The Molsheim Meadowlark: The Unlived Life of Opera Diva Merda Bumberger

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and the editor of Newsletter
of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and
Documentation Centres.

One wonders who is going to read this book. Opera lovers could well be
turned off by its vaudevillian parody, which has all the subtlety of a
Mack truck.

The picaresque plot revolves around the heavyweight Alsatian diva Merda
Bumberger (the author has a fondness for scatological names) who battles
her way across the operatic stages and bedrooms of Europe. Blessed with
a Richter-scale voice, Bumberger jousts with the widow of Wagner’s
son, feuds with her rival Angela Muffoni, has affairs with Adolf Hitler
and a Greek shipping magnate who resembles Aristotle Onassis, and
entertains German troops on the Russian front during World War II. But
after the war, Bumberger’s star gradually sinks as her voice (which is
not everyone’s cup of tea) and combative temperament take their toll.

Eventually Bumberger, with her long-time manager, piano accompanist and
former lover Sol Hump, ends up in Vancouver. When no one shows up for
her millennium recital at the whale pool of Stanley Park’s Aquarium on
December 31, 1999, the aged “Molsheim Meadowlark” (as Bumberger is
also known) defiantly declares, “They can all kiss my ass.” In fact,
this is the book’s last line.

Author Christopher Dafoe, a former music critic for The Vancouver Sun,
writes in serviceable prose, although there are some errors in editing.
He gives no clue as to what inspired this ribald chronicle, which runs
overly long, but the “musical slapstick” of comedienne Anna Russell
does come to mind.