Profound In His Silence by G.R. Richards

There was nothing more daunting than a room full of strangers, except a room full of strangers who also happened to be opera singers.

How would Charles ever manage to keep track of all these people? Director, conductor, voice coaches, language coaches, rehearsal pianist, choreographer, costumers, stage manager, assistants and, last but not least, the company. Usually, he didn’t have to worry about these things. He just faded into the background and, unless he slipped up somehow, nobody cared who he was. Charles wasn’t exactly sure how he’d cope with being known to everyone.

Pelléas et Mélisande was written for a small cast, as far as operas went, and only a smattering of chorus members. This would be Charles’s first escape from among their ranks. He’d never been cast as anything but “male chorus” before now, not even in school, and to have been selected for a title role? Well, it really blew his mind. Not that he’d let anybody know how excited he felt, or how nervous. How nauseous, actually. Charles spotted a water bottle underneath the chair with his name on it, and he rushed to sit and take a good long swig.

He sputtered when he heard his name from a woman’s lips. “Charles! We wondered when you would arrive.” Her airy French accent wisped about the room like a butterfly. A broad-shouldered black man trailed behind her. Both wore warm smiles, which helped loosen the knot in his stomach. He stood to greet them, his apprehension temporarily suppressed.

“I am Melissa,” the blonde continued, “and this is Bo. We have been cast as Mélisande and Golaud. It is very nice to meet you.”

Like Charles required their introduction! These performers were perhaps not world-renowned, but Charles had heard of them both. He couldn’t decide whose hand to shake first, so he put down his water bottle and awkwardly stuck out both at once. Melissa took one while Bo grabbed the other. If he weren’t so much in awe, he might have felt a spark.

In the presence of two such seasoned opera singers, what could Charles do but regress? Suddenly he was the painfully gauche child of his youth, always saying the wrong thing. “Melissa,” he teased, “did they give you the part just ’cause your name sounded like your character’s? Melissa, Mélisande? Get it?” He nodded expectantly, even though he felt like a jackass. He couldn’t seem to control which words decided to tumble out of his mouth.

Melissa offered a gracious smile. “Ah,” she said, simply. “I should hope not.” She released his hand and chucked him gently on the chin before taking her seat. Hers was next to his, right in the front row, and on his other side sat Bo. When Charles plopped down between them, he felt a little like a kid sitting between his parents. If only there was a way to keep from saying anything else he’d regret…

Charles glanced down at Bo’s large, dark hands perched on the thighs of his khaki cargo shorts. “So,” Charles began, somehow unable to stop himself, “you don’t see many black opera singers.”

Bo turned his shiny shaved head slowly, like a robot. The guy was big. He could have played in the NFL. Charles’s heart pummelled his ribcage. After taking another sip of water, he offered a nervous chuckle. And his mother thought he’d never get injured performing opera for a living! Seemed like he was about to prove her wrong.

“You’re right,” Bo said at last. He had a hint of an accent, but Charles couldn’t identify it. It was very slight.

“I can think of a few,” Charles went on. Why am I still talking? Am I an idiot? “Mostly mezzos, though. Not a lot of men.”

Bo nodded, gazing up at a frizzy-haired woman who’d just climbed onto one of the risers in front of them. “You’re right about that, too,” Bo said as a hush fell over the audience of performers.

The woman on the riser kept running her hand through her hair, like it was an Afro comb and she was trying to get that ball of orange fuzz as full as it would go. She introduced herself to the gathering and Charles recalled she was one of the producers who’d been at his audition. She also introduced the cloud of people hovering around her. Charles found himself snickering when she got to the director. The one he’d auditioned for had to drop out when performance dates were changed. This new guy was tall, adroit, and supremely French. All he needed was the beret to cover his big bald head. Charles tried to muzzle himself but it was no use. The laughter burbled up from his core and exploded in disruptive bursts.

The director stood very still, turning his head only enough to glare down at Charles with the small, beady eyes of a rodent. “Ah, c’est mon Pelléas en train de rire come un bouffon?“

Charles was pretty sure he understood, but he simply said, “Yeah.” Hopefully answering in English would convey that his French was rather weak. Maybe not the best thing to admit after landing the leading role in a French opera, but what the hell, his contract was signed.

“Would you like to inform the room why you are laughing?” the director asked.

Christ, this was high school all over again! All his operatic training, all his work at establishing a career, and Charles felt like a teenager. “Well…your name,” he confessed, unsure what tack to take. “It’s Jean-Luc…and you kinda look like Patrick Stewart. See where I’m going with this?” Charles tried to suppress the class clown in him, but stifled titters from the back of the room egged him on. “I was just wondering if you wanted us to call you by your name, or if you prefer your title as Captain of the Starship Enterprise.”

The snickers from the back of the rehearsal room expanded into full-blown laughter, and Charles felt quite satisfied until the director bounded from the riser. Charles leaned as far back as he could in his chair. He was sure this Jean-Luc guy was about to pound him. What a way to start the rehearsal process. First insult a huge black man and then get beat up by the director!

The angry man had stopped so close to Charles their knees very nearly touched. His nostrils flared and his face went bright pink, all the way up to his peaked egghead. He stood there for a moment, towering over Charles like a bald volcano about to erupt. Charles couldn’t move. His limbs were locked in place, feet flat on the floor and hands gripping the seat of his chair. All he could do was wait in dumbstruck silence and hope the director wouldn’t break his nose. Hockey players looked good after taking a punch to the face, but opera singers? Not so much.

After an eternal moment of heart-pumping, breath-robbing intensity, the director took a step back. Charles slumped in his chair, but his senses were still on high alert. He thought he ought to say something, but he didn’t know what. The director solved that problem for him.

“Our Pelléas has proven what I’ve always held to be true: opera singers are children. You are nothing but self-indulgent, egocentric infants, and I am hired to be your guardian throughout this process.” Jean-Luc stared down at Charles with those beady rat eyes and said, “To answer your question, for your sins, you shall call me Director.” After a lingering gaze bordering on lechery, he looked up over the heads of the rest of the cast. “For now that goes for everybody, and you may thank your dear Pelléas.”

As “Director” made his way back to the riser and the stage manager broke into a review of housekeeping details, Charles’s shoulders fell and he stared straight ahead even though he felt both Melissa’s and Bo’s eyes on him. Why turn to face their scolding gazes? He’d obviously proven himself the token toddler of the group. Christ, even the little kid playing Golaud’s son was better behaved, and likely now scared to death of Jean-Luc.

Charles half-listened to the costumer and music director and all the rest as they outlined the rehearsal process. He knew he’d never remember all this information, quietly thanking the heavens he already had it on paper. People in this industry just liked to hear themselves talk. Charles was no exception, but he certainly wasn’t alone in his gregariousness.

After what felt like for-fricken-ever, the producer called a break. Mr. Director shot her a “how dare you usurp my authority” type glare, but she didn’t seem to notice. Charles noted that most of the bigwigs left the room for break, and then realized with a jolt of dubiousness, that he was now one of the bigwigs too. After all, he’d landed a title role.

Even as Melissa and Bo rose from their seats, Charles tried not to look at them. He tried not to, but Bo’s gaze was softly magnetic and he had to look up at the guy. As Bo opened his full lips to speak, Melissa reached for Charles’s shoulder and squeezed. “Pauvre petit,” she cooed. “Keep your eyes to the floor and your nose to the grindstone, and Jean-Luc will treat you fairly.”

“You’ve worked with him before?”

The crow’s feet around Melissa’s smiling eyes crinkled as she nodded. She tightened her grip on Charles’s shoulder until it hurt. Struggling not to shrug away, he stood, and she released her grip. He was taller than Melissa, and not as tall as Bo, so for a second it seemed as if he and Bo were the parents, and she the child despite the fact that she was significantly older than either of them.

“Funny that you and I are playing brothers. We don’t exactly look like family,” Charles said to Bo as the three of them wandered toward the snack table. He felt like fruit today. Normally, he’d have been all over those donuts.

Bo chuckled and the sound reverberated deep in Charles’s belly. “Pelléas and Golaud are only half brothers,” he corrected while putting a few sliced melons and whole berries on a small plate.

“So, I guess your dad was mother’s big black hunk of a husband, and my dad was the scrawny second one she married out of pity.”

When Charles chuckled, Bo cocked his head and gave him a tilted glance. “You’re not so bad for a scrawny white half brother.”

Bo’s gentle gaze shifted in intensity until it made Charles feel… strange… uncomfortable? It was more than he could handle. He looked quickly to Melissa, but she had turned her attention to their director, who’d just left to return to the rehearsal space. Grabbing Charles’s wrist, she whispered, “Come, let’s get back. He will want to start immediately.”

Melissa pulled on Charles’s arms, and Bo followed behind them. “But we haven’t had fifteen minutes yet,” Charles said, “and I wanted more fruit.” He’d worked for hard-asses before, but even hard-asses gave them their allocated breaks. Opera performers were union, after all.

“Hush,” Melissa said, pushing him into his chair. Bo sat, too, and when their knees touched, Charles shifted toward Melissa, trying not to be obvious

“Pelléas et Mélisande is a symbolist opera,” the director called out over the buzz of performers settling down from break. The room fell eerily silent all at once as everybody returned to their seats. “It was the sole operatic creation to flit like a dream from the mind of the master impressionist Claude Debussy. You cannot compare it to Don Giovanni or Aida or, God forbid, Carmen. This is a work on an entirely different plane of consciousness. This work defies simple understanding. It is about everything and nothing. It defies even synopsis.”

Charles looked around at the nodding sycophants. They were nothing but a bunch of dashboard bobble-heads agreeing mindlessly with whatever drivel the director spouted. He’d seen it over and over again when he sat at the back of the room as a lowly chorister, and had learned to keep his mouth shut. This man, this Jean-Luc, Captain “Call-Me-Director” seemed to taunt him with every word, and Charles couldn’t keep himself from laughing out loud. Boy, he was asking for it!

“Ah, le bouffant est encore en train de rire,” Director muttered. His little rat eyes stared down at Charles, but he didn’t budge from the riser this time, thank God! “Pourquoi, mon vieux? Why do you insist upon laughing again?”

Without the director standing at his knees, Charles felt a little bolder than he had before. “Well, you said this opera defies synopsis.” Charles even went so far as to imitate the Director’s accent when quoting him. “It has a plot. I mean, some scenes don’t make a lick of sense to me, but there’s obviously a storyline.”

That smug bastard nodded and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “If you are such an expert, why not enlighten us? How would you summarize Pelléas et Mélisande?”

In for a penny, in for a pound...

Charles leaned back in his chair, tossing one ankle over the other leg. His knee was touching Bo’s again, but he didn’t care anymore. “Okay, well, there’s this guy, Prince Golaud–that’s Bo’s role–and he’s out in the woods one day, and he finds Melissa’s character, Mélisande, who’s crying and lost. Golaud marries Mélisande and brings her back to the castle, where she meets my character, Pelléas, who is Golaud’s half brother. Right away there’s an attraction, right? They get all flirty with each other. Golaud doesn’t pay any attention to it, at first, because he thinks of Pelléas and Mélisande as children. Golaud’s kind of a dumb guy.” Charles quickly turned to Bo. “No offence.”

Bo smirked and nudged Charles with his knee. “None taken.”

Suddenly, Charles felt a flush come over him and he didn’t know why. Maybe because all eyes were on him? No, he didn’t mind being the centre of attention. “Anyway,” he continued, “when Golaud catches on, boy oh boy, watch out! He’s obsessed with finding the truth about Pelléas and Mélisande. He even asks his son from his first marriage to spy on them. Of course, there isn’t anything to report back. They’re flirty and playful, but it’s not like they’re getting in each other’s pants. Still, Golaud wants to know what the hell’s going on.

“Well, the tension gets so high that Pelléas decides to leave the castle, but before he goes he and Mélisande finally do the big ‘I love you’ thing. They kiss and, of course, Golaud races out from behind a tree, guns blazing, and kills Pelléas on the spot. From the stress, Mélisande goes into labour. I guess she was knocked up the whole time. She dies right after her baby is born. That’s it. The end. There’s your synopsis.”

The director stood on his riser, one hand on his hip, the other cradling his head as it shook left and right. “You are like a child, mon vieux, with this love of simple stories, simple themes. Some opera were written for feeble-minded individuals.” The director’s tone was like a finger pointing directly at him. “But Pelléas et Mélisande is not one of them.”

The denigration only encouraged Charles to sit up a little straighter. “I did what you claimed was impossible. I broke your complex symbolist opera down into basic elements.”

“And in doing so, you have missed the whole point. You have stripped it of its essence. This is a grand-scale psychological drama, a subconscious allegorical exploration of humanity itself, and what do your eyes see? A children’s storybook. No, mon vieux, c’est pas ça du tout!“

Charles wondered if the director was being ironic, calling him by that French term for “old man” over and over again. His French might not be on par with Jean-Luc’s or Melissa’s, but he could always tell when he was being insulted.

“You made a grave error, too, I should point out.” The director seemed obsessed with ragging on him, but Charles kind of liked the attention. “Golaud did not kill Pelléas with a gun, but with a sword.”

A smirk bled across the director’s face like he was in on some secret Charles couldn’t yet fathom. He was a little startled when he turned to his left and discovered that very same smile painted on Bo’s lips. Was everybody in on the same joke? And, if so, when were they planning on telling him the punch line?