Dearest, wait another year, until my heart has healed.
—Donna Anna, Act Two, Scene Five, Don Giovanni
The streets glistened with the last of a cold February rain that had fallen during the opera. Massimo Luca had been walking for hours. He had watched the bars and cafés of the University Quarter empty of people, pull their shutters, extinguish their lights. He walked to the piazza where the two towers looked over la rossa, the red city of Bologna, then on, through the long portico with its hundreds of arches, all the way to the hilltop basilica, the Santuario della Madonna di San Luca. The basilica was closed, of course, and he knew better than to go in, even had it been open. He knew what would happen if he tried.
He walked back beneath the arches toward the Piazza di Porta Saragozza and pressed on along the cobbled medieval streets. As he walked, he compared her memories with what he saw now. The Teatro Comunale had changed a great deal since Teresa Saporiti had sung there. Even the auditorium’s original bell shape, oddly appealing and intimate, had been altered to the more common horseshoe configuration. But these ancient streets, the Renaissance fountains, the squares like Piazza Nettuno and Piazza Maggiore, had changed little. And by the time a cold, late dawn began to lighten the eastern sky, Massimo had nearly seen it all.
He should have been exhausted. He had sung a long rôle, after an intense rehearsal period. He had basked in ovation after ovation, a triumph. And then, makeup and costume removed, street clothes resumed, he had begun his long walk. He felt as if he could walk for days. He doubted anything could tire him.
At last, because he didn’t want to be seen abroad in the city as the sun rose, he found his way back to the Hotel Novecento, and his comfortable double room. It had none of the oppressive elegance of Il Principe, but it was simple and inviting, and offered an expansive view of the center of the city.
He ignored the elevator, taking the stairs two at a time to his third-floor room. He had showered at the theater, but he showered again, for the soothing feel of hot water. When he was done, he wrapped a towel around his waist and went to stand in the window and watch the city awake. Delivery vans and early workers passed below him, ordinary people with ordinary and predictable lives.
Short lives.
Massimo suddenly turned his back on them and pulled the drapes to shut out the view. He didn’t want to think about those innocent people. They had no idea how vulnerable they were, how easily harmed.
It had been ridiculously easy, supremely simple. He had driven from Milan to Bologna before the first rehearsal. He had looked forward to the drive, but had felt thirsty and edgy all day. He kept bottled water in the Mercedes, but it didn’t soothe the burning of his throat. He could hardly bear the confinement of the car. He pulled off the autostrada and parked in front of an Autogrill, hoping coffee might help. He bought an espresso and stood at the bar to drink it. It was early, a bright winter morning, and few people were about. The bar was nearly empty, and traffic was light.
He went back out into the parking lot, still feeling restless. His nerves jumped at every sound, every movement. He needed something, indeed he craved it, but he could not yet admit to himself what it was.
There was a man standing in the parking lot, a man with thinning hair and bad teeth. He was yelling at a youth struggling to start the motor of a Vespa. Massimo passed him on his way to the Mercedes. It seemed the youth was the man’s son, guilty of some infraction or other. The longer it took him to start the Vespa, the more abuse he had to absorb. Massimo had his keys in his hand, looking over his shoulder, when the Vespa’s little motor finally sputtered and caught and the youth zipped away, with his father shouting invectives after him.
When the boy was out of sight, the man bent his head, out of the wind. He cupped his hand over the flame of a lighter. When he lifted his head, with the cigarette between his teeth, he wore a satisfied smile, as if he had accomplished something.
Massimo dropped his keys back into his pocket and moved away from the car.
Thinking of it now, in this clean hotel room in Bologna, he could barely remember leaping on the man, pulling him around to the back of the Autogrill, where a few tables rested beneath collapsed umbrellas. Did he stop to see if anyone was watching? Did he look behind him, or ahead of him, or take any kind of care? He wasn’t sure. The scene was a hot blur of movement, of need, of the gratifying taste of blood flooding his mouth.
What he knew for certain was that he hadn’t planned it. He hadn’t selected his victim in any conscious way. He wasn’t punishing a bad father, or winning vengeance for an abused son. He could make no such claim to virtue. He had been thirsty, driven by a new and irresistible instinct. And he had taken what he needed, drunk to satiety, then left the man slumped over one of the picnic tables.
He unlocked the Mercedes, slipped behind the wheel, and drove out into traffic. He didn’t look in the rearview mirror. Once in Bologna, he didn’t check the papers. He didn’t listen to the news to try to find out what had become of a man left unconscious—perhaps dying—behind the Autogrill.
When he reached his hotel, he went straight to his room and stood beneath a hot, stinging shower for a long, long time. He thought of Octavia, and that last night at Il Principe. He understood now. He recognized the unthinking need that had caused her to lose control. His experience had been just like that. It felt as if some animal part of his nature sprang forth in the moment to claim its own territory.
When he turned off the shower and climbed out, he brushed his teeth as thoroughly as he could and stood for some moments looking at them. He suspected they had changed in some way. He couldn’t see a difference, but he couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling of self-consciousness about them. He thought they must surely be longer, sharper than they had been. He would keep his lip down when he sang, he supposed, hiding them.
He felt stronger, that night, than he had ever felt in his life.
Now he dropped his damp towel in the corner of the bathroom and folded his long body beneath the bedcovers. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, and examined his memories.
The man’s memories were thick and unpleasant, tinged by drunkenness and a sort of reflexive cruelty. There was an unhappy wife, several resentful children, an unappreciative boss. Massimo tossed these memories away as unworthy of retention. Octavia had spoken of rooms, cupboards. Massimo’s image was different. He found that he could discard them, as effortlessly as if dropping trash from one of the two towers of Bologna.
But Octavia’s memories—those were precious. He remembered Teresa’s father, and the rudeness of a wealthy couple toward a penniless girl traveling from Limone to Milano. He remembered the kindness of the castrato, Vincenzo dal Prato, and the painful first audition at La Scala. He remembered the tribulations of the first production of Don Giovanni in Prague.
He remembered Mozart. The sparkling eyes, the cheery smile, the sensitive, deft fingers. The way music poured from him, orderly, inventive, diamond-bright, heart-full. Massimo understood, now, the way a phrase could be shaped, a cadence made graceful. Rhythm meant more than meter, more than tempo. Harmonies were like colors on a painter’s palette, nuanced and emotional. Melody was the crown of it all, the jewel that made the creation sparkle.
Just so had Teresa Saporiti transformed from a good singer to a great one. It was not merely a matter of voice, but of understanding. And Massimo had received the same gift, and the same curse. Greatness was at his fingertips.
He didn’t know, yet, if he was willing to accept its cost. He was beginning to feel thirsty again, that burning in his throat, the craving in his belly. He could, he supposed, ignore it. He would not die as Mozart did, the flame of his spirit suffocated by the weight of memory. But surely that thirst that had overwhelmed him at the Autogrill would burn him from within if he denied it. And he could never sing with such a thirst. Never.
Sleep surprised him, lying there on the bed in the Novecento. When he woke the light had changed, the early winter evening closing
in. He had slept the better part of the day.
He rose and pulled on a pair of jeans, a fresh white shirt. He drank a glass of water, and then another, but they did nothing to assuage the dryness in his throat. He went to the window again, and looked down into the street.
Teresa, Hélène, Vivian, Octavia…she had made magnificent music, given great performances. She had bowed before thousands, sung in houses across Europe and America and Australia. He had longed for just such a career since he was an eleven-year-old choirboy. And he wanted it now.
Across the road, a well-dressed couple strolled down the sidewalk. The man wore an unbuttoned sports coat, and the woman was in high heels and fur. They paused outside a restaurant to read the menu posted in the window.
As Massimo watched, a woman in a shapeless raincoat bumped into the man. She made gestures of apology, brushing at his coat, shaking her head of wiry gray hair. The couple were laughing as she backed away from them, still apologizing.
She had picked the man’s pocket. The couple went inside the restaurant, and the pickpocket disappeared down an alley, her raincoat billowing around her.
Massimo turned from the window to seize his leather jacket from the chair where he had flung it. He hurried out of the room and down the stairs. He was not sure if he had made the decision or his body had, but it came to the same thing, in the end.
Last night, in the Teatro Comunale, he had sung the best performance of his life. He wanted to do it again.
More than anything in the world, he wanted to do it again.
42
Questo è il fin di chi fa mal!
E de’ perfidi la morte alla vita è sempre ugual.
This is the ending for those who are evil.
And evildoers always die the death they deserve.
—Tutti, Finale, Don Giovanni
Nick sang “Metà di voi qua vadano,” from Giovanni, and “Se vuol ballare” from Figaro. He sang “Ombra mai fù,” of Handel, because Mozart had known it well. He sang Papageno, and Mozart’s concert aria “Io ti lascio.” His fingers struggled with the notes on the piano, but he knew he had never sung better. The music had depths of meaning he had never guessed at, could never have understood before. His voice felt strong and full, and he played with dynamics in ways that would never have occurred to him. The high ceiling, the dim recesses of the vast parlor echoed with his sound, lavish and beautiful.
When he lifted his hands from the keyboard, he knew that he had just given the greatest performance of his life. But there was no applause, no flowers, no spotlight.
His only ovation was more of their bloody hissing, like hooded snakes wavering around him. These ghastly creatures seemed barely to cling to life, and then only so that he—their prisoner, their victim—could sing to them.
Every night. Endlessly.
He wished with all his soul—if he still had one—that he had never heard of La Società, or the elders. He longed to roll back time and return Zdenka Milosch’s diary without ever opening it. He wished he had never heard that bitch Octavia Voss sing, with her pure tone and her dazzling musicianship. And he wished, above all, that he had never come to this grim mansion, where ancient creatures haunted the hallways and mute servants sprang to fulfill their slightest wish.
Those last days in Milan had been a nightmare in their own way, until he learned, as she had done, to dam the flood of memories, to pluck what he wanted from the stream and ignore the rest. He had only just achieved it, found some rest from the cacophony of voices in his head, when Ugo had shown up again, slim, dapper, and cruel.
For muscle Ugo had brought Tomas, brutish, mindless, silent. Nick had no choice but to go where he was told. And it seemed, now, that he would never leave.
If he so much as wanted to step outside this near mausoleum, he found Tomas in his path. When he slept, his door was locked from outside. When he ate, Kirska, with a wickedly sharp kitchen knife in her hand, watched him with eyes full of hate for what he had done.
And every night, these elders, these ancients, demanded the same thing. They gathered in the parlor, and they hissed at him, “Ssssing, sssing,” and “Mozarrrrrt,” until he thought he would go mad.
He sang until he was hoarse and played until his fingers ached. They were insatiable. If he tried to rise from the piano bench before they were ready to let him go, Tomas loomed above him, and the memory of his stabbing glittered in his eyes. If he tried to refuse, for even one night, Kirska brandished her kitchen knife and curled her lip to show her long, sharp canines.
Their patience was endless, and their cruelty absolute. He could not leave. It was a living death, here in this great dark place where no light of day penetrated, where no one could find him.
Nick Barrett-Jones had won what he wanted. He possessed Mozart’s blood. And he wished he could give it back.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The names of the first cast of Don Giovanni are the real ones. I’ve taken some liberties with the details of Teresa Saporiti’s life, but some fascinating facts accrue to this first Donna Anna: She lived to be 106, and she made her debut at La Scala at a very young age. Historical sources disagree about her exact position in the Bondini company. It’s true that the people of Limone sul Garda have a genetic disposition to very long lives. I can’t prove that Teresa Saporiti was born there, but it is a useful coincidence.
Vincenzo dal Prato was indeed a castrato who created the rôle of Idamante in Mozart’s Idomeneo. Mozart didn’t care much for his work, but he had great success in Munich. The only extant recording of a castrato singing is that of Alessandro Moreschi. He was already old when the recording was made, but it gives us a hint of how a musico might have sounded.
Caruso did, of course, sing Carmen in San Francisco the night before the great earthquake. The Micaëla, however, was a soprano named Bessie Abbott, from the Metropolitan Opera Company; for a number of reasons, it suited the story better to employ the fictional singer Hélène Singher in that rôle. The great Olive Fremstad sang Carmen, to rave reviews, and she was probably not so unpleasant as she has been painted in these pages. I hope she will forgive me, as one mezzo-soprano to another, for using her as a source of conflict.
The details of Mozart’s death have been mostly lost, but from a letter from Constanze Mozart’s sister, Sophie Haibl, we know that no priest attended Mozart on his deathbed.
The history of intravenous injections stretches back to 1642, and they were used by Christopher Wren and the physicist Robert Boyle, prompted by new information about the circulation of the blood. In 1853, the French surgeon C. Pravaz invented a small syringe, the piston of which could be driven by a screw. It was calibrated to measure an exact dosage, and a sharp needle with a pointed trocar was used to pierce the vein.
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