Opera singers are just like other people, only more so. Often unseen by their public and fans, they erupt in glorious, dazzling displays of human cussedness, using biting banter, one-up-manship, and even sabotage to deal with their main frustration, which is, of course, each other. The irreverent atmosphere backstage is often hilariously in contrast with the reverent hush out front. In terms of chaos on stage, yells from the balcony and intermission twaddle in the foyer, you'll meet dimwitted audience members, meatball tenors, vain soprano fatsos, stilletto-tongued conductors and old-time impresarios and general managers who didn't know their brass from their oboe. The Viennese conductor Franz Schalk said, "Every theater is an asylum, but an opera theatre is the ward for incurables."

Stephen Tanner grew up in Cambridge, Mass. with a yen for music, theatre and creating mirth. During twenty years of living in several European opera capitals he purposely rubbed elbows with the widest variety of opera folk and gained many glimpses into the life in the opera world and the "light" motifs of backstage humor: flubs, idiocy, vanity, imbroglios, squabbles, vendettas and dirty tricks. He lives in southern California. Umberto Taccola lives in Isernia, Italy.

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by Stephen B. Tanner; cartoons by Umberto Taccola

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