The Black Opera (88 page)

Nora looked as intent and silly as most singers do, founding the sounds within their body and giving them voice, and she leaned forward very slightly, as if she leaned into a gale that opposed her.

Something broke warm and fragile within him; he loved her with something that was not pity—
No one can offer such a force of nature pity!
—but might have included an empathy for another outsider who remained out of the pale of ordinary men's social lives, not from some romantic rejection of it, but simply because what she is—what Leonora Sposito is—precludes it.

And yet she's
improvising.

Voice mounting by leaps, with no need for breath control, no weakness in the passaggio—though indeed she
must
be controlling the breathing she didn't need, to produce the sound.

Conrad's head throbbed, less for the pain in his skull than the painful puzzlement of knowing in his heart that he first heard this sound in sleep on a morning in February, on a day when he had no idea whether Nora was alive or dead, and no conception of what her voice has become now it's been through fire and ice.

Her voice lifted up, bringing half the Returned audience of Naples to their feet with her, stamping, whistling, cheering, crying
bravo! bella! bellissima!

At that moment, the four voices of Sandrine, Brigida, JohnJack and Velluti—and the musicians—the orchestra of the Prince's Men, too—dived into unison, and lifted up, and missed four bars seamlessly together, all of them, without any sign to each other or from the Count. Missed those bars and came in together on the next phrase, their playing and singing all of a piece.

The principal singers of the San Carlo walked forward, their music lifting hearts; stood all in a line with hands joined, and began to sing the finale as Roberto had rewritten it.

JohnJack first, noble and immoral, loved once, corrupted by ambition but raised up now by remorse—swearing to go into exile as Sandrine bade him, but first to lay down his life for her against the white man's king.

And at this, the Aztec Princess gave him a wonderful smile as Sandrine came in, at lowest contralto, jumping two octaves and dropping down, swearing she would walk through a sea of blood to keep her throne—but she would not put her General Chimalli or her Consort Cortez in danger of their lives. Love is so easily frangible and comes so seldom that it is never to be wasted when it comes—

Brigida's voice broke for a second as she joined the bass and contralto, lamenting her daughter whose love she has lost to a man who no longer cares for her.
Now I will take Hippolyta home and soothe her hurts
. Brigida sang with the desperate knowledge that no hurt of Estella's can ever be soothed: she lies dead on the stage of the broken Teatro San Carlo.

To his utter amazement Conrad saw a tear slide down in the dust on Velluti's cheek.

The castrato added his voice to what should have been a sextet—were not Lorenzo Bonfigli laying with Estella, as dead as she—and Velluti brought his presence into the choir of voices, not ponderous, but young and energetic as his clear, dark face.

He sang first to JohnJack: that if they have been enemies and competitors before, they now meet equal on the floor of desiring what is the most best for the Princess, for that Tayanna whom they both love.

And then, to Brigida, the castrato sang that whatever happens to him, her family will always find succour among those who have loved the name of Hernan Cortez.

“Non sia spaventato!”
Velluti's voice soars up, swelling, unencumbered by the thunderhead eruption-cloud overhead.
“Don't be afraid!—Proud defender of your nation, you will always find a friend in me.”

They ought to look comic, Conrad thought. The over-tall castrato singer in dirty robes and armour, his hands resting on the much lower shoulders of the round Brigida Lorenzani… but it only makes the words come with more sincerity.

They faced the singers of
il Principe
with utter defiance. Brigida held a prop sword—Conrad couldn't begin to imagine how she might have clung to it through the San Carlo's destruction and the flight on board the
Apollon
; but there it is, wiped clean of dust—and it gleamed as she raised it.

The steel of her breastplate catches light, and glows with the colour of the dust clouds. Not a property armour, but one from Egg Castle made for a large man, and it fits her; and Conrad sees at last why they call bright steel “white armour,” taking every bit of light and reflecting it the colour of milky ash.

Brigida sang,
“How long have I wandered—and to find my daughter so!”

They came up to the new lines that Conrad had talked her through as they scrambled over rock and ash, leaving Pozzuoli. He found himself holding his breath.

“Solo una memoria, curò teneramente ed adorò…
Just a memory, cherished and adored.” She voiced it flawlessly.
“I will take home with me this token of your love, your son
.”

The voices flowed in and about each other.

JohnJack lifted his head.

“Fratello detestato!”
His deep voice reached every highest terrace of the amphitheatre.
“Nemico valutato!”

Detested brother. Valued enemy
. Conrad caught a sideways glance from Roberto Conte di Argente, where the man conducted.

I never thought…

It lost itself in the music, with the knowledge that very often one does
not
think; the applicability to personal situations is only apparent afterwards; and in some senses, a libretto is always a story that the poet tells himself, only to be truly read after it's finished and other people sing it back to him.

All four of the voices sang. Here and there a silent bar, where Lorenzo or Estella should have come in—Conrad found his throat too tight to give voice, reminded painfully of those parades after the war, in which the cavalry formations led a horse with an empty saddle, to mark all the fallen.

It is those silences that underscore the sadness of glory and joy that is the last stretta of
The Aztec Princess
. Far more than what Leonora is singing, her coloratura moving as unnaturally far below the female voice as Velluti's is above the male, but it doesn't matter, Conrad sees and hears.

The attention of the Dead is not divided.

They are not partisan between one opera or another. Inexplicable as it seems, he thinks—

The people of Naples regard both these operas as one and the same work.

But what else are they to think?
Conrad realised.
All singers are on the one stage!

They clap and compliment all equally. Leonora's is not the solo star voice. It is, Conrad hears, the accompaniment to what the quartet sing. JohnJack's
“I regret,”
Sandrine's
“I love.”
Brigida's
“I grieve,”
and Velluti's
“I burn with the fire of ambition.”
For a stanza, Leonora is the comprimario voice which throws all of theirs into sharp relief.

She realised it, he saw, but there was nothing to be done.

Conrad began to sing, very quietly, in the tenor which would never be professional, no matter how much as a young man he had tried. Sang softly enough that surely no one could hear him, but sang, because it was beyond him not to be a part of this.

He walked forward, finding himself behind Paolo-Isaura, who sent her bow over the strings in ferocious pursuance of the score. She whipped out notes as if the violin bow were a sword; reinforcing Roberto's control of all the singers of the counter-opera as she walked, as if all the gathered singers were one instrument, and could be played like one alone.

Tullio Rossi took the score from Conrad and walked beside her with it open in one hand, and an army bayonet in the other. He stared alertly from side to side for threats, acting as if he were the one man present not involved by the
musicodramma
—but Conrad saw his feet fell on the cinders in the rhythm of the major part of the music.

It changed.

From quartet and comprimario to an ensemble of all five singers—Leonora's superb unearthly voice winding in and out of the others, joining in unison now with Velluti, now with Brigida, now with JohnJack and Sandrine, until it was not possible to say whether she sang for the black opera or against it.

Even more troubling, Conrad found as he dropped his efforts to sing, blasphemous in the face of this kind of quality, there was no way to say if the San Carlo's quartet sang for the counter-opera or against it.

The stretta of the
finale ultimo
became something else with a life of its own. He lost his breath at the sound of it. Velluti and Leonora without hesitation and on the same note changed roles, so that Nora's voice rang out triumphantly on
“O Re, mi perdono,”
and Giambattista Velluti portrayed more emotion in his voice than he ever had in acting, and sang at the lowest extent of his range,
“We will live as one, all together, as we ought
.”

Nora sang coloratura improvisation around the melody that Conrad had
heard when he dreamed of storm-riven seawater sinking into sand. He cannot recognise it—
should
not, because what does that say about the universe?—but he does.

He tried desperately not to be swept away.

He failed.

His heart clenched under his ribs with a sensation of emotional vulnerability as the chorus joined her, and soared up into air thick with destruction. He forgot that it was Roberto Capiraso—
husband to the woman I love
—who had created this music. Forgot that it was Nora singing—
lying treacherous bitch
—and felt something in himself aching, reaching out, gathering himself and his energy as the orchestra and singers began building by note and phrase.

The voices of
il Principe's
tenor and contralto joined her inhuman voice, making something—heart, lungs, soul?—swell inside his rib cage until Conrad became breathless.
Not inhuman!
he protested his own thought.
But not human either.

Orchestra and other singers paused in an aching moment's silence. Nora's soprano rang out:

“Non perdoni! Io non pento!”

Isabella of Castile's declaration, when her plans of murder are irrevocably committed:

“Do not forgive! I do not regret!”

Her audience cheer, shout, loud enough to drown the instruments—the strings, which for Conrad are the soul on which opera rests; the brass for emotion, and the drums are the heartbeat.

All of it's nothing without the voice, and now's the time to find out if that's true, he thinks.
Because, here, we have almost nothing else except the voice
—

Conrad would laugh if he wasn't weeping. He stifles that, so he can feed even his own weak tenor into the chorus. A little ragged because not rehearsed, but forgivably human against Leonora's inhuman perfection.

The score passes without a break into the
finale ultimo
.

Words slotted seamlessly into sound, the stresses falling on the important emotions and knowledge—the surge of the chorus coming to lift the whole body of the work up—he smeared tears from the corners of the eyes with his sleeve. The stretta shifted to a different level: words and lines repeating—he heard the distant drums and trumpets of war—the aching desire of love—the words carried beyond the music by one singing voice—

Music and choir crashed back down in a secular hymn, an anthem that set shivers down the hairs of Conrad's nape.

Everything acted on his nerves, as if he had no skin: the interplay between
soloist and crowd—the part the orchestration played in echoing back the words—everything complex and complete to the last decorated words and music. All the singers' voices lift all up, and buttress the poignant voice of the soloist—desiring, balked in that desire, but searing up to completion despite all. Even the pain is enjoyable, or it would not be possible to leave a performance streaming with tears and yet searingly happy.

Conrad's head throbbed, hearing Leonora's melody and that of
L'Altezza
twine around each other, join and climb, all five voices lifting like the skylark that flies up and up into the hot skies of June, flies upward until it can sing no more and falls out of the sky—every effort given, every heart emptied, every exposed emotion naked—and the dead of Naples stand up on the amphitheatre steps, where their ancestors cheered blood, two thousand years ago, and they shout, calling in a confused mess for each of the singers by name, Velluti, Spinelli, Lorenzani,
bella
Sandrine!—and
Contessa!
, too;
Leonora!
, Conrad hears; the audience giving their loud validation not to one or the other but to both, as if the only way to defeat the black opera were for black opera and white opera to become one.

“The finales are different!” Conrad shouted—going completely unheard.
Reconquista
will be tragic death and then triumph: Ferdinand of Aragon's death, and the apotheosis of Isabella of Castile, free to rule and reign. And
L'Altezza Azteca
… will have forgiveness.

It felt like a physical weight on his shoulders.
Roberto composed both of these, so the difference is in the word, my words
—