Score!

Next day Chloe recorded her great aria, ‘O Don Fatale’, and denounced her ‘fatal gift of beauty’ so gloriously, but with such controlled venom, it was impossible not to think it was part of her character. As she came to the end, however, and before the strings could tap their bows on the backs of their chairs in congratulation, Hermione had produced a Tampax from her bag, and thrusting it towards her, asked solicitously, ‘Are you needing this, dear?’

Chloe was outraged.

‘I can’t believe you’re still young enough to use those things,’ she snarled back, and retaliated later in the day by dropping her handbag in the middle of an exquisite take of Hermione’s aria in Act II. This triggered a five-minute screaming match, with Hermione threatening to walk out. Only Tristan managed to calm her.

‘There are women, Hermione,’ deliberately he made his voice even huskier, ‘who Verdi claimed are “born for others, who are quite unaware of their own egos, and who rise above the petty squabbles of lesser mortals”.’

Hermione was so moved she behaved herself for the rest of the afternoon.

On the other hand, she was not the only member of the cast to be worried that Fat Franco had been ousted by an unknown Australian. At least Franco would have ensured that Don Carlos was a commercial success. Confidence was restored, however, the moment Baby opened his mouth. The entire orchestra turned round to gawp, and at the end of his first duet with Chloe, Mikhail put down the score he was studying, ran across the hall and flung his arms round Baby. ‘You have most beautiful voice I ever hear. It will be privilege to vork with you.’

Mikhail’s own voice was just as impressive: Posa’s death scene had everyone in tears. Mikhail, however, was easily demoralized, particularly by Alpheus the bass who, in the great duet between Philip II and Posa, kept sighing and wearily holding the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb, as Mikhail, with his poor command of English, fluffed line after line.

Baby and Mikhail on the other hand took to each other instantly, almost as an extension of their comradely role in the opera. In the evening they went on pub crawls, rehearsing their songs for the next day to the noisy delight of the punters. They tried to take Tristan with them but, to their disappointment, he insisted on returning alone to a friend’s flat he had borrowed overlooking Regent’s Park. After all the rows and hysterics, he needed peace to study the next day’s score.

Mysteriously with Mikhail’s arrival things started to disappear. Serena mislaid some pearl earrings, Alpheus some gold cufflinks. Chloe had quite fancied Mikhail until a large topaz ring, the only decent present Alpheus had ever given her, went missing. The cutlery in the canteen had to be replaced twice in a week. Only Baby, Mikhail’s buddy, remained unfleeced, which convinced Hermione, who’d made an unbelievable fuss about a missing umbrella, that he must be the thief.

‘All Australians are descended from convicts.’

‘I have never stolen anything in my life except thunder,’ snapped Baby.

Poor little Christy Foxe, the PA, had the thankless task of getting the cast to the right mikes on time. A singer meant to sound far away has to stand back from the mike, but if, in the middle of a number, he has a love scene with another singer, he has to rush to the mike next to them.

In the ensemble numbers, therefore, it was like Waterloo in the rush-hour, with little Christy shunting Dame Hermione, like a cattle truck, in one direction, and the chorus master propelling Alpheus, like the Intercity Express, in the other. Collisions, screaming-matches, kicks on the shin and slapped faces were inevitable.

There were more rows in the control room, which was where singers flocked after a stint of recording to listen to the playback and try to persuade Serena and Sylvestre, Tristan’s handsome blond French sound engineer, to use the take in which they had sounded best.

Baby, who knew he sounded best in everything, got so bored even of listening to his own voice, not even handsome Sylvestre could distract him, so he frequently started dancing round the recording-machines, much to Alpheus’s disapproval.

Alpheus already disapproved of Granny’s hunky boyfriend, Giuseppe, because if Giuseppe’s consumption of red wine didn’t impair the beauty of his voice he might one day topple Alpheus in leading bass roles, as Alpheus had toppled Granny. Alpheus also disapproved of Granny, who sat calmly knitting colourful squares for a patchwork quilt for his and Giuseppe’s bed, shaking with laughter at his own even more colourful asides. He hardly bothered to put down his needles when he sang, but chilled the blood every time he opened his mouth to deliver the words of the Grand Inquisitor.

Alpheus disapproved most of all of the orchestra.

‘I think the brass section have been drinking,’ he complained, during an evening session.

‘I should be extremely surprised if they hadn’t,’ said the orchestra manager calmly.