Marrying Mozart

by Stephanie Cowell

It was a long time before he spoke. “And did Josefa always keep the locket, madame?”

  “But for that brief period when she lent it to Aloysia, she wore it all her life, and, as I promised, I kept her secrets as long as she lived.”

  “And she never had any lovers at all?”

  “She did marry eventually; you know that. She married the bass Hofer, whom she had met in Prague. He moved to Vienna with her, where they both sang. They had a music shop for a time, a very nice one, and they were very close to Mozart. She and Mama made up, but they never did like each other very much. Did Hofer know about what was in the locket? I don’t know. She did love her husband with all her heart.”

  “And you married as well. Your name is Haibel.”

  Using my cane, I rose slowly. “I did marry, though the others thought I wouldn’t. I didn’t marry Johann Haibel until I was in my middle forties. Before then I stayed home, trying to keep Mama from madness and manipulation; I succeeded at the first but not the second. That was beyond me.”

  I began to make my way across the room past my table and to the trunk near the bed. “I know your visit to Austria is coming to a close soon, my English friend, and I must say, I will miss you. I will miss telling you my stories, but to tell the truth, you did not need to come such a very long way to know the Weber sisters.”

  My back ached unmercifully, and I put my hand on the small of it before bending over the trunk. I pulled away the shawl, which covered it, then had to use both hands to open the top. The smells of dust and old paper and wood rose to my nose.

  Monsieur Novello joined me beside the trunk, holding up a lamp. “What is all this music?” he asked, looking down at the contents of the trunk, and then his voice grew softer. “I know. They’re his operas; they’re his operas in his own hand, the original scores. I know his handwriting from some of his other works, but I had no idea where the opera scores were. Forgive me, but I’m overcome. I can’t help it.”

  He dropped to his knees and began to take out the heavy bundles, laying one after another on his knees. “All here,” he murmured. “Le Nozze di Figaro, Idomeneo ... and here, Abduction. Here’s the second aria for little Blondchen! And Zaide, which sadly he never finished.”

  My English biographer sat with the scores all around him and wiped his eyes, turning his face so that no tears would fall to the pages. I lowered myself to a chair, and he reached out and grasped my hand hard. I felt his gold ring on my palm and the cuff of his English shirt as it brushed my wrist.

  He murmured, “Here are all the operas....”

  “Here are all of them, monsieur. Constanze had them, and then they came to me.”

  He loosed my hand but held his in the air so that I would understand he couldn’t speak for emotion; in that moment I was so glad he had traveled from England to find me. For some time there was no sound but that of his uneven breathing and the creaking of a carriage passing in the street. Then he wiped his face once more and began to turn the pages.

  I said, “Monsieur Novello, when you first came to speak with me, you told me how real you found the women in Mozart’s operas, and asked if I and my sisters were any influence on their creation. With all modesty, I think I may reply that we were a fair influence indeed. Indeed we were, monsieur.”

  This congenial biographer moved the lamp closer, and continued to turn the pages of the scores with their many lines for instrumentation. “Yes, we’re all there,” I said. “All of us, you see—Aloysia, Constanze, Josefa, and me—all our moods, our sensuality, our youth. Whatever score you take up—Giovanni, Così Fan Tutte—you’ll find something of us. We’re the playful girls, the lonely countesses, the abandoned women. I see myself in the chambermaid disguised as a notary, though alas! I never did sing, never could sing at all.”

  I shook my head. “I wish I had. Constanze sang some of his roles in concert later in her life; her voice was good, but she lacked the boldness needed. Josefa, as I told you, was the fiery, brilliant Queen of the Night. When I saw her, she seemed to glitter from within. It brought back to me how she appeared in our sleeping chamber when she was not yet ten years old, waving her stick over us, releasing us from all sadness and harm.”

  He managed a half smile. “And did she?”

  “Yes, often as children, and then many times through our later years.”

  I leaned over as best I could, and he held up the score. “This little aria from Figaro when the young Susanna sings in the garden for her husband to come to her quickly on this their wedding night... ‘Come, my beloved, come without delay.’ There’s no music more simple and sweet, or that Mozart felt more deeply. ”

  Monsieur Novello let his fingers touch the scoring for strings that accompany that aria, and after a time he raised his face to me. “Will you tell me then of the marriage, his marriage,” he asked quietly, “and how it truly happened at last?”

  “Yes, how it truly happened,” I said. “It almost didn’t happen, you know. Or perhaps you didn’t know that after all.”

  PART SIX

  The abduction form the Boardinghouse

  Aloysia Weber Lange stood, late in the morning, before the hand-lettered poster that hung outside the Burgtheater. The words announced Mozart’s new opera. Instrumentalists were hurrying inside, carrying their violin or cello cases, greeting one another, talking about their upcoming engagements. “No, there’s not a ticket left for this performance,” one of them was saying. “My wife was hoping to come. She’ll have to hear the work tomorrow night.”

  A group of workmen were carrying out a red carpet, which would be rolled from the carriage to the door so that Emperor Joseph and the Russian Grand Duke might not dirty their feet. Two servants hurried by discussing the supper that would follow the five o’clock performance.

  Aloysia followed them into the theater.

  It was now lit only by a few high windows, with a standing set for a Turkish harem on the stage. “Where is Mozart?” she asked one man.

  “Where is he? Likely in the musician’s gathering room. He’s still correcting orchestral parts.”

  Aloysia walked back through the door, turning past the rolled canvas backdrops. There was all around the bustle that signaled something extraordinary was going to take place within several hours. From behind a closed door came the high scales of a soprano. She knew a few people recognized her face, even under her enormous straw hat with its great dipping feathers. She wore a white muslin dress with a slashed silk band tied about her waist. “It is Madame Lange,” she heard someone whisper. “It’s the soprano from the other opera house.”

  “Your sisters have a ticket for you for the opera premiere tonight,” Lange had told her over his shoulder after she woke; he was, as usual, engrossed in his painting. “It was the last one; I’ll go tomorrow. It seems half the city’s talking about your old friend Mozart!” But she hadn’t replied; she’d been so intent on studying herself in the mirror.

  Something had happened the day before that had disturbed her. A soprano who had been well known some years before had applied to sing again at the opera and been turned away by the directors. “She was once beautiful,” they said, with a smile in their voices. “But she’s now past forty, too old for what’s wanted.” Aloysia’s hands had fumbled when she overheard their words, sitting in her dressing room meticulously removing the feathers and false jewels she had worn in her hair during the performance. It had not just disturbed her; it had terrified her. She thought, One day I will also be old, and people will talk through my arias, if they come to hear me at all. And is this all there is to life? Lange won me, and now he says, Yes, my dear; no, my dear. He sighs when I disturb him, looking at me with little wrinkles near his eyes. Have some soup, he says, and returns placidly to his painting.

  There were only the sounds of a pen scratching rapidly and paper shifting as she opened the door of the gathering room. Mozart was bending over a long table marking changes in instrumental parts, an older man beside him. The man nudged Mozart, and the young comp
oser looked up impatiently, frowning at the interruption.

  She said, “I wanted to wish you well, Mozart.”

  “You’re very kind to come to say it!”

  “I’ve seldom seen such a fuss. Everyone hopes for a great success.”

  “The production’s expensive. I’ve done my best, and it will do as it will. I sent over a number of tickets to your mother’s house, but I suppose you’ll be singing at the other theater.”

  “We don’t sing tonight; I’ll come.”

  He came closer, a look of concern on his face. “Is everything well with your family? Is Constanze well?”

  “She’s well enough,” Aloysia said, lowering her voice. “But you don’t ask of me anymore. You’ve never come to hear me sing. Don’t you care if I’m happy or well? I was the center of your life, or so you told me, and now I’m a stranger because you court my sister. I wonder how she can bear to let you court her. But that’s not important; only this evening can have any importance.” Her words poured forth in an angry whisper, though she never lost her pure silver tone in speaking. “I was fortunate to fall out of love with you, knowing how inconstant you are. I feel sorry for Constanze; she’ll find out.”

  He took her arm, opened the door to a costume room, pulled her inside, and closed the door behind them, not noticing that the doorknob had caught on the bow of her sash and pulled it. “What’s the matter with you?” he said impatiently, his voice also low. “Why do you ask me if I’ve forgotten you? It took me years to do so, and I have at last. No one will ever know what pain you caused me. You can see I’m very busy today. You could have come another time, Aloysia.”

  “Well then,” she said, “will you become simply another dull married man? Will you be just like Lange then, faithful, stupid, asking your wife about the soup?” She bit her rouged lip hard. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s not what I wanted to say. I didn’t come here to argue with you or berate you, but to make a proposition. It’s this, dear Wolfgang! Yesterday I recalled again the tour you wanted to make with me. Now is truly a good time to go forth with it. Why not? Your reputation’s greater, mine’s very good. I’m wanting to leave this city; I’m tired of everything here. We have much in common, our very natures. There’s a restlessness in you, too.”

  At that moment he heard his name called; anger passed his face, and he stood against the door, blocking it almost as if to prevent her leaving.

  She said, “How can you be so cold to me?”

  “I’m sorry for your misery. I don’t just say that,” he said, seeing her expression. “I didn’t expect you today; I was working. But you know I did expect you for a long time. Every time I lay sleepless in bed I’d hear your footsteps coming up the steps to me. Every soprano who sang was you. Then I would have to say, ‘It’s not her.’ I thought even after you were with child that you’d come to me, and I knew if you did I would have taken you back. I loved you that much.”

  “Do you ever think of me now?”

  Again came a voice calling his name, and he replied sharply; then he turned to Aloysia, his face stiff, muttering, “I think of you, Aloysia.”

  “What do you think?” She reached out gently, laying her hand on his chest.

  He flinched. “I think of how recklessly I loved you and how much pain it caused me, and I think never to experience such pain again. Life hurts so much in so many ways, I wonder how I can go forward with it.”

  He looked over her head at the racks of costumes. “Then I begin to think more plainly, and I wondered what there is to all this, what remedy? What recourse? And I concluded somewhere in my grief that the only recourse is to love simply, faithfully. To go home at night to someone who loves me alone and to think what I can do for her comfort and happiness. I can have that; I will have that. Perhaps I’ll have children one day and love them the same. I was unable to give you anything that you wanted, Aloysia, except my songs. But I can assure you of this: I’ve stopped waiting for you at last.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “Because I want to be as happy as I can be; I want to love and be loved in return.”

  “Do you hate me?”

  “I did for a time, but no more. I want your happiness.”

  “You want what I can’t have.”

  “Why, my dear?”

  “I don’t know. What have I done? Is what we had over truly? I thought, If I wanted to enough, I could go back. And today I said, ‘I want to go back; I want to begin again, and he’ll be waiting for me.’ Time’s such an odd thing, an unreasonable thing. How can you say, ‘Be happy, Aloysia!’ when you withhold happiness from me? Tell me this one thing, let me smile today: Will you meet with me when you are married?”

  “I’ll try to be your friend. More I can’t do, won’tdo. I saw your husband last week, and he said he’d like to paint me. Aloysia, do you know what you seek? You couldn’t have found it with me.” He reached for the door. “Look, I must go now.” Pushing open the door to the gathering room, he was greeted with the smell of paint and wood, and the perfume of dozens of long white chandelier candles. Then he returned to his orchestral parts.

  It was Johann Schantz, coming to replace a string in the theater fortepiano, who glimpsed Aloysia running from the theater in tears, her silk sash in her hand; she stopped and looked at him haughtily. He mentioned the scene to Thorwart, who told it to his wife; she, in turn, walked over to the boardinghouse near Peterskirche and reported that Aloysia Lange had been to see Mozart privately, that they had been closeted together for some time, and that no banging on the door could bring them out. Constanze came up from the kitchen as Maria Caecilia and Madame Thorwart were speaking. She, too, had been to the thehe had gone away to speak privately with the beautiful singer and would not come out when they called.

  To Constanze the coming of autumn was the most beautiful time of the year, with the stone buildings glowing in the late afternoon sun and the green trees drooping toward the washed cobbles. Sometimes when you turned a street corner you felt the faintest tinge of cooler weather, or saw a single tree whose leaf edges were drying. Everything was rich, heavy, and warm. The lemonade stands were crowded. Yet, she thought as she walked between Josefa and Sophie toward the theater for the performance, all my life from now on there will also be a terrible sadness for me in this time.

  She understood that even with all the tenderness between her and the young composer, in his mind she had been and always would be a mere substitute for Aloysia. She had spent much of the last hours grieving alone in the sewing room and had decided that she would bid him good-bye with as much dignity as possible. She would hear the opera with whose composing she would always feel deeply connected, and she would send him word tomorrow. She would not make any kind of scene. She respected him for his hard work; she loved him for it. She was her father’s daughter.

  Dozens of horses and carriages were gathered before the theater, though the royal parties had not yet arrived. Constanze walked up the steps with her two sisters, and they found their places on the gilt and red-velvet-covered chairs to the left of the stage. The house was half full already with perfumed men and women, their hair powdered and jewels glistening, who came to see the first performance of the new work in the presence of the Russian Grand Duke and the Emperor himself. They could hear musicians tuning.

  Constanze closed her eyes.

  With the rustling of fabric and the scraping of chairs, the entire audience stood and bowed deeply toward the imperial box. The Emperor and his guests seated themselves and turned to the stage. Mozart entered in his white wig to take his place at the fortepiano. Constanze leaned forward. He’s tired, she thought, but in a moment anger consumed her sympathy. The overture began, and the singers came onstage.

  She had heard a great deal of Die Entführung aus dem Serail before, but only in pieces: arias, duets, choruses accompanied passionately on the fortepiano, the sound flowing down the steps from his rooms and pouring from his open window, accompanied by his light tenor. Now
the full glory of orchestra with horns and timpani and rich singers swept over her. She clutched her fan and leaned forward still more.

  The heroine and her maid had fallen to pirates and been sold to the Pasha, and their faithful lovers, a nobleman and his amusing servant, came to rescue them. Not far into the opera, the tenor began his poignant aria, whose lyrics poured through the theater with their aching repetition of the heroine’s name: Constanze, Constanze. She could feel her sisters turn to her, and Sophie took her hand. In front of all the people in the theater, he was calling to her, and it was as if there were no one in the theater but the two of them as he declared his love.

  “Constanze, dich wiederzusehen, dich!”

  (Constanze, when will I see you again?)

  She put her head down; had she not been seated in the middle of a row, she would have run out, weeping. “Immer noch traurig, geliebte Constanze?”(Are you still sad, dear Constanze?) spoke the bass voice of the Pasha. She could feel Sophie squeeze her hand hard. Each aria, duet, or chorus passed in sequence, until the great quartet when the two pairs of lovers have been reunited.

  “Wohl, es sei nun abgetan, es lebe die Liebe!”

  (Now let all our doubts be gone; our love will be lasting!)

  The lovers are caught, and forgiven by the benevolent Pasha, then sent on their way to the joyful singing of soloists and chorus over the bright orchestra. Then it was over, and the audience broke into cheers and applause. Through her tears, Constanze saw the neat little figure with the white silky wig bowing to the audience.