The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice

by Laurel Corona

  Why is he telling me this?

  “So when I come to the Pietà... Perhaps I should not tell you this—” He turned back toward her. “I look forward to seeing you. You are the truest and most sincere person I know.” Maddalena saw his eyes take her in as she stood facing him, her back pressed against the counter. “And I see you now, so mature and accomplished, and...” His eyes glistened and his voice broke, only slightly but unmistakably. “And I am just so proud.”

  He sat down and motioned again for her to come sit next to him, but she stayed where she was. He splayed his hands on his knees and began to rock back and forth in small, nervous movements.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “What’s done is done. But I cannot help envying the man who would have you for a wife.”

  I should leave, she thought. I should chastise him for daring to be so bold, and then I should walk out.

  Vivaldi looked up, acknowledging her long silence. “I have said too much.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Forgive me. After my attacks, I often find myself being more honest than I would be otherwise. As if perhaps I recognize that the next one could mark my last moments in this world and I don’t want to leave the record incomplete.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Maddalena, look at me.” He stood up to face her but did not move in her direction. “I will say nothing more, I promise. But I want you to know I treasure the moments I have spent with you more than any in my life. It would make me sad beyond repair if what I have said caused you to feel uncomfortable being with me.”

  “No,” Maddalena said. “It won’t. I’m needed at rehearsal.” With no more than a nod, she turned her back and left the room.

  For the next half hour, Maddalena missed her cues, misread her part, and finally put her bow down. Pleading a headache, she asked to be excused. As she lay on her bed in the quiet room, she could not decide if what bothered her more was what he had said, or that he had promised never to say it again.

  Maddalena shared nothing with Chiaretta about what Vivaldi had told her. She remembered how uncomfortable he had made the relationship with her sister at times in the past, and she didn’t want to revive what was best left behind them. But conf iding in her sister would have been difficult for another reason. Even before the meeting in the inf irmary, an awkward silence had set in between the sisters over a dispute between Chiaretta and the maestro.

  The lead role of Judith needed a voice dramatic enough for the audience to envision her cutting off a head with the swing of a sword, and Chiaretta’s voice was far too sweet for that. She accepted that her last role would not be the title one, but the conflict began in earnest when she learned that Vivaldi had not written even the second most substantial role for her. Vagaus, the eunuch servant of Nebuchadnezzar’s general, Holofernes, would be performed by Barbara, whom Chiaretta was convinced Vivaldi was already grooming to take her place.

  Chiaretta was astonished. “My farewell performance and I’m playing the maid?” she had said, brandishing the music in front of Vivaldi’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I can’t take any chances with a larger role. You have no time to rehearse. Even this will be difficult for you, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m the best sight reader of all of them,” Chiaretta countered. “You could adjust the range a little. I could do Barbara’s role, or sing Ozias. He doesn’t even show up until the end, and it’s less to learn. And I’d be last. I’d be remembered.”

  “True.” Vivaldi nodded his head. “But it isn’t just the number of notes you have. What impression do you want to make? Do you want the audience to listen to you sing the role of a manservant? Even worse, a eunuch?”

  Chiaretta had to concede that she wanted her final impression to be as an attractive woman, and the matter was settled, at least temporarily, when he sent her back to the apocryphal story to point out that he had invented the character of Abra to have a role suitable for her at all.

  Her second explosion came when she saw the sheet music for her four arias and wanted to sing only the first two. “Boring” was her verdict on the third, and “wretched” was the nicest word she had for the last piece of music she would ever sing in public.

  “He promised he would write the role for me, but listen to this!” She made a hash of the last aria one evening in their room. Maddalena, who had struggled for weeks to be the peacemaker, had to agree that it did sound like the marches the boys in the village had made up when they were playing soldiers.

  Chiaretta could barely make her way through rehearsals without dropping her voice to a growl and stopping altogether in annoyance before finishing. Maddalena tried to get her sister to see it from Vivaldi’s point of view, that there was a story to tell and she had one of many roles to play, but Chiaretta lashed out at her for defending him.

  The soloists received just their own parts to rehearse, and the war broke out again when Chiaretta saw how all the pieces of the oratorio fit together. Her final aria was followed by one that would be sung by Barbara. A figlia named Giulia was playing Ozias, the governor of the besieged Hebrew city of Bethulia, and she would have the final aria and recitative.

  “These are the last notes I am going to sing!” Chiaretta flung the music to the floor at her next private rehearsal with Vivaldi. “I hate them! And you make it worse by making the next aria so much better they’ll forget me before I’ve had time to step back from the railing!”

  “Chiaretta, how can a servant girl sing the last words of an oratorio? The story matters.” Vivaldi spoke with the flat emphasis used to explain unpleasant facts to a child. “The characters matter.”

  “The audience won’t care if Holofernes sings through his severed head,” Chiaretta retorted. “They come to hear the singers.”

  Vivaldi’s face reddened. “They come,” he said, “to hear the music. It is the entire composition that counts, not just you.”

  Chiaretta refused to attend the next rehearsal, and when Vivaldi filled in with an understudy without comment, she sent word to him that she would not sing in the production at all.

  “Caterina swaggers around acting like she really is Judith and I’m her maid. And don’t you see the way Barbara smirks at me?” Chiaretta wept into her hands as she sat with her sister in their room. “And Giulia too. Why did he do this to me?”

  Maddalena knew Chiaretta’s threat not to perform was an empty one. Her final performance would already have occurred at a mass the week before, and not singing again would have been too much for her to bear.

  “Your sister has been impossible,” Vivaldi said to Maddalena at a break in one of the full rehearsals, while Chiaretta fumed in her room. “But threatening not to sing? It’s ridiculous. Figlie di coro do what they are told. Deciding whether a part is good enough for them? That’s no different from the divas at the opera house.” He shuddered. “And besides, how much of a chance is there that the Congregazione will pass up the opportunity to make money on a farewell performance just to coddle your sister’s ego? And her new family is unlikely to take kindly to her tantrums either.” The annoyance in his voice was tinged with bitterness and anger. “No,” he said. “She’ll sing.”

  “It sounds as if you don’t like her anymore,” Maddalena said.

  “That’s not it at all,” he said. “I feel terribly sorry for her. And for me, and for you, and for everyone. You won’t ever play with her again. I can never write for her. No one who comes to the chapel will hear her voice. And that’s nothing compared to what it must be like for her to know what she will lose. She has a gift she’s scarcely had time to develop, and a decade or maybe more of fame she’ll never see.”

  He shook his head. “No, even these last few weeks when she has been throwing tantrums and insulting my music, I have felt sorry for her. I wondered what I would be doing if the church had told me I couldn’t play the violin.” He paused. “I honestly can’t imagine it. God help me, I think I would rather be dead.”

 
; The faint sounds of drums and trumpets grew louder as Chiaretta and Maddalena walked down the hallway toward the stairs leading to the chapel balcony. At the door to the staircase, Chiaretta stopped for a moment. “This is the last time I’ll walk up these stairs.”

  Maddalena said nothing. She reached up and pretended to straighten her sister’s sleeve, just for a reason to touch her. A girl of about ten came down the hall carrying a pitcher of water. She stared at Chiaretta until she came abreast of her, at which time she lowered her head, murmured a pardon, and started up the stairs.

  “I must have looked like that,” Chiaretta said, watching the girl protect the water from sloshing on the steps as she ascended. “The time I snuck up the stairs and found Michielina. So long ago I can hardly remember.”

  “We need to get upstairs,” Maddalena had to say a second time. Chiaretta’s lips were parted, and her eyes widened and then narrowed almost imperceptibly, as if her thoughts were so numerous and contradictory they had battled themselves down to none at all. She took in a breath as if to speak but then did no more than hold out her hand to Maddalena and pull her close in a long embrace.

  Finally the two of them made their way onto the balcony. Below them the chapel was already nearly full. Maddalena began tuning her violin, but stopped for a moment. “Has Claudio arrived?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Chiaretta said, peering through a break in the black gauze draping. “I don’t see him.”

  She hadn’t really looked. It felt as if the crowd was gathering to witness her execution. “I think I’ve made a mistake,” she whispered, not sure whether she wanted to be heard.

  “This place is more crowded than heaven!” Anna Maria grinned at them and crossed her eyes before sitting down at the harpsichord. As the other musicians filed in and took their places, she began to run her fingers across the keys. The singers came out next and lined up nearest the grille. Mechanically, Chiaretta went to join them. The last to come onto the balcony was Vivaldi, carrying his violin. He stood for the opening notes at an angle where he could be seen by the brass and string sections, and when the figlie nodded readiness, he lifted his bow to cue them.

  The brass blared a fanfare, setting the scene in two warring camps, before Maddalena and the others burst into wild bowing, supported underneath by the cellos and bass viols. By the end of the sinfonia, every instrument had been heard. The timpani pounded until the music stands rattled. The woodwinds tootled, while in the background an ensemble of lutes, mandolins, theorbos, and archlutes strummed furiously.

  The music died down and Vivaldi began a wild solo, with the maestra, Prudenzia, joining in as principal violinist, followed by Maddalena, playing lead second violin. Together they wove a story of mounting excitement, ending in a final thunderous crescendo of drums and brass.

  And then the story began. After Holofernes rallied his troops, his servant entered to tell him a beautiful woman from the Hebrew camp wanted to make his acquaintance. Caterina stepped forward and, without a bar of recitative, began to sing. Her voice was soft and fluid as she sang of Judith’s fears and hopes, caressing each phrase with grace and a hint of melancholy.

  Although the November cold had already begun seeping through the windows and hallways of the Pietà, the crowded balcony quickly grew hot. The figlie who had no other role than to swell the choruses began picking up pieces of music that had already been played and used them to fan the musicians, who were glistening with sweat.

  And then the music turned to Chiaretta. “Ne timeas non,” she sang. “Don’t be afraid.” Accompanied by Anna Maria at the harpsichord, Chiaretta’s voice hovered over the chapel, the notes rising and falling, ebbing and flowing with perfect ease. Maddalena rested her violin on her lap as she watched her sister. Though Abra was supposed to be singing about Judith’s beauty, it seemed to Maddalena as if not just the music but also the words were perfect for her sister. “Cedit ira, ridet amor,” Chiaretta sang. “Seeing the beauty of your face, anger fades and love begins to shine, and everyone applauds your noble spirit.”

  Before she finished, the violinist next to Maddalena fainted, and a crash of timpani at the rear suggested that another musician had fallen to the heat. The youngest figlie brought towels, dipped in hastily procured pails of water, for musicians and singers to wipe their brows when they had a few bars of rest.

  Chiaretta shifted her feet back and forth, filling her lungs and exhaling in quiet sighs as she waited for her turn. Judith was calling Abra to support her in her hour of need. “Like a turtledove I speak to you, my trusted friend,” Caterina sang, cooing like the bird itself. The music was so beautiful, so perfect, that despite her jealousy Chiaretta felt herself succumbing to it. When the solo was over, one of the newest iniziate gave Caterina a towel to wipe the sweat away, and exhausted, she buried her face in it without noticing the girl’s adoring look.

  Vivaldi had given Chiaretta a spectacular aria to counter with, but to her horror, in the recitative leading up to it, her voice came out sounding uncertain and a bit shrill. She fought to open her throat while Maddalena played the melody she would pick up. The last time they played together had to be perfect, and her voice settled. Within a minute Caterina’s aria was put behind them, and the audience belonged to Chiaretta.

  Maddalena’s accompaniment fell silent, and Chiaretta’s voice soared alone over the chapel with the heartbreak of farewell. Everything a voice could promise was delivered as her notes rose and fell, warbled and trilled. She sang as if she could fly off the balcony, straight out the back of the chapel and directly to paradise, before coming back to earth to bring the aria to a close.

  “Abra! Abra!” Judith cried a few minutes later, after she had cut off Holofernes’ head. Chiaretta brought her character to joyful life at the success of their mission, sliding her voice up and down as if drunk with happiness. And then she launched into the hated last aria, milking it for every likable bar as she went along. She took one last breath and made her voice soar once more, bidding it good-bye as she sent it into the rafters. And then it was over.

  * * *

  In the week remaining before the wedding, every motion Maddalena and Chiaretta made, every step they took, felt unnatural. Though Maddalena had relished the luxury of being able to practice with only her sister for company the last few months, playing her violin inside their room now felt like twisting a broken arm, and she kept it locked inside its case.

  One night Chiaretta began to hum and then fell silent.

  “Go on,” Maddalena urged.

  Chiaretta looked at her sister with a wan smile. “I guess I need to practice what it’s like to have nothing to practice.” She put down the mending she had been doing, and they went to bed in silence.

  Chiaretta’s wedding dress and veil were laid out in a room adjoining the priora’s study. Maddalena was brushing her sister’s hair, which would be left loose, according to Venetian tradition, when Antonia and her mother arrived. Antonia, whose waist was growing thick with her first pregnancy, clapped her hands with excitement as Chiaretta’s dress was laced up. Even Giustina was caught up in the moment, as she helped fasten a family heirloom, a jeweled pendant she herself had chosen, around Chiaretta’s neck.

  Venetian women were always married in their families’ churches. The Pietà was the family for their own brides, but to control the excitement and imagination of the rest of the figlie, they were normally not permitted to attend. For Chiaretta’s wedding, Anna Maria and the rest of the coro were given special permission to watch in silence from the balcony. Maddalena alone was allowed on the floor of the chapel, with Claudio’s immediate family. They stood inside a small candlelit area near the altar, while all around them the chapel was deep in shadows. The priest’s colorless voice disappeared into the gloom as he mumbled his way through the nuptial mass.

  When she had been officially pronounced his wife, Chiaretta walked on Claudio’s arm through the dark, quiet nave. Bernardo rushed ahead to open the door, and they stepped out into a
flood of golden sunlight. The Riva was crowded with spectators jostling for a glimpse of her. “Chiaretta! Chiaretta!” they shouted over and over again.

  Though her face was veiled, she could see their faces as she made her way across the flower-strewn walkway. They’re crying, she realized.

  And then, as she boarded her gondola, she heard what else they were saying. “Addio!” they called out. “Good-bye, Chiaretta. Addio! ”

  The gondola, festooned from the silver ferro to the stern with ribbons and flowers, pulled away through water turned pink and yellow and red by thousands of petals, getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared from view.

  To Maddalena, standing on the empty dock, the boat seemed to be crossing the river Styx. It felt that much like dying.

  PART FOUR: MASKS

  1716–1719

  FOURTEEN

  Chiaretta awoke alone in her bedchamber the morning after her wedding. She sat up, pulling back the bed curtains to see feeble sunlight reaching into the room from a tiny glazed window. I’ve missed prayers, she thought. “Domine, labia mea aperies,” she murmured as she crossed herself, then paused, uncertain whether it was so late in the morning she should be saying Terce instead of Prime. She pulled back the velvet coverlet to get out of bed and continue her prayers at the wooden prie-dieu in the corner of her room. The tenderness between her legs made her wince, and she looked down to see a bloodstain on the sheets.

  She draped the coverlet over the sheet to hide the stain from view and sat down on the bed again, her prayers forgotten in the enormity of where she was. At the Pietà, Maddalena would be murmuring encouragement to an attiva struggling with a new technique, and Anna Maria would be fretting about getting music copied in time for rehearsal. The sweet familiarity made her heart twist in her chest. It’s over, she thought. There is no going back.

  Chiaretta had been told by the priora what in general to expect on her wedding night, but alone in her room, she reviewed the details with bewilderment, as if she wasn’t sure it had actually happened to her. At the Pietà dressing was simple, but when Claudio dropped her wedding gown below her waist and then helped her step out of it, her corset made her still feel almost fully clothed. As he loosened it, she took in what felt like her first deep breath since that morning. Standing behind her, he reached around to hold her tight, then turned her toward him and embraced her so firmly that by the time he pulled away and her breasts were left bare to his view, she hadn’t felt as vulnerable and exposed as she had expected.