That was the question which, as the last week of my stay in Madrid began, tormented me and came to obsess me, as it did for several minutes (dream minutes, long minutes) in my dream this morning. They were the busiest, most complicated days, during which I had the least free time, the days of our final rehearsals for the premiere of Verdi's Otello at the Teatro de la Zarzuela and the days when everything seemed about to end in disaster: suddenly and belatedly, two days before the first night, ancient, conceited Hörbiger, Otello, announced that he was entirely incompatible with and unable to sing with Volte, who kept deliberately confusing him on stage in order to discredit and outshine him; the slimy, insatiable Volte, Iago, inexplicably showed signs of losing his voice, a claim I rejected from the start as false: an utterly unimaginative act of retaliation, an absolute classic among singers; and the lovely, silly Priés, Desdemona, began to neglect her accent and to fluff her words and then delayed the dress rehearsal for two whole hours, engaged as she was in a tempestuous flirtation with the orchestra's ugly and mediocre first violin (a Spaniard), who was also missing from his post (they arrived within a minute of each other, their hair dishevelled and their lips wet with saliva, she still fastening her costume and revealing her breasts, he with his bow tie in tatters).
