Battle Fatigue

By Michael Walsh

Even by the famously hot-blooded standards of opera, last week's passionate dramma giocoso at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City was positively -- well, operatic. In the fiery lead role was the mercurial lyric soprano Kathleen Battle, renowned for leaving a trail of ill will in her wake wherever she goes. Opposing her were the forces of decorum and rectitude, represented by Met general manager Joseph Volpe. The denouement was catastrophe. Volpe, citing "unprofessional actions . . . profoundly detrimental to the artistic collaboration among all the cast members," summarily fired Battle from this week's production of Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment and withdrew all future offers. In so doing, he set off grand international choruses of "It's about time."

The combative diva, 45, is the darling of a huge public, a glamorous former schoolteacher from Portsmouth, Ohio, who possesses one of the loveliest voices in opera today. Thanks to her supple, dulcet soprano and winning stage personality -- and with the powerful patronage of Met artistic director James Levine -- she has risen to worldwide fame in secondary roles that ordinarily do not make stars, parts like Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni and Sophie in Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. Battle's presence in a cast or with an orchestra practically guarantees a sold-out house; her albums, whether art songs or spirituals, are consistent best sellers.

Behind the scenes, however, Battle often lives up to her martial surname. Divas are expected to be difficult; opera lore is rife with tales of their devouring egos and overweening eccentricities -- not to mention the outrageous quirks of arrogant male singers, especially tenors. But Battle is, according to many who have worked with her, impossible. Fussy, erratic and arbitrary, the headstrong soprano has infuriated colleagues and administrators and crossed swords with functionaries and hapless hoteliers across the globe. The cast of The Daughter of the Regiment applauded when it was told during rehearsal that Battle had been fired.

Stories about her pettiness are legion: the time in Boston she telephoned the management of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to complain that the Ritz- Carlton's room service had put peas in her pasta; the time when, feeling chilly while riding in a limo in Southern California, she used the cellular phone to call her management company in New York, which phoned the limo service, which phoned the driver, who turned the air conditioning down; the time in New York when she and Luciano Pavarotti competed to see which could arrive later for a dress rehearsal. Battle has a penchant for changing hotel suites in the middle of a stay just to vary the color of her surroundings. After her appearances at the San Francisco Opera this season, the backstage crew sported T shirts that read: I SURVIVED THE BATTLE.

The Met's Volpe finally lost patience with her rehearsal shenanigans -- which included lateness and even absence, as well as withering criticism of her fellow performers and flaky, almost paranoid demands that they not look at her. Battle's role in the production is now being sung by Harolyn Blackwell.

"I applaud Joe Volpe for standing up to her," says Ernest Fleischmann, managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. "Somebody has to say stop. It's a salutary lesson and a help to us all." In these sentiments, he is far from alone. Other impresarios were also harsh in their assessment. "In the Met's place, I would have done exactly the same," said Hugues Gall, newly appointed head of the Paris Opera. "In the 1920s the director of the Met, Gatti-Casazza, used to deal firmly with even greater stars, like Caruso. But Caruso wasn't as crazy as Miss Battle seems to be."

On the advice of her handlers, the powerful Columbia Artists Management Inc., the soprano was saying little. Battle is a reserved, private woman who has subordinated her personal life to her career; in a brief statement that was her only public comment, she complained she was never warned that her actions were out of line. "To my knowledge," she said, "we were working out all of the artistic problems in the rehearsals, and I don't know the reason behind this unexpected dismissal. All I can say is, I am saddened by this decision."

Sources inside and outside the Met agree that Battle's downfall was triggered by her harsh treatment of co-star Rosalind Elias, 64, a veteran and locally beloved mezzo. In one high-comedy scene, Elias, as the Marquise of Berkenfield, is seated at the piano coaching the high-spirited Marie, played by Battle, in a proper old tune. Battle stiffly complained that Elias' piano playing was inept and was adversely affecting her phrasing; she issued a series of ultimatums culminating in a demand that the solo be played by a musician in the orchestra pit.

The Met management, wearied by Battle's incessant demands -- last year, she abruptly pulled out of a Met Rosenkavalier after a tiff with conductor Christian Thielemann -- informed Columbia Artists' formidable president, Ronald Wilford, that Battle would be fired. Wilford asked that the decision be postponed a couple of days and, in a meeting with Volpe on Feb. 7, pleaded Battle's case. "Enough is enough," Volpe told him. "This has to stop." Later that day, after Battle left him three telephone messages, Volpe finally called her back and told her she was fired. Says Volpe: "Please understand that I pride myself on working with singers. What I find so unfortunate in this situation is that I was not able to make this work."

The battle of Kathy is also complicated by her race; black singers such as Battle, Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman have had to make their way -- determinedly, often courageously -- in an overwhelmingly white milieu. Yet so unpopular has Battle become that she is often openly derided with the crudest kind of racial epithets -- backstage at the Met she is known as the "U.N.," or "uppity nigger" -- and speculations about her sanity are widespread. "She's young, pretty, very talented and very, very screwed up," says a Met insider. "I think she's sick, actually, but I couldn't tell you why."

Why indeed? Singers, especially sopranos and tenors, are notoriously insecure. They are the only musicians who wake up every morning not knowing whether their instrument is going to be there. "A singer is really a human container for the vulnerable, invisible instrument -- the voice. Because they can't touch their instrument, they can't see it, that makes for sensitive and fragile people," says Elma Kanefield, a psychotherapist at the Juilliard School in Manhattan with a private practice exclusively devoted to performing artists. "This instrument is vulnerable to weather or biochemical changes or other people's colds. I think they play out this vulnerability in other areas of life. Instead of their voices being vulnerable, they feel vulnerable."

"I think she's frightened to death," says former diva Beverly Sills, now chairwoman of Lincoln Center. "She's obviously an insecure girl, with a perfectly beautiful voice. You can't do an opera all by yourself. No matter how big a superstar you are, if you don't have a collaboration with your colleagues, you're in a lot of trouble. I think it's wiser to concentrate on singing like a prima donna than on acting like one."

Battle's handful of defenders agree she can be difficult but argue that her artistry makes her worth the trouble, and obliquely criticize the Met for not defusing the situation diplomatically. "Many great artists are difficult in their search for perfection in their craft," says Peter Gelb, president of Sony Classical Film and Video and Wilford's former deputy at Columbia Artists. Gelb has made nine TV programs with Battle. "The role of the Met is to support great talents. Nothing a producer does comes close to the challenge and difficulty great artists face when they go onstage."

Volpe says he is keeping the door open for Battle to return to the Met, provided she cleans up her act. "If the time should come that Kathleen has been successful in working with other organizations," he says, "then of course I would consider it." Abandoned, scorned and vilified, Battle is at last appearing in the kind of role she is not accustomed to singing: tragic heroine. It's not a part that suits her. She would do far better to rediscover the wholesome, appealing qualities that made her a star in the first place and leave the prima donna business to someone else.

With reporting by Benjamin Ivry/Paris and William Tynan/New York