Vivaldi's Virgins (7 page)

Maestro Gasparini provided us with oratorios with the same workmanlike regularity with which the
dispensiera
provided us with shoes and hose. But Vivaldi hadn’t yet written any of the choral music that now fills these halls and thrills the people who come to our concerts.

The ambitions of individual
figlie
of the
coro
were certainly not among his preoccupations. His only goal at that time was to make himself shine in the eyes of the king. A patron of such wealth and stature could save the Red Priest from ever having to worry about money again.

Determined to control every last detail of our upcoming performance, he brought in his father, Signor Giovanni (a barber before he became a regular violinist at San Marco), to cut and
coif our hair. Since of course there were none of our signature pomegranate blossoms to be had at that time of year, one of the maestro’s sisters, Signora Zanetta, prepared sprigs of holly for our hair instead. God knows where she got them, but the effect was charming. When we nodded or laughed, the bright red berries trembled—although one had to be careful not to prick oneself on the leaves.

We played well. Bernardina and I both went out of our way to try to outplay each other—and, in fact, the maestro had chosen his E-flat sonata, which features a sort of duel between the two solo violins.

When we were finished and had taken our bows, the king declared himself besotted with the
figlie di coro.

“Vivaldi,” he said in the most affected voice imaginable, “I cannot possibly go to my next engagement without these angels in my entourage.”

The king walked among us then, touching a cheek here or a shoulder there. Bernardina kept her gaze on the ground. We were all of us flushed from the effort of playing.

But the king was the picture of sangfroid. Beneath his curls, which were more elaborately coiffed than any of ours, his fleshy face was powdered a bluish white. Just below his right cheekbone, he wore the beauty spot that coquettes among the nobility refer to as “the saucy.” Over the years, more than one member of the
coro
has shown up for a performance with a beauty spot stuck to her face in one place or another—there’s “the man-slayer,” “the passionate,” “the rakish,” and the “majestic,” which is stuck smack in the middle of the forehead, between the eyes. I can’t imagine anything sillier, especially as our faces—except on the rarest occasions—are always hidden when we perform.

After taking his tour, the king waved one of his heavily beringed hands in our direction. “My dear Vivaldi, can’t you do
something,” he drawled, “so that they might accompany me?”

If the maestro had bowed any lower, he would have turned a somersault. He kissed the largest ring of the so-called duke, as well as the hem of his robe, as if he had been the Pope himself. “There are no rules that cannot be broken for your Grace, and there is nothing these angels won’t do to please me.” He leered at us then, so that we all moved back a step or two. Vivaldi could be quite disgusting when in pursuit of a powerful patron.

But the king took it all in stride. “Very well, then, Padre. Let us all hasten to the Palazzo Foscarini. But, wait—”

He looked at us more closely then, seeing for the first time, I think, the plainness of our red robes, which had been mended and washed a hundred times. Bernardina put her hand over her bad eye. The king peered with sad distaste at the sprigs of holly in our hair, and the fresh red berries seemed to shrivel beneath his gaze.

And then a smile lit his features again. “Never mind!” He clapped his hands, and half a dozen liveried servants appeared, surrounding him and bowing low. The king gave the grandest one among them instructions, and he in turn gave instructions to the next grandest, who minced orders at those below, all in French—which I suppose is considered to be the world’s most elegant language. It is spoken, I have been told, as far away as the royal court of Russia.

A trunkful of jewels and another of silken garments materialized as if out of the ether. The rustic holly was stripped from our hair and replaced with strands of pearls. Our carefully mended robes were whisked away without regard for our modesty, replaced by corsets, crinolines, and frocks of the finest lace and silk brocade, all in shades of ivory, pink, and pale gold. Another trunk held the most delightful dancing shoes, cunningly fashioned of silk and velvet in the latest mode. There were enough
shoes and of sufficient variety to accommodate all four of us. We were too busy swooning over these objects of fashion to mind being remade.

My heart, for one, was pounding at the prospect of not only attending a ball but perhaps being allowed to dance there. Claudia, our great ambassador from the outside world, had been teaching us all to dance by the light of a stolen candle beyond our bedtime. My longing to test myself with an actual man, rather than a girl in her nightdress, had been keeping me awake at night.

Finally, the king’s majordomo opened a silk-lined silver chest to reveal richly jeweled Carnival masks, each one worthy of a princess. There must have been premeditation in this, although, at the time, I and all the others were quite happy to accept it as a miracle.

When we were thus ranged before him, the king nodded his approval. “Everyone shall wonder from what royal court I have absconded with these lovely ladies.” We giggled and curtseyed as he left the concert room, and then looked at one another to marvel more fully at our transformation.

All four of us served as mirrors to one another as we turned and struck poses and admired ourselves covertly in our admiration of the others. It was all very much antithetical to what we had been taught about modesty and humility and behavior befitting a girl charged with the moral safekeeping of the Republic.

I felt that I had truly stepped out of my own body and into another. Every fiber of my being was excited by the secret trove of possibilities held by the night, as if the doors of life had suddenly been thrown open and a red carpet rolled out to receive us.

The maestro ordered some of the king’s servants to stay behind and guard the passageway till we were all safely outside. But when he’d turned his back, I could tell that they were
sneering at him and at us, as well. Perhaps their sensibilities were offended by the thought that we might be the children of beggars and whores. I have since learned that servants are ever more snobbish than their masters, living in constant fear, I suppose, of being exiled from the rarefied world vouchsafed them by their position.

But who could say that we did not belong in these rich garments? Giulietta was rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of a senator and one of Venezia’s highest-born married ladies. Bernardina, like so many of us, hadn’t the slightest clue about her parentage. She claimed to have a vague memory of living on a pirate ship and being blinded in a battle. But Claudia told us it was far more likely that Bernardina’s eye was blighted in childbirth by syphilis. Claudia herself hailed from one of the richest families in Saxony. Her father and mother between them owned five castles and vast holdings of farmland. Such garments were probably her everyday wear.

And I? And I. There were no whispers about me, Anna Maria dal Violin. And yet there were whispers awakened inside me as soon as the jeweled mask was placed upon my face and from top to toes I was transformed. Was this, then, the true identity of Anna Maria, foundling of the Ospedale della Pietà? Were my orphan’s robes my true disguise? And then I could not help but wonder—was it not possible that one or both of my parents might be there at the ball?

The
portinara
on duty had mysteriously disappeared. And all that was to be seen of Sister Celestina—one of our visiting nuns who came to the Pietà to further her musical studies—was the back of her robe receding down the dark passageway. I was sure I heard the jingle of coins in her pockets.

Thus resplendent, one by one, we were handed over the threshold of the water gate, down the stairs and onto the king’s
gondola, which was draped in red velvet and brocade and lit by hundreds of candles that cast a sort of golden daylight, even though the stars shone bright above
la Serenissima
. There was a crescent moon in the icy sky, and I swear it looked dipped in molten silver that night in honor of the king.

At first there was only silence as we glided up the Grand Canal toward the Ca’ Foscarini, the star-studded mirror of the water barely rippled by the expert oarsmen, who gazed at us with lust and wonder.

But the splendor of that gondola ride was as a journey on a cart along a muddy country lane compared with the splendor of the Palazzo Foscarini.

As much as the king may have relished the notion of traveling incognito, there was no one in Venezia in ignorance about his exalted station, and no expense was spared to fête him in befitting style. I am sure I was not the only one among the orphans to have a moment of difficulty breathing when the doors of the Foscarini’s grand salon were thrown open to us.

The mountainous chandeliers of Murano glass. The ceilings that seemed as high as Heaven, painted with gods and goddesses in the likeness of our hosts. The intricacies of the carvings. Everything gleaming, inlaid, bejeweled, waxed, and perfumed. Candles swathed in pink silk and light that would put the sun to shame for the plainness of its illumination.

The noble company—all masked, of course—parted, bowing low, at the entrance of the king and his entourage. We each of us held her head high, trying to look as regal and as foreign as possible—although I was careful not to meet Giulietta’s eyes, as I knew we would both begin giggling if I did. The maestro, craning his neck to gauge the reaction of the crowd, was quite inflated with his own success and ours.

Then the musicians struck up a gavotte and the king, laugh
ing underneath his mask, whirled away with the
procuratessa
Mocenigo, who was dressed all in black and diamonds and feathers. She had visited us before and even spoken with a few of us through the grille in the
parlatorio
, and I was sure she knew at once who we were.

It looked as if the king were dancing with a magnificent and dangerous bird of prey. Rumor had it that she was intimate with the Grand Inquisitor, and I wondered if the maestro was having any second thoughts about his boldness not only in secreting us out of the
ospedale
but also in exposing his folly to Venezia’s highest and mightiest.

Kissing
la Mocenigo’s
hand when the song ended, the king turned to find himself presented with Venezia’s pride, Signora Caterina Querini.

Of course, I had heard of her, of her beauty and her riches. There were those among the adults of the
coro
at that time—as now—who were patronized by noble families, who would send them food and furniture, invite them to their homes to recuperate when they’d been ill, and include them on family outings during the
villegiatura,
when whole households are loaded onto barges and floated down to one or another country estate on the Brenta River. When in a festive mood, these senior members of the
coro
would regale us with riveting tales of the nobility and their way of life.

Signora Querini was a favorite subject of these stories. But now it seemed that her reputation did not do her justice. One could see her gracefulness even when she was standing still. Indeed the entire assembly stood absolutely still, like a thousand moths in the breathless moment before fluttering toward the brightest lantern they’ve ever seen. Even the king looked truly dazzled.

No one danced while they danced, which they did with an obvious and mutual delight.

And then an odd thing happened. We heard the sound of a harpsichord suddenly usurp the orchestra, a kind of playing I had never heard before, so fast did the fingers of that musician fly. Everyone looked to see who it was who dared upstage the king in his graceful dance with Signora Querini. And yet neither the king nor his partner was of a mind to be upstaged. They danced faster and faster, as if caught in a whirlwind, their heads thrown back, laughing. Oh, to experience that, I thought to myself. I heard the maestro mutter, “Good God, it is Handel!” And then a man’s voice beside him laughed, “It could be no one else but the famous Saxon—or the devil himself!”

The maestro—and all of us around him—turned to see who had spoken. “Scarlatti!” the maestro cried. “Is it you? Is every musician in God’s kingdom here tonight?”

But Scarlatti’s answer—oh, he was dashing!—was drowned by exclamations of surprise and one would even say horror from the crowd as pearls began flying from Signora Querini like drops of water from a dog just emerged from a swim on a hot summer’s day.
La bella Querini
at first tried to catch them, and then, holding her lovely arms out straight and throwing her head back, she whirled round and round till all the pearls from the broken threads of her gown lay scattered on the dance floor.

No one dared move, and the music stopped. And then the king himself dropped to his knees and began to gather them. He scooped them up in his hands and—with a bit of help from some of the other men ranged around, who discreetly kicked stray pearls in his direction—the king presented the pearls to the lady with a bow.

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then all of us, at once, broke into applause at the magnificence of this gesture of tribute by a king to
la Serenissima’s
greatest beauty.

A commanding voice in the crowd shouted out, “Scarlatti, you
must challenge the Saxon—for the honor of your countrymen!”

Claudia whispered to me, “It’s Cardinal Ottoboni of Rome!”

Scarlatti bowed. “Your holiness,” he said to the cardinal with a sly grin, reaching for the sword at his side. “Would you have me kill the great Handel, then?”

“Not with your sword, boy! With your bare hands.” And then Ottoboni held up both his arms, which were clothed in white lace beneath the red taffeta of his robes. “
Signore, signori
,” he boomed from under his ruby-encrusted black mask, “the two greatest keyboardists of our time are here tonight. Let them do battle so that we can determine which of them to crown our king!” He bowed low to the king then, who kept up his charade by looking innocently around and applauding with the rest of the company.