The Black Opera (47 page)

“Signore Conte!” The diminutive tenor thumped a set of much-annotated music in front of Roberto Capiraso, and launched into a diatribe. Conrad found it amusing that, within forty-eight hours of his presence, the company had taken to badgering their composer quite as much as they did their librettist.

Paolo hitched a hip onto the stout wooden table. “Need you and il Superbo to listen to Velluti's run-through.”

Roberto's brusque “Of course!” cut across whatever answer Conrad would have given. The Count swept up Bonfigli's score and pushed it back into his hands, with what might have passed for an apologetic look.

Paolo winked—and was gone back to the musicians before Conrad could react.

I think il Superbo may actually enjoy composing on the spot
, Conrad reflected.
Even if he has no patience at all…

The tenor was not so easily disposed of, drawing il Conte aside and putting his point, with the tenacity of a small dog.

“Cortez's big aria on the step-pyramid.” Paolo patted Velluti's shoulder. “Time to wrench everybody's heart, so we have to keep rehearsing!”

Surprisingly obedient, Velluti waited for the piano's introduction.

“‘Mio figlio! Mio patria! Mio amore!'”
The castrato voice thrilled up into the spaces of the great cavern.
My child! My country! My love!

Roberto dumped himself down in his chair, four bars after the beginning of the aria, seemingly at the end of wits and patience. He cast a look at Velluti.
“Gran Dio!
Thank God that man can sing!”

“I can't lie.” Conrad muttered. “He wasn't hired for his thespian talents…”

Roberto unmistakably stifled a laugh.

Giambattista Velluti was not in any meaning of the term a “singing actor.” He stood on his mark on stage and sang. If necessary, he moved to his next mark and sang again. He showed his better side to the audience. If severely nagged to act, he would place his right foot carefully forward, and extend his right arm towards the audience—usually towards the general region where the boxes owned by the local nobility were situated. Four bars later, he would bring his arm back and place his hand flat on his breast, over where he fondly imagined his heart to be. He struck these two attitudes no matter what role he might be playing. It was the context of the opera that made him seem tragic or comic.

And his voice, which conveyed every nuance that his acting did not.

“When he sings, he's a genius,” Conrad added, in an undertone, “and we have JohnJack to
act
.”

Roberto Capiraso took a folded page from an inner pocket and weighed the paper in his hand. “I've taken a rather unusual step, with that in mind. The traditional ‘Heroine's Mad Scene'… there really isn't any place for it with Donna Sandrine's Princess Tayanna. If I give it to Estella Belucci's Amazon, the
prima donna
will shoot me.”

He said this with sufficient gravity that Conrad had to choke off a guffaw.

“Giambattista has the best voice,” Roberto continued, “but the acting ability of a sheep. With your co-operation, therefore, I propose to give the Mad Scene to a man—to the bass. To Signore Spinelli.”

Conrad spread the synopsis out on his knee, reading while he spared an ear for Velluti.

“That is… ideal.” He dug in his pocket for a pencil, marking the paper. “We'd need a repeat verse, here—JohnJack sings brilliant coloratura bass; let him show it off!”

“I suggest it for Act Four, scene two.”

The suggested melodic line sounded so powerfully in his mind, Conrad lost track of what the musicians were actually playing.

“So… we have our complex villain being driven mad by the loyalties pulling him apart… On the one hand, he's promoting rebellion with the aid of the Priests of the Sun—” Conrad made another pencil note. “Have them on-stage with him here. He must get rid of his rival, the false Quetzalcoatl, Fernando Cortez—the Feathered Serpent must die! But this means fighting against his love, Princess Tayanna… You'll want to bring his warriors on somewhere…”

As if there had never been a rift between composer and librettist, Conrad looked over at Roberto, Conte di Argente, without any constraint.

“We might have to choose between a hymn and something military—with what you've got here, a march would suit better. Let's see: JohnJack tells the priests he'll marry Tayanna afterwards, to legitimise his reign as King Chimalli. But he's torn—and suddenly he's tormented by the image of the old King, who was his shield-brother, and whose beloved daughter Tayanna he promised to support! He hallucinates the old warrior-king, and begs his pardon—embarrassing himself in front of his own warriors—then
recovers
himself,” Conrad scribbled
cabaletta!
in the margin of the score. “Because he knows that, if the white men aren't driven off, they'll take over the whole Aztec kingdom. His motives for wishing Cortez dead are mixed—but his aim is
right
. He gathers his followers, exits to
martial
music, close scene, and we don't need to see him again before the climax of Act Four!
Bravissimo!”

Roberto leaned back in his chair, apparently observing Velluti, but in reality attempting to see the pencilled notes. “A true martial march, or town
banda
martial?”

Conrad tapped his fingernail on the paper, not so much debating the question but wondering that il Conte di Argente should think to ask it.

“Start off with a park bandstand march,” Conrad suggested. “Segue into the true melancholic march of men going off knowing they're going to die.”

Roberto Capiraso nodded. “I'll write you the cabaletta to lead into it.”

Before Conrad had even been old enough to name the parts of opera, he had always preferred those faster, change-of-gear sections at the end of long arias—'cabaletta' for one or two singers, ‘stretta' for the whole cast on-stage. To his ear they are the apotheosis of opera.

Conrad folded the already-creased paper and slipped it into his coat pocket, while he applauded Velluti. He leaned over to Argente.

“You know what? Since you've given JohnJack the Mad Scene, and Estella's got her nose out of joint—give
her
the bravura aria of the slave protesting against the loss of his freedom with a call-to-arms for
Libertà!
The one that usually goes to the tenor.
I'd
pay money to see Estella singing the amazon warrior-made-slave who yearns to be free, to fight to liberate her homeland from the Aztec invaders…”

Roberto's eyebrows climbed into his hairline. “You mean an aria of the kind that caused a riot in Signore Donizetti's
Gemma
? And set up a republic in the Netherlands when Monsieur Auber's
Muette de Portici
began a revolution?”

“To be fair, I think it was the signal for revolution, rather than the cause of it.” Conrad smirked. “I did hear rumours of his Majesty King Ferdinand belting out an aria of young Signore Verdi's on the palace balcony, the day the Two Sicilies became free of the North's power—despite the fact that he can't sing.”

“Write me some verses,” Roberto, Conte di Argente, said, with a somewhat put-upon air that didn't disguise his enthusiasm.

Thirteen days
.

With the curtain drawn back, there was no door as such to his chamber. Interruptions came frequently. He was not surprised, as he walked back in from a rehearsal, reading the score he carried in both hands, to realise someone was waiting. Glancing up from the pages, Conrad caught a glimpse of brown kid boots and embroidered white muslin skirts, and saw Leonora putting her fur muff down on his desk.

His heart stuttered and jumped. He came to an undignified sudden halt.

“Leonora!—Contessa—!”

She wore a short green pelisse over the morning dress, buttoned to the throat, and her hat was a velvet fantasia based on a horseman's steel helm, also sea-green.

His mind gibbered.
The first time I've seen her close enough to speak with
—

An odd calm came over him. Conrad put his score down on his desk. He was near enough to touch her, if that had not been absolute stupidity, and he was not afraid.

She's not the monster my imaginings have made of her. She's just Nora
.

Her voice was quiet and direct. She did not quite look him in the eye. “I want to apologise to you. I know Roberto never will. I apologise for the prison. This is my fault. If it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have any trouble working with you—and he was enjoying it.”

She did meet his gaze, then. Her eyes were dark.

“At first, he didn't tell me the name of the ‘damned commercial librettist' he was working with, but he quoted me parts of your discussions, and arguments… It isn't always easy for Roberto to make real friends, being on the opera board—”

“—Being a stiff-rumped son of a bitch!” The callow, school-boy insult fell out of his mouth without consideration.

“Roberto is always sure of his opinions.” Leonora's chin came up. “And always ready to change them. It's just that he's very—thorough—in his arguments, and he rarely meets anyone who can stand up to him.”

By her expression, she did not like being put in a position of defending her husband to him. Conrad let it pass.
Because this is Nora, finally speaking to me…

“In any case,” Leonora said, determined, “you and he wouldn't have quarrelled if it wasn't for me. Therefore I apologise. I
am
sorry. Truly.”

Conrad found himself unable to concentrate on anything but her face. “Thank you.”

“It seemed ridiculous for both of us to be part of
L'Altezza azteca
, and for me not to speak to you…”

Her gaze fell. Conrad realised that, before he came in, she had been reading Paolo's daily report where it lay on his desk, deciphering the smudged inky handwriting of their progress.

“I'm sorry, I didn't intend to pry, Corrado; I was… I'm hearing the verses now, as a
recitateur
, and Roberto talks about his composing
just
enough that I want to know more. It's as if he
forgets
I was a singer!”

Conrad pushed the report towards her. “Look at it all you like. One of us will need to add your progress with the singers to it.”

He watched her closely, seeing her expression change as her gaze flicked across the notes. Concern, amusement—at Paolo's terse nagging of his “cousin,” perhaps—and then worry—and finally her intense Delft-blue gaze rising to meet his eyes, full of whatever he dared not hope for or name.

“What I need to say to you,” Conrad murmured, “can wait until after the
fourteenth of the month. Do you understand?”

She bit at her full lower lip—which so automatically made him want to kiss it that he had moved forward before he stopped himself.

“Yes, Corrado, I do understand.”

In his more cynical moments, these past few years, Conrad had thought
love is only pain
. He understood viscerally, now, why poets speak of love being felt in the heart. It felt as if something physically pierced him through the ribcage. It might have been unselfish empathy for Leonora, going through her life so misunderstood—or an entirely selfish satisfaction that Roberto Capiraso should so prove it:
he doesn't understand or deserve her
.

“Well then.” He spoke with a forced brightness, that—as she looked up, curiously—became oddly genuine. “I have a copy of the score; you can give me your expert option. If you've forgotten how an opera's put together in the last five years, I'll be very surprised!”

A slow smile grew on her face.

It changed her, he thought. The polite facade that she or any other gentlewoman must keep up in society vanished. The smile was a lot closer to the orphanage brat's grin that Nora had been used to have, shortly before she suggested some plan or other that would get them in trouble.

She unbuttoned her pelisse, and unpinned her hat, removing both, and gave him a grandiose gesture. “Show me your verses, poet! Let's see if I can give you any inspiration.”