Apropos of nothing, well, apropos of the Get Smart episode we watched last night that included a CONTROL agent who was also a snotty opera diva – I was reminded of the horror stories I had once heard about Kathleen Battle. Remember her?
If not, fire up the Wayback Machine and read this old Time article.
Stories about her pettiness are legion: the time in Boston she telephoned the management of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to complain that the Ritz-Carlton’s room service had put peas in her pasta; the time when, feeling chilly while riding in a limo in Southern California, she used the cellular phone to call her management company in New York, which phoned the limo service, which phoned the driver, who turned the air conditioning down; the time in New York when she and Luciano Pavarotti competed to see which could arrive later for a dress rehearsal. Battle has a penchant for changing hotel suites in the middle of a stay just to vary the color of her surroundings. After her appearances at the San Francisco Opera this season, the backstage crew sported T shirts that read: I SURVIVED THE BATTLE.
Her firing by the Met back in 1994 effectively ended her opera career, which is why you don’t hear about her so much anymore, although she still does a few performances in other venues.