighbor’s request. She returned shortly with some pasta and soup and joined him at the table. Batcho ate the food hurriedly but respectfully. He gave his belly a pat to show that he was satisfied. “You know, Madame,” he began, “I ought to marry you someday.” Braulia let out a high-pitched squeal. “Why, maestro, after 14 years of living next door to each other, what suddenly changed your mind?” Bantcho sat with the lazy expression of a man digesting his food and shrugged.
Bantcho had risen from his seat and was walking towards the door. He regretted that he did not have anything with which to repay his neighbor’’s kindness. Instead, he asked if he might sing her a song. Braulia had accepted this form of recompense on many past occasions and saw no reason to object now. She became an attentive audience as he sang “Nessum Dorma” in a voice that was hoarse, but undeniably full of feeling.
Braulia clapped enthusiastically and called after him to drop by that evening for dinner. “Thanks very much, Madame, for the invitation, but I am otherwise engaged. You see, Madame, I plan to die today.” Braulia had never shared a morbid sense of humor and hearing these words from one who had recently been so sick filled her with horror. She scolded him and told him not to talk of such things. “That’s a terrible thing for anyone to say, but especially you. You are so fond of life, Maestro. Go home, pull up your shades and think of happier times.”
Bantcho thanked his neighbor for the encouragement. She said goodbye to him and waited by the door as Bantcho walked down the hall toward the elevators. From her vantage point, she could see Bantcho clutch melodramatically at his heart (he had a great sense of theater) and mutter, “Oh! This is going to kill me.”

Bantcho didn’t usually sit in the upper balcony. He knew enough people at the opera who furnished him with seats in the orchestra. He reckoned, though, that he would feel bad accepting a complimentary ticket to this particular performance. It was the one and only time in his life that he felt the absolute necessity of paying his own way.
His one regret was that it should be such a lackluster performance. What a bad stroke of luck. During the past few weeks, many of the stars of the production had dropped out and all sorts of backstage drama and intrigue that usually remained hidden from the public had become widely, almost embarrassingly, publicized. In truth, Bantcho did not mind not seeing the originally-billed singers. But the entire first act was filled with a palpable atmosphere of failure. Everything from the chorus to the ballet to the sets seemed too thoughtlessly deployed to possibly enhance the performance in any way. Though none of his friends would have ever suspected it of him, Bantcho actually made loud noises of disapproval during the opening scenes. Those around him told him to keep quiet and let them enjoy the opera. Bantcho was offended that others could tolerate, much less enjoy, such a travesty. Bantcho knew this couldn’t be the same work that had made him fall in love with opera when he was 13.
At 3:25, the lights came up for the second intermission. Bantcho remained in the balcony while most of the audience around him filed out for drinks or the restroom. He looked about him and saw that he was pretty much alone up in the balcony. Now’s the time, he thought as he got up from his seat and walked to the balcony railing. The drop seemed far more dramatic that he had expected it to be looking up from the orchestra and Bantcho wondered if he shouldn’t have chosen a seat in the Grand Tier. He sat down on the railing and firmly gripped the brass bars to his sides. He felt himself gently begin to sway and closed his eyes. An usher called out from the back of the section for him to get off the railing. Bantcho opened his eyes slightly and squinted at the usher who approached with determined gait. For a moment, Bantcho froze and felt certain that the usher had torn him away from the rail. At 3:30, he let out a sigh of relief and dipped backwards, loosening his grip finger-by-finger from the bars.
The descent was quicker than he had anticipated and more painful. He hadn’t considered, for one, that the momentum from tipping backwards would cause him to flip over several times in the air. He had always been slightly anemic and all this somersaulting made him incredibly dizzy. He hadn’t expected, either, to hit his skull against the Grand Tier railing. When he finally reached the ground after covering a distance of 80 feet in an astonishing 2.2 seconds, part of a broken seat fell on top of him. He lay face-up in the left orchestra aisle, around row Y. The impact of the landing snapped his spine, while few of his ribs cracked under the weight of the broken seat. Bantcho had been knocked out almost immediately, when his head crashed into the brass railing.
Now, he lay sprawled out on the red velvet carpet, blood issuing from his head, mouth and nose. He was blind and deaf to the screams and chaos that his spectacular plunge had caused among those who had remained in the theater.

Luben was sitting in the living room after lunch with his wife listening to the radio broadcast of the matinee performance. They interrupted the intermission opera trivia to bring a report about a man who had just leapt from the upper balcony. There would be a slight delay until the third act. The opera trivia resumed, and the announcers kept stalling for time. Luben waited for more information about the man who had jumped, but was more impatient for them to get back to the opera. After an extra hour of opera trivia, the managing director came on the air to say that the rest of the afternoon’s performance had been cancelled, owning to an unfortunate incident. Disappointed and irritated, Luben switched off the radio and shuffled over to his record collection to decide what next to listen to.