Dr. Cathleen London testified today, showing where the defenfdant allegedly hit her in the face. (Steven Hirsch)
It was a heck of an oratorio.
An amateur opera singer belted out a crescendoing aria of profanity — highly ornamented with f-bombs and b-bombs — during a wacky and highly disputed frozen food fracas at the Upper West Side Trader Joe’s, according to testimony today.
Mezzo soprano Marcella Caprario is on trial in Manhattan Criminal court all day, fighting assault and harassment charges for admittedly slapping the face of Dr. Cathleen London during some jostling in the frozen food aisle of the jam-packed grocery last January, as the singer made a grab for a store-brand vegan pad Thai with tofu dinner.
The soprano insists the doc was “in my face” and needed slapping.
But the doctor countered from the witness stand this morning that the soprano had insulted her and her sons, calling them “New York rude” and that in the ensuing angry verbal duet the slap came unprovoked, out of nowhere.
“She told me, ‘Get the f–k away from me,'” London, a family practitioner and frequent TV talking head, told a Manhattan judge of her alleged attacker’s supposedly off-color coloratura performance just before the slap.
The lyrics were recalled by London only in part, but apparently included a recurring liet motif of, ‘Get the f–k away you b—h.”
“She said, ‘Get the f–k away you b—h, you f—–g b—h’,’ ” London testified. “She just kept saying, ‘Back off, back the f–k off, you b—h.’ 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 was asserting a stance. I’m with my children,” she said of her two teen sons. “I’m a mom. I was protecting my children.”
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 grinning. She was smiling. She was very pleased with herself.”
The soprano gets her chance to, er, sing this afternoon, when she’s scheduled to take the stand.
“Dr. London was acting in a smug, arrogant and obnoxious manner … so she could cut the line to get to the frozen food,” her lawyer, Mark Bederow, told Manhattan Criminal Court Judge ShawnDya Simpson in opening statements.
“Dr. London told Miss Caprario’s husband, ‘Get the pole out of your ass — there will be credible evidence to establish that.”