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It was a heck of an oratorio.
An amateur opera singer admitted on the witness stand yesterday that she belted out an aria of profanity, complete with F-bombs and B-bombs, during a wacky and highly disputed fracas at the Upper West Side Trader Joe’s.
But mezzo soprano Marcella Caprario — on trial for assault and harassment charges — insisted she had good reason to curse and slap Dr. Cathleen London after some jostling in the frozen-food aisle of the jam-packed grocery last January.
The doctor got “into my face,” and sorely needed slapping, argued Caprario, 37, an English teacher and self-described “freelance professional opera singer” from Inwood.
“I think I called her a bitch a few times,” the diva conceded as she testified before Manhattan Criminal Court Judge ShawnDya Simpson, who will preside over closing arguments in the case of the bizarre smack-down this morning.
“I stated, ‘Get the f – – k out of my face!’ ” Caprario remembered of the fight, which both sides agree started after the doctor’s 13-year-old son somehow got between Caprario’s husband and the singer’s favorite frozen dinner — the Trader Joe’s brand vegan pad Thai with tofu.
“But she came right at me again, into my face, and it startled me again, and at that point I took my left hand and I slapped her,” the singer said of London. “I just wanted her to get away from me.”
The doctor countered from the witness stand that the soprano — who before moving to New York in 2006, lived in Philadelphia — started it all by insulting her and her sons, calling them “New York rude.”
In the ensuing angry verbal duet the slap came unprovoked, out of nowhere, London told the judge.
“She told me, ‘Get the
f – – k away from me!’ ” London, a family practitioner and frequent TV talking head, said of her alleged attacker’s supposedly off-color tirade, just before the slap.
The lyrics were recalled by London only in sum and substance, but included a recurring refrain of, ‘Get the f – – k away, you bitch.”
“She said, ‘Get the f – – k away you bitch, you
f – – king bitch! ” London testified. “She just kept saying, ‘Back off, back the f – – k off, you bitch!’ She just kept repeating things like that.”
“What was her tone of voice?” assistant district attorney Colleen Tompkins asked of the singer’s alleged rhapsody in bright blue.
“She was very agitated. Very awful . . . She told me to back the f – – k off or I’m going to hurt you.”
“I felt threatened,” continued the doctor, who practices at the Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center on the Upper East Side, and who has appeared as an expert on the Joy Behar show, CNN, and Fox Television.
The doc says she took a step toward the prima donna. “I’m a mom. I was protecting my children,” she said of her two sons.
Then, slap.
“She hit me so hard my ears were ringing. I couldn’t even see for a moment. I was absolutely stunned.”
Asked what the singer was doing, the doc said, “She was smiling. She was very pleased with herself.”
Both sides agree that the two did come face to face, that the diva warned the advancing doctor to step back or she’d hit her, and that Caprario indeed made good on that promise.
But in daylong testimony, each side called a personal cheering section of relatives to the witness stand to haggle over petty differences, including whether the combatants were several feet apart or “nose-to-nose” as the defense contended.
“They were close enough to kiss,” testified Caprario’s hubby, Bill, an unemployed restaurant manager.
Fancy wording abounded, as to be expected in a fracas involving an opera singer and a physician. London told the judge she suffered ecchymosis (bruising,) petechiae (pinpoint-sized burstings of blood vessels), tinnitus (ear ringing) and vertigo (dizziness) for days after the slap.
The opera singer told the judge she’s fluent in three languages and conversant in five, and that when the doctor started going ballistic she told her husband, “Andiamo,” Italian for “let’s go,” and “basta,” for “Stop. Enough already.”
Insults, too, abounded. London called her adversary “a screaming banshee.” Bill called his wife’s accuser “demonic.” Caprario herself compared the doctor to a grimacing “animal.”
“After she rushed at me, she began making grimaces and moving her head in a strange, animal-like manner,” the singer asserted. Caprario’s lawyer, Mark Bederow, said that “Dr. London was acting in a smug, arrogant and obnoxious manner . . . so she could cut the line to get to the frozen food,” the lawyer told the judge in opening statements.
And the doctor could give as good as she got in the profanity department, Bederow claimed.
“Dr. London told Miss Caprario’s husband, ‘Get the pole out of your ass — there will be credible evidence to establish that,” he promised. The doctor denied the profanity.
The judge set 10:30 am for closing arguments in the kooky case, and has not said how soon her verdict will be rendered in the jury-less trial.