Sophie and the Sibyl (21 page)

‘No interval?’ Max ruminated upon the implications of Klesmer’s speech. ‘Well, the sorbet sellers won’t be pleased.’

A wonderfully warm, still evening, dry underfoot, brought out the crowds. Here were the last days of promise in an Indian summer, a breath of unruffled serenity that could only end in driving sleet and blown leaves. The women came with their cloaks untied and their hoods thrown back. While he stood waiting on the steps of the freshly painted theatre Max heard one or two English voices. The playbill announced Julius Klesmer as the Director of the Orchestra and Herr Süßmann as the baritone, singing the lead, his lovely wife supporting him as the noble maiden Senta, prepared to die for her great love. Süßmann’s name gleamed magnificent in huge black letters, far larger than Wagner’s, which the theatre manager in Stuttgart still considered a discouragement to large audiences. They love Süßmann. He’ll draw ’em in. But the legend of the opera itself proved to be the greatest attraction.
The Flying Dutchman
! Who does not know Heine’s passionate ballad of the sailor doomed to sail the seven seas for all eternity, until he finds a woman prepared to sacrifice her life for love, and remain for ever faithful unto death?
Treue bis zum Tod
! Max noted that the playbill promised spectacular scenery and special crowd-pleasing effects: a haunted ship, its ghostly crew of damned sailors, and a brand-new diorama, created for this very production. The theatre, recently refurbished, advertised itself as ‘luxuriously equipped with all the appointments that safety, comfort and elegance dictate’, the front stalls freshly padded.

But here comes Lewes, bounding up the steps.

‘Ah Max! Polly hoped you’d dine with us. Didn’t you get our message? No matter! A little supper afterwards perhaps, if we all survive the ravages of damnation and immortality granted by eternal love.’

Behold the Sibyl, shimmering in eerie gas light, her fine veil thrown back, her wonderful eyes raised towards him, intense with sympathy and concentration.

‘I fear that you were distressed by yesterday’s discussion.’ She spoke so that only Max could hear her as she took his arm. ‘I would not see you unhappy. No, not for the world. And to think that I had any part in your unhappiness would give me great pain. For we have become such friends.’

Max pressed her gloved hand; his irritation vanished and he felt infinitely reassured. He had been heard, and noticed, by someone who mattered. The Sibyl understood and anticipated every current in his thoughts. Wherever he looked, he saw her, patiently waiting for him, her countenance overflowing with counsel and forgiveness, her presence all-embracing, like the Everlasting Arms.

‘Liszt regards
Der Fliegende Holländer
as a transitional work,’ she continued, ‘in which Wagner seeks only to escape from the idols to which he once sacrificed. He has not yet reached the point of making war against them. So you may rest tranquil for this evening. There will be a mighty wash of dramatic situations and affecting melodies. You will not have to suffer as we did with
Lohengrin
.’

Here they were, facing an ornately gilded picture-frame stage, and heavy swags with tassels, new cane chairs for the orchestra, red plush for the front stalls and fresh flock wallpaper covered with paintings of famous moments in Shakespeare. Lear staggered forwards, his eyes rolling, with Cordelia dead in his arms, Beatrice and Benedict flounced away in different directions, misunderstanding one another in a garden, Juliet leaned over her balcony, Rosalind strode the forest in breeches, and Banquo’s ghost summoned Macbeth away from the feast. The company settled into the second row beneath the slips, a little discomfited by a noisy crowd on the hard benches above them. Carus glared up at the malicious faces, sensing trouble.

‘Don’t worry,’ cried Lewes, ‘Klesmer will drown them all out.’

The theatre filled up to the gunnels like a great ship transporting expectant emigrants seeking New Worlds, and many sat munching pastries as the rumoured lack of an interval did the rounds and caused some digestive alarm. How can we get through three hours without ice cream or sweetmeats? The audience, noisy, hot and cheerful, anticipated an astounding spectacle and a riot of emotions. Two ushers fled round the auditorium, lowering the gas light, a trick upon which the Maestro had insisted, as essential to his emotive effects. The orchestra trooped in, greeted by unsteady applause. An army of brass and timpani assembled in too small a space. Klesmer clearly intended to lift the roof off the theatre. Well known in the town for his concert performances, he proved something of a favourite with the audience, and two squat candles balanced either side of his score threw his face, lit from beneath, into a dramatic mass of shadows. He resembled a demon, risen from the depths.

‘Klesmer! Klesmer! Klesmer!’ bellowed a rowdy section far above the stalls.

This enthusiasm was rapidly dowsed by a collective intake of breath as the curtain soared upwards, revealing two gigantic ships rocking, dangerous in moonlight, before an implausibly vertiginous precipice, with distant cliffs reaching to infinity. Simultaneously a terrifying gust of wind blustered through the strings. The catastrophe of imminent shipwreck seemed inevitable. Sailors, apparently swinging from the rigging, appeared in little bursts of limelight, then faded away into shivering gloom. Throughout the overture the stage shuddered, gleamed, darkened, and the audience gasped, thrilled to their stomachs. The rollers on the diorama were inaudible above the blazing orchestra, and as they shifted and slithered, the black ghost ship with wonderfully red-painted ripped rigging loomed above Daland’s smaller trader, like a vampire apparition encircling its victim. Then, in the far depths of the stage, a pale face, leery as Mephisto, hovered high on the mast of the black ship with ripped sails. The pale man stared out beyond the limits of the diorama into eternity. The audience recognised Süßmann, and screamed in unison. Klesmer urged the orchestra onwards, the grand outline of his face and floating hair flung into sinister relief by the stage lamps, as if he was in pursuit of his own shadow. Then, for one second only, the audience glimpsed the soprano, perched on the rim of the cliff, her arms outstretched, as the Overture thundered to its close. The emotional narrative of the opera, condensed into a few precious minutes, now unfolded at greater length. One or two people set off towards the foyer in search of drinks and pastries.

The Dutchman’s long opening monologue wooed even the doubters standing at the back. Tragic, white-faced, Herr Süßmann transformed himself into the Solitary Wanderer, terrifying, corrosive, predatory, heart-rending in his longing for peace.

‘Bravo! Bravo!’ screeched someone close to them, longing for an encore. But Klesmer continued, inexorable.

‘I was delighted with this opera when we were with Liszt in Weimar,’ murmured the Sibyl. Her shawl fell across Max’s arm.

The mighty conflict imaged in the two ships proved to be a metaphor for the entire production. Daland’s dapper modern waistcoat and fob watch, his scrubbed sailors and natty trading vessel smacked of profit, successful capitalist ventures and domestic prosperity. The sea, raving against his native rocks, remained simply an inconvenient antagonist. But for the Dutchman, that cursed image of white-faced damnation, the sea, the storms, the flood tides and the infinite horizons formed his only element, as one of the eternal undead. And between him and the voyage that has no end stood one young girl and her peculiar passion for a legendary man she had never seen.

But how does a revolutionary composer wean a conventional audience off their customary diet of operatic song? The public longs for arias, duets,
romanza
,
cavatina
– for three whole acts, yea, sometimes four acts, with a ballet in the middle. And how do you stop them walking about, taking the air in the foyer, looking up their acquaintances and chatting, stepping out for a cigarette or a mislaid shawl, and then nipping back inside just to hear their favourite solo? Abolish the intervals and tighten the plot; if they so much as shift a leg they will miss something crucial!

Those two threads, the Dutchman’s curse and Senta’s promise of redemption, shrill tremolos on the high violins, diminished seventh chords, a mixture of diatonic chromatic figures in the basses and ah! that familiar, endlessly rising motif in fourths and fifths, they saturate the score, bending the pale man towards his own salvation. No one can step into the shadow where grace cannot reach them, nor can they ever escape the compassionate grasp of the Everlasting Arms. It is the stage manager’s business to transform the scenery, rapidly and in secret, as the music rages onwards, firing the singers, pulverising the audience into their seats.

And on that night it worked. There they all were, sweating, breathless, gripped. Will she be true to her pale-faced wanderer? Can her handsome huntsman lure her back to a safe life, where nothing more will happen to her, but days of marriage, children, peace and happiness? Will she choose one supreme moment of glorious sacrifice or the patter of long summer days? She has been sold to the Dutchman! Daland’s cupidity made him sell his daughter to the captain of a ghostly black ship with ripped red sails. She is promised to another, but here at last, risen from the ocean’s depths, stands the man she loves.

Klesmer knew that subversives lurked in the audience. The author of the
Wagnerfrage
and his friends had pinpointed the Stuttgart production as a crack in the dam of orchestrated prejudice, which had so far successfully kept Wagner’s operas out of the provincial theatres. But Liszt and Klesmer had triumphed in Dresden. Their friendship and their adulation of Wagner stood revealed for all to see! The Jews have joined forces with the Wagnerians! This creeping evil must be stopped!

How far through the score had they actually got?

Steuermann, lass die Wacht! Steuermann, her zu uns!
Helmsman, leave the watch! Come to us, come to us.

A ripple stirred the slips. Three young men had risen to their feet. No, they were being dragged down and drowned out by a detonating chorus of Norwegian sailors apparently based in the row just behind them. Max noticed the disturbance and its rapid suppression. Nothing could stop Klesmer now. Here from the belly of the phantom ship came the eerie hollow cries of the Dutchman’s crew, spectral lights flickered in the rigging like will-o’-the-wisps. Max worried about the incendiary nature of the extraordinary stage effects. The Sibyl tucked her arm through his. Yes, the climax approached! Every part of the scenery, including the flats, appeared to shiver and undulate. The singers, unwavering, plunged onwards, keeping pace with Klesmer. The heat in the house soared to levels equal to that of a tropical rainforest. Max loosened his collar, and noticed that Carus and Lewes had already done so. The Sibyl’s massive upper lip shone gently with perspiration. Then, suddenly, a smoking object, the size of a gin jar, flung from above, sailed past them and landed amongst the cellos. The sizzling odour of sulphur, accompanied by dense clouds of smoke, engulfed the musicians.

The huntsman, closely observed by the Dutchman, had almost completed his
cavatina
–
Willst jenes Tags du dich nicht mehr entsinnen
? – and the Finale loomed in sight. Klesmer, his lips compressed and his head flung back, stood proud of the belching smoke emerging from the bomb in the pit. He had no intention of losing a single note. Not one member of the orchestra flinched or dared to move.

Du kennst mich nicht, du ahnst nicht, wer ich bin!
You do not know me, you do not suspect who I am!

The Dutchman bared his soul, at last and in a thundering declaration, boomed the truth of his identity to a horrified cast and the sweating public, most of whom believed that the sulphurous stench and dense, rising clouds of yellowish smoke constituted yet one more bold stage effect, intended to enhance the performance. A fight broke out in the slips as the two factions closed upon one another. A shoe flew through the air and struck Lewes on the forehead. He leaped to his feet, staggered, and then collapsed upon Carus.

Klesmer increased the pace.

I am the Flying Dutchman!
bellowed Herr Süßmann to the enraptured mass. The Sibyl suddenly noticed that her husband lay bent double bleeding on Carus’s lap. She let out a little smothered cry, which vanished in the wash of the soprano’s ecstatic vow.

Here I stand, true even unto death!

A shrill gasp rose from the audience as she appeared to fly from the cliff’s edge into the arms of the Dutchman, who then soared away from the mast up, up, up into the murky dimness of the painted sets. They vanished as the mighty ship of ghosts collapsed in a series of gigantic crashes, echoed in the orchestra, all of which drowned out the fight now raging throughout the slips and bursting out on to the staircases.

‘Klesmer! Klesmer! Klesmer!’

The conductor’s supporters took up the chant as the entire auditorium filled with nauseous smoke. The crowds in the stalls, now thoroughly alarmed, burst the doors asunder and poured out into the foyer and the autumn night. Some abandoned coats and hats in the
vestiaire
, seeking safety in the streets. But some never actually noticed what was happening at all in the lowered gas light, and remained on their feet, flinging flowers at Herr Süßmann and the soprano, who had descended from the heavens unobserved, and re-emerged from behind the tabs, bowing to left and right. Klesmer and his orchestra now barely visible in smoke, sank out of sight into the pit. Lewes drew himself upright, and wobbled a little, clutching a handkerchief to the wound, which was now bleeding copiously. But, ebullient as ever, he snatched up the offending shoe and waved it around his head, anxious to swing a punch at whoever had made him their target.