Hi.
Welcome to my blog.
Welcome to my blog.
By Manuela Hoelterhoff
Setting: New York: Grand Opera at Lincoln Center, Harlem and other northern realms, Nice Dreams Funeral Parlor, Golden Towers at Columbus Circle, Mimi Pizza, Paris.
Sometime in the late fall.
Characters:
Mickie Wolff: excitable short general manager of the Grand Opera Company of Manhattan, the very greatest in the world. He is about 50.
Lennard: African-American opera nut, voice student at Juilliard, pizza deliverer who worships Lulu Verlaine. About 23.
Madame Lulu Verlaine: Extravagantly chic, moody, whimsical, mysterious French diva in the Callas tradition, who is making her long-awaited Grand debut as Aida, the doomed slave in Verdi’s opera. About 32.
Madame Gronka Viperova: rival of the above, a squinty-eyed backstabbing Russki soprano. Past her prime.
Mrs. Hertz: gaga 100-year-old zillionaire drifting between her residence in the Golden Towers and the Grand Opera and also the present and the way past.
Reynaldo: Lennard's gay Hispanic friend, a walking archive of Opera News, who works at the Bronx Zoo. Father runs the Nice Dreams Funeral Parlor.
Shosheena: Lennard's rapping long-nailed sister, a devoted follower of A Boogie Wit da Hoodie. An untrustworthy employee of the Nice Dreams funeral home (located below their apartment).
Manny Haltertop: Incredibly beautiful narcoleptic, alcoholic music critic from the New York Night Times.
Godzilla, aka the Great B-Minus conductor: Ginormous psychopathic podium personality in late midlife crisis. Preferred pronouns: Me Me & Me.
Also Starring:
The Three Tonners: LGBTQR members of the Clean Plate Club, O-shaped backup opera and soul singers who embody multicultural perfection being also Afro-American, Chinese-Puerto Rican and Replicant.
Jobo, Fester, Lothar: Hip-hopping pals of Shosheena, rhymin’ lowlife clowns and thieves.
Beppe Benito: Gronka’s insanely jealous tenor boyfriend. Italian, stupid.
Jordan: lofty Waspy and whispy annoying assistant to Wolff.
The Last Tenor: ancient leftover from the Three Tenors act whose ceaseless singing of “Maria” from a wheelchair the world over is a leitmotiv of “Sing Louder.”
Mabel: Lennard's sweet, sluggish mom and Animal Planet addict.
Carleton Hunsucker, Esq: Mrs. Hertz’s neurotic lawyer.
Alfonse Verlaine: Drunk husband of Madame Verlaine.
The Dancing Nuns of Togo: Performance group funded by Mrs. Herz.
Also: chorus and dancers as well as assorted animals (a beagle, an elephant, a camel, large cats, a stuffed ibis). Stage hands and a brass band for Aida’s Triumphal Scene.
Act 1
The camera hovers over Manhattan, panning south from the scrappier neighborhoods of the Bronx and Harlem to the fountains of Lincoln Center, home of the Grand Opera, the Borda Philharmonic, the Koch Theater and across the street, Juilliard and Tully Hall. The sounds of the city give way to the strains of Wagner's “Die Walkure” (better known as the theme for “Apocalypse Now”).
Scene 1:
Backstage at the Grand: The narrow halls are filling up with half-dressed dragons, dwarfs, divas, musicians and giants. Large flower arrangements, racks of costumes, proud dressers bearing wigs and harried assistants clutching scores arriving in the catch pool outside the dressing rooms.
Scene 2:
The Grand’s Grand Tier restaurant overlooking the grand staircase. Here sits and sips Mrs. Hertz with her oxygen tank and sycophants, as mere mortals mill around the plaza with plastic cups waiting for the doors to open.
Scene 3:
Backstage dressing rooms where the Three Tonners are warming up and ordering pizza (with everything) from Mimi’s across the plaza. Wagner's epic operas require stamina to go on forever. In another room Brunnhilde practices her Hohotojo. The high C is elusive. The trio snickers.
Scene 4: Mimi’s Pizza.
Lennard is taking down their orders. His devotion to the Grand's deities extends to throwing on extra cheese for free. Working here helps pays for his voice lessons. Opera makes Lennard’s eyes shine like kleigs. In the mythic world of opera, Lennard forgets his grungy life further north on Broadway where everyone raps or sings gospel.
Scene 5: The Grand’s Grand Tier restaurant:
Mickie Wolff, general manager, whose unctuous guests talk behind his back about the horrible reviews for the “Ring” cycle which went gazillions over budget.
"How healthy do you think she is?” Wolff asks Jordan as they stare across to the restaurant at Mrs. Hertz who is being pried loose from her chair and carried to her box
Scene 6: Backstage at the Grand.
Lennard arrives carrying the pizzas (one for each girl), and knocks on the three T’s dressing room. As he tries opening the door, the three tonners spill out with their dressers crushing him and the surprised people outside in the hall: a minister, wig carriers, relatives, the make-up man, a child dragon. Yes, this is an homage to the cabin scene aboard the ocean liner in the Marx Brothers’s ``A Night at the Opera.’’ The pizza is scooped up and devoured by battling parties.
Scene 7: Golden Towers.
Lennard makes his last delivery of the night to the triplex of Mrs. Hertz, who slept through most of the opera performance and is now wide awake and hungry.
The doormen snag a few slices and beam him up. The two have a touching scene: he speaks of his ambitions to sing opera and get away from his loud family up north. She drifts back to her heyday as a dramatic soprano during the Reich when the Fuhrer sent her flowers. She slips him a big tip.
Scene 8: Fredrick Douglass Boulevard:
Lennard cycles home waving to the dealers, poets and drunks .
Mabel, his sweet, out of work and out-of-it mom is watching lizards canoodle on Animal Planet. Sister Shosheena is in the kitchen with Jobo, Lothar and Fester. When Lennard turns up the volume on a Verlaine cd, Shosheena screams along in mockery. A cd! Opera! So old school. Shosheena and the boys blast Big Punisher and Moneybagg Yo. A duet ensues. Actually, a trio as Mabel turns the volume up on the squawking beasts.
Scene 9: The Nice Dreams funeral parlor/apartment the next morning.
Lennard and Reynaldo, who lives here, converse in made-up opera Italian, as in "Yo! Voglio un cheeseburgio."
Reynaldo’s bedroom is an altar to the French diva legend. Photographs show Verlaine with poodles, the Pope, kings, queens and beaming dictators. Rumors abound why she hasn’t sung in years. A personal tragedy? A vocal crisis? ``Aida’’ has been sold out for months provoking excitement as well as stern questioning from the woke community: what’s a white woman doing singing a black slave?
Scene 10: Along Broadway:
The Three Tonners have risen and after fueling up with Krispy Kremes troop down Broadway exchanging gossip about Verlaine and her rival, Gronka Viperova. They pass through the Met’s prison like entrance and take the elevator to the rehearsal rooms in the bowels of the house where Godzilla is discovered in a warm embrace with the lighting designer.
Outside Lincoln Center, a limousine pulls up. General manager Mickie Wolff sprints into view and crashes into the chauffeur as both reach to open the diva’s door. Adjusting her fur, Verlaine steps out with her beagle, Sugar. Wolff bows and scrapes and escorts her inside.
Scene 11: The Grand:
A rehearsal room: Applause as the diva enters the rehearsal room and begins the aria O Patria Mia. Skulking haughtily at the door is her rival Gronka Viperova.
Scene 11: The funeral home:
Shosheena and the boys are having a business meeting at the Nice Dreams Funeral Parlor. This is their base for their fencing and pill operation. Just in: ten boxes of $3,000 Nike Air Max Jeesus sneakers sprinkled with Holy Water and blessed by a priest. The stuff leaves in the caskets and is dug up a little later. Shosheena is not entirely happy with the situation, but the boys have club connections. The scene ends with Shosheena and the boys prancing through the funeral parlor singing ``I wanna be normal, I wanna be sane” from Panic Attack.
Act 2
Scene 1: The Grand:
Wolff presides over an early meeting (meaning eleven; opera people sleep late) with representatives from the orchestra, the rehearsal department, costumes, wigs, box office, make-up, orchestra, chorus, press, and HR.
Is there another art form that attracts so many sublime sufferers and so many nuts? One singer’s contract specifies two unopened boxes of Kleenex, three bottles of Perrier and an extra-sized humidifier. Aida inflicts extra make-up costs on the company: Egyptians are tan and the Ethiopians they defeat are well, dark. Hand make-up is one fee; both arms much more.
“What about full body makeup? We’re forgetting Otello! Jeesus Christ,” moans Mickie, moving on. What are we going to do about Beppe. He is not black. He’s Eyetalian playing a fucking moor. Isn’t that point of the show? He’s insecure cause he is a moor. He wouldn’t be so nuts if he was white to begin with. I can see the headline: “Columbia Professor Decries Use of Blackface at Elitist Met. Demands Boycott.”
Asks Jordan: Do we need to include a trigger warning in the program? Desdemona being strangled? Chaotic laughter.
Scene 2: The Empire Hotel: Lennard has discovered the Great One is in residence and has parked himself in the lobby holding a newspaper with two holes in it so he can look at her in secret.
Verlaine steps out of the elevator swathed in furs, trailing Sugar, the beagle. The diva, having devoured Manny Haltertop’s bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning ``Backstage Eating Buckets of Pasta with Cecilia Bartoli and Others”, spies the altered newspaper and recognizes it as the get-up of the shy opera nut. She playfully snatches the NYNight Times away and smiles.
He introduces himself and ends up walking her across Columbus Avenue to the opera house for an afternoon rehearsal. They have an immediate connection.
Scene 3: Juilliard:
An exhilarated Lennard goes to his music class overlooking Broadway. His brilliant rendition of “Nessun’ dorma” (No-one sleeps) – the hit tune from Turandot and the Three Tenors concert in Rome --wakes up the homeless people on the Plaza. He leans out the window and waves a white hankie, Pavarotti-style. Bravo!
Scene 4: Backstage at the Grand:
Another night at the opera. Viperova is getting her wig on as Desdemona in Otello. She does not NOT like her blond pig tails and refuses so adamantly that the dresser calls for help. Mickie Wolff barges through her door and says: “That wig is going on with or without you.”
The furious woman steps into the corridor and bangs on the door of boyfriend Beppe Benito, the moor of the show. A lovely make-up artist is straddling the smoochy tenor, slathering on blackface.
Viperova inflates with rage.
The make-up artist is dragged out by her hair. She and Benito have at each other until the curtain rises and continue cursing in Italian and Russian whenever either one of them isn’t required to sing. Shut up! B Minus yells from the podium.
Viperova refuses to submit quietly to her strangulation. They argue through the curtain call as the audience erupts in boos and cheers as Godzilla stomps madly on her podium. Stuff is thrown at the stage.
Scene 5: Lennard’s apartment.
After another night shoveling out pizzas, Lennard returns home where mother Mabel and Reynaldo are watching another offering from Animal Planet while Shosheena and the three baby thugs writhe to Wu-Tang Clan, which is about as classic as music gets for them.
His cell rings. He nearly faints to hear Madame Verlaine’s silky voice on the other end. She invites him to a party the next night in her honor and she could use an escort. Reynaldo lies on the floor in front of Lennard begging him to get him invited too. Yes, he can come says the gracious diva.
Scene 6: The Grand office of Mickie Wolff. He is yelling at Viperova for nearly killing Beppe, the only tenor in the world under the age of 55 who sells tickets and is thin enough to wear pleated pants and/or tights. The phone rings. Jordan is at Golden Towers with Mrs. Hertz who isn’t looking too good.
“Exactly how sick is she?" Wolff asks, with a hopeful air. “Keep me posted. Drop in every hour.’’
Scene 7: Lincoln Center’s Addio restaurant:
The party for Madame Verlaine has attracted everyone in the opera world, patrons, the Last Tenor, near dead divas, Gronka Viperova, opera queens and donors and even Manny Haltertop who is slumped at the bar with a bottle of Chardonnay. Jordan hits on a happy Reynaldo who thinks: Free Tickets!
Scene 8: Central Park:
Late that night, Lennard and Madame Verlaine are walking back to her hotel through Central Park on a beautiful, starry night. They sing the duet from “La Boheme” as Sugar saunters along behind.
Act III
Scene 1: Golden Towers:
Mrs. Hertz’s bedroom. Jordan is at her side. Every inch of wall space is covered with pictures, paintings, and ceremonial plaques. "Just me and my memories" she mutters gesturing weakly. The voice of Maria Callas wails in the background. They once sang together in "Norma." "I had better top notes," she remembers with a happy smile, suddenly rising from her pillows.
After offering bits of her entire repertoire, her lungs give out and she dies gasping bits of Violeta’s death scene from “La traviata.” “Oh God! To die so young.”
Jordan leaps into action looking for her papers. Has she made over her gabillions to the Grand Opera? A worrying document lies crinkled on her bedspread. Jordan looks it over and turns pale. She has left her fortune to the dancing nuns of Togo.
He calls Wolff who is in his office screaming at Viperova. “Getcha boa on, " he says to the Russki. "You’ve got a new role, honey.” Viperova will impersonate Mrs. Hertz and improve her will in favor of the Grand Opera.
Scene 2: The Empire Hotel:
Lennard arrives at the Empire to escort Madame Verlaine to the final rehearsal of “Aida” and overhears her crying in her suite as a man yells in French. He knocks on the door as a flushed-looking drunk opens it and mistakes him for a bellboy. Lennard discovers what he has feared: It is her husband who has arrived unannounced.
Scene 3: Golden Towers: Mrs. Hertz's bedroom:
Wolff, Viperova and Jordan stuff the frail being into a sub-zero refrigerator, removing a few vats of caviar. Viperova struggles into Mrs. Hertz's nightie.
Disguising her voice, she calls Mrs. Hertz’s lawyer, Carleton Hunsucker, saying she wishes to review her will. Her face wrapped in bandages, she scrawls an addendum and sends him away.
Wolff and Jordan remove the real Mrs. Hertz from her fridge and tuck her back into bed, still dead. Wolff pretends to be surprised and calls for a doctor. He scuttles back to his office.
Scene 4: Nice Dreams Funeral Parlor:
Days later, up north an unhappy Lennard isn’t sure whether to go to the Aida gala. He steps into the funeral home where a service is in progress and sits in a corner with Reynaldo who tries to cheer him up but only says the wrong things as in: She’s white, married, French, and you have no money.
Visitors are thronging around the casket of a chunky dead mammy wearing a lot of jewelry. Reynaldo looks at Lennard who looks back. Nice necklace! What a waste to bury it! As the sobbing family departs, they steal it before the casket is closed.
Scene 5: The Grand:
Hours later, Lennard knocks on Verlaine’s dressing room door and gives her the necklace which she agrees to wear as Aida. It will bring good luck for tonight.
Scene 6: Nice Dreams:
Shosheena arrives at the funeral home with Jobo and his two business associates. When they open the casket, they freeze. Then they begin jumping around in a rage. The necklace, stuffed with uncut heroin, is gone. Gone. After scaring Reynaldo into telling them what happened, they stuff him into the casket and shut the lid.
Scene 7: Broadway:
With Shosheena screaming in the backseat of a Lincoln Navigator, the trio comes to a screeching halt outside the loading dock on Amsterdam Avenue behind the Grand.
Scene 8: Backstage at the Grand:
Jobo leading, they barge inside to the dressing rooms where they find Lennard reclining on Madame’s chaise with Sugar the beagle.
It doesn’t take extensive torture with a hair curling iron for Lennard to reveal the diva is wearing the necklace.
Which way, mother-fucker? Leonard points them to the big stage where the Triumphal Scene is picking up steam with slaves, soldiers, two hissing tigers, hundreds of extras, and dancers, one small elephant circling the pyramid and thrones.
Gloria, they sing, Gloria to Egypt and Isis. The tenor has returned from Ethiopia with the defeated in heavy chains, Aida’s father among them. He looks terrible. Oh no! What do I see? Mio padre! She cries.
The four of them fit right in with their face jewelry, tattoos, ripped clothes, crazy hair. For a few minutes Jobo, Lothar and Fester enjoy racing around, teasing the elephant and shoving the Egyptian king and his daughter Amneris off their thrones while adding their contemporary voices. But the necklace. Where is it.
Madame Verlaine moves center stage for her aria they make their move and throw her to the stage. Gasps all around.
The fit diva fights them off with the Egyptian army. The Three Tonners corner the three thugs and sit on them. Pandemonium as the elephant tumbles on top of Godzilla in the pit. “Das Ende.” But not yet.
“Sing louder!” Godzilla shrieks to everyone and no-one.
In the mayhem, Shosheena tries to escape by climbing a rope hanging down from a pyramid and ends up swinging onto one of the Austrian chandeliers in the auditorium as the audience cheers. Shosheena waves. Since she is wearing very little, people think she is part of the show.
Verlaine’s soused husband runs onstage from the bar. Lennard decks him with a shield. Sugar bites him.
“Sing Louder” Godzilla shrieks at the stage after heaving the elephant into the first two rows.
The crowds part as the greatest of the great divas now saves the show, raising an imperious arm and singing several glorious high Cs.
The thugs escape empty-handed, chased by Wolff, the tigers and the annoyed elephant. What a comeback for Verlaine. The entire hall quakes with applause. Fans surge backstage.
Scene 9: Stage door:
Hours later, Lulu Verlaine exits the stage door with her beagle and Lennard who is barely visible under her rose bouquets. Endless autographing. Then a hearse comes to a screeching halt. It is Reynaldo, escaped from his casket. Get In! He yells. Pandemonium as Sugar briefly escapes. Off they go up the Hudson River Drive past the twinkling bridge to the exit marked Valhalla where Manny Haltertop has a cottage. They wake her up.
Scene 10: The law offices of Hunsucker, Esq. filling up with emissaries of Mrs. Hertz’s many charities including the endangered pink-tufted supplicary, the dancing nuns of Togo, the Ossining prison library system, and the Glimmerglop retirement home for senior members of the club,
Wolff arrives with Jordan and they sit down looking smug. The creaky-shoed Hunsecker extracts the will from a safe and begins to read. Somewhat smallish sums are awarded to one befuddled group after another. He comes to the last bequest. Wolff tries on a serious face.
“Finally, I, Adrienne Hertz, have decided to leave the bulk of my fortune, including my holdings in Amazon and Raytheon to the soprano whose impassioned singing so reached deep into my heart and touched my soul, Madame Gronka Viperova and that sweet little Lennard who brought me that wunderbar pizza mit alles.
Gronka Viperova, inspired by Puccini’s comedy “Gianni Schicchi’’ (adapted from Dante’s Inferno!). has awarded the dough to herself and the pizza guy who is also her pizza guy.
The sly Russki grins. Nothing for the Grand! Wolff tries to throw Viperova out the window. Mayhem.
Scene 10: Paris:
As the credits start to roll, there is a final shot of Shosheena and the boys hip-hopping along the Seine at night, followed by Madame Lulu Verlaine and Lennard and Sugar as they come to a halt at the grandest of the grand operas built by Charles Garnier in the 19th century.
Their names are on a poster for "La Boheme".
Lennard will make his debut as Rodolfo, a poet who sings of castles in the sky, with Lulu by his side as Mimi, the doomed maker of artificial flowers.
Trailing them is Sugar and Lennard holding hands with Jordan. They stop in briefly at Deux Magots to pick up Manny Haltertop at the bar. A newly energized mama Mabel topped off by a Valkyrie helmet is pushing the Last Tenor in his wheelchair as the dancing Three Tonners bring up the rear.
