Music: In Sickness & in Wealth

At England’s Glyndebourne Festival last week, Soprano Joan Sutherland, playing the role of Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, rushed disheveled from the wings to shriek lamentations over the fallen body of her father. Restlessly roaming the house, her husband. Pianist Richard Bonynge. sweated out every note. He had his own lament: “We have as bad reputations as ballet dancers’ mothers.” He meant himself and all the other incarnations of that fabled musical folk figure, the opera diva’s husband.

Says Andre Mertens of Columbia Artists Management: “Singers’ husbands! Find me stones heavy enough to place around their necks and drown them all! In all my 35 years of managing artists, I never quite got used to the sharp little men who tell me where Madame is to be booked, what fee she is to be paid, who is to sing with her and what the critics will have to write. Somewhere in the brain of every prima donna there is a deep craving for security and comfort, linked with fear of old age. This causes her to pick a man who is prepared to act as a permanent wet nurse.”

The most famous modern operatic husband is Giovanni Battista Meneghini, the building-materials millionaire who, legend has it, built Maria Callas. Even Meneghini has his critics, who claim that he stripped Callas of every cent she made and prodded her into her notorious tigress behavior. But whatever a husband’s shortcomings, the care and feeding of a diva is no easy task. One veteran recalls his routine before each performance: “I keep all windows shut, even in summer. I also make sure my wife eats no soups, pasta or heavy foods. I avoid smoking and refrain from doing or saying anything that could upset her. We even stop making love.”

Not all operatic husbands go to such lengths, but most of them work hard to fulfill “their contract, marriage”—in the words of Recording Executive Walter Legge, who is married to Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. And despite frequent criticism, many are admired in the trade as career builders of taste and intelligence.

Among the more successful teams: ¶Vienna-born Walter Surovy was a matinee idol in prewar Prague when he met Bronx-born Mezzo-Soprano Rise Stevens, then barely launched on her singing career. They were married in 1939, and at war’s end. after an unsuccessful fling at Hollywood, Surovy settled down to the fulltime business of making Rise into a “national celebrity.” He sent her to top Hollywood and Paris dress designers, converted her from a lank-haired brunette into a curly blonde, insisted that she take dancing lessons at the M-G-M studios.

Surovy steered Rise into Carmen, her most famous Met role, and over her objections that she wanted to sing Bach and Gluck, he also got her to sing Carmen Jones, Showboat and other light fare. Result : while her operatic career has declined (she is now 47, he is 50), Stevens is still in demand for concert and TV performances. Surovy handles all the “commercial work” for his wife with such success that “if we ever got divorced, I think she’d still retain me as her personal manager.”¶Enrique Magrina, 38, was a law student at the University of Barcelona when he met his wife, Victoria de los Angeles, in 1942. Although she was studying voice, she had no real professional career until Magrina persuaded her to enter an international song festival, which she won.

When the two were married the following year, Magrina became her manager. What led him to reject a law career, he says, was the realization that she would need a manager and that such a responsibility should not fall to a stranger: “At least I am honest and sincere.” Magrina claims responsibility for having persuaded De los Angeles to leave Spain for the more lucra tive climate of La Scala and the Met. Today he handles all contract negotiations, has long since become inured to being addressed by his wife’s name. Says he: “Victoria sings, but later she is the classic Spanish woman in her home. In private life, she is my wife, not I the consort of Victoria de los Angeles.”¶Belgrade-born Dragan Debeljevic, 39, abandoned plans for a career as an art and musical historian to guide the career of his wife, Swiss-born Soprano Lisa Delia Casa. While he was studying at the University of Zurich he heard Delia Casa sing, married her not long after. By his testimony, his wife was not an ambitious girl (“she was not born for this profession”) and had to be worried by him into a star contract with the Vienna State Opera and later with the Met. Debeljevic attends every one of his wife’s rehearsals and performances, selects engagements that fall within the “frame” of her career and ruthlessly rejects others, helps design her personal wardrobe. He also walks the dogs (a Weimaraner and a pointer), parks the car, and always travels with her: “Someone has to carry the money. She never does. She sings, as she says, for the dog biscuits, and I do the worrying.” To help her relax, he took up yoga with her, and when she needs slimming, he goes on a diet too, although he is slender himself. His anonymity does not bother him in the least: “Debeljevic doesn’t work very easily on the telephone with a stranger. It’s easier to say yes, this is Mr. Delia Casa.”¶Mario Lanfranchi, 33, is an Italian TV producer, who four years ago set U.S.-born Soprano Anna Moffo, 25, on the road to La Scala by hiring her for a highly successful TV production of Madame Butterfly. Soon afterward, when he married Moffo, Lanfranchi took over the handling of her career. His services include the design of Moffo’s shoes, clothes and 100 hats. “Without him,” says one Italian, “she would still be a promising but struggling singer.” ¶Dieter Berger, 40, who met his wife, Soprano Rita Streich, after the war when he was assistant stage manager at the Berlin State Opera, is an operatic husband who struggles to maintain an occupation of his own; he has a small motion-picture company and films TV travelogues where-ever Rita’s engagements take them. As for his wife’s career, he is involved in everything from conducting negotiations with concert managers to packing trunks to picking out her wigs. He also, says Rita, “looks after my nerves and my health” by deciding when she needs holidays, what time to break away from post-performance parties. The anonymity of his career sometimes disturbs Berger: “The public is interested in Rita Streich, the famous coloratura. The only one who seems to be interested in her husband is the income tax collector.” But in a sound partnership, personal concessions can always be worked out. Says he: “Aly Khan used to need seven hours of sleep and Bettina ten. Well, Rita gets along with seven and I need ten. But I work hard, so ten it is.”