Cleaning up my social media this week, I came across the name of a French baritone in my list of friends.

Jacques Calatayud was a devoted friend to Suzanne Sarroca (and her former student) and he had died. And so had she. They died within a year of each other. I had no idea.

In 2015 I met up with both of them for dinner in Paris. Sarroca was already quite in advanced age, still living in her apartment on the rue Notre Dame de Lorette, and Jacques was attentive to her needs. He screened the diva’s socializing activities and facilitated the meeting with Sarroca. I remember him as a very gentle and kind person. 

“You are lucky,” Sarroca said to me over dinner, “you can do other things than just sing.” Her words were kind, but she knew me well and recognized that I did indeed have other occupations than singing that I genuinely liked. 

Jacques was her prize student. “Il tourne,” she said proudly. Meaning that he had solidified a career in the opera world. He routinely sang secondary roles on major European stages, and occasionally primary roles. 

I remembered the conversations that I took part in and witnessed while I studied in Paris with two celebrated sopranos, Suzanne Sarroca and Mady Mesplé. Years later I wrote the conversations down, verbatim. They are part of a bygone era, yet in a way the social mannerisms revealed in those conversations are still valid in the operatic world today.

Other than the diva’s names in Idle Opportunities, nothing else changed about the ladies. Not their words or their attitudes or their homes….but written from, of course, my then perspective as a twenty something year old.

Side note: Sarroca’s beloved dog Polka was renamed Mazurka.

Although I remember both Sarroca and Mesplé as fierce, loving and regal in their own ways, primarily I was Sarroca’s student. I am grateful to have experienced Paris with her as my main teacher and guide.

Suzanne Sarroca (left) as Octavian in RosenKavalier