Soprano Doubleheader

Opera stars who can--or will--sing two major roles in one day are about as rare as pitchers who are up to hurling both games of a doubleheader.* The Metropolitan Opera's Eleanor Steber did it once by accident. In 1945, she sang Eva in a Meistersinger matinee, then stepped into the evening performance as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni when the scheduled Elvira took sick. Last week Soprano Steber, 35, became the first star in Met memory to sing a doubleheader by design.

She had been scheduled for months to make her debut as the doomed Desdemona in the matinee of Verdi's Otello. When she told General Manager Rudolf Bing that she also would sing her new hit role of Fiordiligi in Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte the same night, Bing's eyebrows went up. "You must be crazy," he said. "But it's up to you."

Hammerlocks. At 12:30 p.m., after a lunch of poached eggs and toast, Soprano Steber turned up at her Met dressing room and began costuming herself as Desdemona. She added a waist-long switch to her blonde hair, got into a "long negligee sort of thing," and was ready to face the volatile Moor (burly Tenor Ramon Vinay) onstage by the 2 p.m. curtain.

In her big arias in the first and third acts and her fourth-act Canzone del Salce, her singing was as technically perfect as ever; her pianissimos were downy, though her full voice had its familiar fault, a trace of stridency. Her main worry, however, was "getting through the afternoon without a broken neck. That man [Vinay] is crazy in this role." She survived two wristlocks and a hammerlock, and managed to display a fair amount of dramatic ability in doing so.

Sirloin & Champagne. By 5:30, after an hour and 15 minutes of singing, she was back in her dressing room. She rested for half an hour, then downed a 1-lb. sirloin and a glass of champagne, while her hairdresser built up her pompadour for Cosi. After an hour's nap, she changed into hoop skirts, and adjusted her mind from the tragic 15th century Desdemona to the gaily artificial 18th century Fiordiligi. That done, she went to the piano, vocalized on scales for ten minutes, sang a few warm-up bars from Cosi. By curtain time at 8:15, she was ready.

In the second half of her personal doubleheader, she sang one of the most technically difficult roles in opera, and sang it as cleanly and brilliantly as she had on Cosi's first night. At 11:30, after eight curtain calls, Soprano Steber got back to her dressing room and poured herself another glass of champagne.

* Most famed: Joseph ("Iron Man") McGin-nity, who pitched three doubleheaders for the New York Giants in 1903, won all six games.

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