The Mastersinger from Minsk

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It must have struck the composer, the conductor, the chorusmaster, the stage director, the house manager, even the old impresario Mecklenberg who thought he’d seen and heard everything in his time — all of them solemnly assembled side-by-side in red, plush seats in the front row of the orchestra section — that what they were about to witness up there on the bare stage was nothing short of a medieval duel: two titans prepared to face each other at full tilt in mortal combat. Each combatant was a tenor; even in the dimness of the place (the house lights were only partly on) there was about each of them the enviable radiance of youth, physical strength, ambition, and readiness. Each hoped and silently prayed that when this was over he would be the one given the sign — an imperial nod from the man seated at the centre of that stern-faced company down there in the front row.

To the tenor so touched by fortune would go the leading role in the composer’s new and long-awaited opera. To the other, the loser (if one could be said to be a loser in such auspicious circumstances), would go the secondary role, that of the character doomed to an ignoble downfall at the opera’s tumultuous climax. At the composer’s insistence, for this occasion the audition pianist had been discharged; the two tenors were to sing without the benefit of accompaniment, the better to test their ability to thread their way through the unconventional vocal twists and turns and changes of key which made the song assigned to them for this occasion unlike any other they had ever sung or dreamt they would be called upon to sing.

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