A Cadenza for Caruso by Barbara Paul

advice?”
    â€œYes, I am asking your advice.”
    â€œThen my advice is to stay out of it. You coerced Puccini into revealing his secret in the first place, yes? And if you start meddling you will just make things worse. Rico, old friend, mind your own business.”
    â€œHow can I do that?” Caruso protested. “When a friend needs help—”
    â€œBut since we both know you have never minded your own business in your life,” Amato went on smoothly, “my second piece of advice is to find this blackmailer and confront him yourself. Find this Luigi …?”
    â€œDavila.”
    â€œDavila, yes. Go to him and tell him you know what he is doing. If he thinks other people know about it, he just might back down. No man wants to be known as a blackmailer. Too risky.”
    Caruso sat up straight in his tub. “You think that will work?”
    â€œIt might. It will depend on how easily intimidated this man Davila is.”
    â€œWill you go with me?”
    â€œHow can I?” Amato blew soapsuds in Caruso’s direction. “I do not even know about this, remember? And Rico—I still think my first advice is the best. Don’t meddle in it.”
    Caruso swooshed the water with his toes, thinking. “Pasquale—if our positions were reversed, what would you do? Would you stay out of it? Or would you try to help?”
    Amato was silent for so long that Caruso began to think he’d fallen asleep. Then the baritone sighed, musically. “I’d try to help.”
    Caruso leaned back in the tub and smiled. It was the answer he wanted.

4
    The following day Caruso was excused from the Fanciulla rehearsal. He was singing Pagliacci that night, and Toscanini had agreed to rehearse around him, just this once. The conductor knew how much preparation a heavy tragic role like Pagliacci demanded of a singer.
    That was another mystery Caruso had to contend with. Why was Toscanini being so understanding? This was unnatural behavior, to say the least.
    It took some doing for Caruso to get himself into the proper frame of mind for the heavier operatic roles. His usual procedure was to spend most of the day lying down. He would vocalize very little, and then always in long, sustained phrases, building up gradually until it was time to go to the opera house. By then he would be in the initial stages of a first-class, grade-A panic .
    Enrico Caruso suffered from stage fright. Terrible stage fright; it had been with him all his life and showed no sign of going away. Over the years it had fallen to his accompanist Barthélemy to nurse the tenor through these pre-performance jitters, to supply him with headache medicine and throat spray and analgesic powders and generally soothe and encourage him any way he could. Once Caruso stepped out on the stage, he was all right; but that period right before a performance began was hell for everybody.
    So it was to everyone’s benefit if the day preceding an evening performance could be spent calmly. Caruso tried lying down and blanking his mind, but this time the trick didn’t work. Ugo had turned up an address for Luigi Davila, and facing the blackmailer was all Caruso could think of. He found, to his distress, that he didn’t want to do it.
    When Davila had been just an annoying little man trying to hitch a free ride on Caruso’s coattails, the tenor had known how to respond to him. But now that Caruso was aware Davila was a blackmailer, or a would-be blackmailer—well, that made a difference. One did not speak to blackmailers the same way one spoke to ordinary pests.
    To get his mind off the matter, Caruso went to his desk to read some of his mail. Everyone in the household took turns with the mail; and sometimes Caruso had to ask friends to come in and help, there was so much of it. Some of it came to the hotel, but most was sent to the Metropolitan Opera. A New York postal clerk had once told Caruso that he received