Scarpia

by Piers Paul Read

  Such power, such wealth and such honour should have a concrete manifestation and in 1772 Prince Alberigo had commissioned Giuseppe Piermarini, the architect of the palace of Caserta in the Kingdom of Naples, to design a dwelling suitable to his status – the Palazzo Belgioioso – which, now completed, was the largest and finest in Milan. Here he entertained not just diplomats and statesmen but writers and artists from the middle class. He was proud of his appointment as the first Prefect of the Academy of Fine Arts in Brescia, and was himself a collector of rare books and works of art. And of course he loved music. He rarely missed an operatic performance at La Scala. The prince was a connoisseur of beauty in all its forms.

  Cardinal Albioni, a patron of Bishop Sarlo, had let it be known that his friend Prince Alberigo would be passing through Golla and would be glad if he could stay for a night or two with his entourage in the bishop’s palace. The suggestion was accepted with professions of gratitude: it was considered a privilege to receive a man of Prince Alberigo’s standing. The bishop had reached a stage in his life when he had no expectations of further preferment, but an innate respect for power, whether secular or ecclesiastical, led him to fuss about the rooms the prince would occupy and personally order a new coat of distemper on the walls of the quarters for his grooms.

  The bishop fretted because, beginning at the back of his mind but increasingly coming to the front, was the puzzling question as to why Prince Alberigo should have chosen to make a deviation to spend two nights in Golla on his way to Venice. He must surely have known that there was a straighter route, and he must also have had the pick of a number of castles and villas where he might have stayed along the way. Could it be that he had heard about Floria Tosca? Could it be that the devious Granacci had tipped him off? Did Tochetti realise that, if the prince should ask to meet her, it would be impossible to refuse?

  Perhaps the prince could be thwarted. Bishop Sarlo suggested obliquely to his coadjutor Tochetti that the sung Mass during the prince’s visit should be one without a role for a soprano, or that ‘the voice of your young protégée’ should be given a rest. But the blinkered Tochetti ignored the warnings. He could not understand why his bishop should want to hide from his distinguished visitor the glory of the cathedral choir – particularly when the prince would be there on 15 August, the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. Could it be that he was envious of his coadjutor? Was he afraid that Tochetti’s achievements would somehow detract from his own?

  *

  Prince Alberigo Belogioiosa d’Este arrived in Golla in a cavalcade of coaches and outriders with his secretary, chaplain, major-domo, valet, a cook, two footmen, two chambermaids, four coachmen and two grooms. Also with him was his twenty-year-old daughter, Carlotta. It was hot. The prince and his daughter were tired and dusty. After being met by Bishop Sarlo and served iced drinks, they were shown to their quarters. While they rested, their servants unpacked trunks and then themselves settled into the newly distempered rooms. The prince’s secretary discussed with the bishop’s secretary the programme for the prince’s visit; the major-domo conveyed to the bishop’s servants the prince’s habits and expectations; and the prince’s cook went down to the kitchens to run through the menus for the meals that would be served to the prince and his daughter during their stay.

  Twenty-four sat down to dinner at the bishop’s palace that night – eight of the higher clergy of the diocese, among them Monsignor Tochetti, and a dozen from the nobility in his diocese. The wives wore the sumptuous dresses that their dressmakers had prepared; the husbands were bedecked with medals and orders. All were taken aback to see that the prince himself was dressed simply – no sign of his Order of the Golden Fleece – and his daughter, too, wore only a modest gown. The contessa on the one side of the prince, and the marchesa on the other, talked about the writers and artists he was said to admire. The prince, still vigorous and handsome, listened politely as these provincials showed off their familiarity with the Horatian odes of Giuseppe Parini.

  The next morning, these same dignitaries and many lesser citizens crammed into the cathedral of Golla to hear Mass on the feast of the Assumption. A special plush prie-dieu had been placed before an elegant upholstered chair for the prince, and a similar if smaller piece of ecclesiastical furniture for Princess Carlotta. Recovered after a good night’s sleep, the heat not yet sufficient to exhaust and enervate, and well-rehearsed in the role that grandees were expected to play, the prince and princess entered the cathedral through the doorway that led from the bishop’s palace, knelt humbly before the statue of the Virgin Mary in the Lady Chapel, musing on the miraculous nature of her bodily assumption into Heaven, then proceeded with their retinue to their small thrones at the front of the congregation. Organ music mixed with the sounds of whispering and shuffling in the packed church. The prince and his daughter first spent some minutes on their knees on the prie-dieux, then took their seats. Behind them, necks, mostly those of women, craned to see what the prince and more particularly the princess were wearing. The objects of their curiosity did not move, their profiles as motionless as the effigy on the coins minted by the prince’s father.

  A blast from the organ, and triumphal music from the full orchestra, announced the advent of the column of servers, acolytes, deacons, priests, canons, the coadjutor bishop Tochetti and finally the Bishop of Golla, Giuseppe Sarlo, all wearing richly embroidered vestments – the gold braid glinting in the light of the candles, or flashing more brightly when caught in a shaft of multicoloured sunlight from the stained-glass windows to the church. All took their places around the altar and the Mass started. Introibo ad altare Dei, chanted the priest. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam, the acolytes responded. Then came the Confiteor, the confessions of sins, and, at the words mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, the prince and princess, together with the rest of the congregation, struck their breasts with clenched fists, for no one is without sin.

  Then came the Kyrie – an unfamiliar Kyrie that the citizens of Golla had never heard before. It exploded with the full choir and full orchestra, and then the voice of a solo soprano soared above all the rest. The bishop glanced at Tochetti; Tochetti did not meet his eye, but could not hide an expression of agonised excitement. It had been at his insistence that Faglia had brought forward a work he had been rehearsing for some months – the Great Mass in C minor by the Austrian composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Both men knew that the music was sublime. Fortuitously, six years before, Faglia had been in Salzburg when the work had been first performed with the composer’s wife, Constanze, singing the soprano part. He had later been able to obtain copies of the sheet music. The Mass was incomplete. The Credo ended with the exquisite soprano rendering of Et incarnatus est and there were gaps in the Sanctus that Faglia had to fill with his own extemporisation.

  The part of the first soprano was, however, the perfect vehicle for the voice of Floria Tosca, first in the Kyrie, then in the Gloria singing Quoniam tu solus Sanctus in tandem with the second soprano and finally the solo singing of Et incarnatus est – a passage so beautiful, so transcendent, so sublime that, when sung by Tosca in rehearsal, Faglia had had to turn away to hide his tears. And the effect now on the congregation was equally powerful: curiosity, impatience, distracting thoughts were all doused by the beauty of the sound, and it was not even noticed that, during the singing of Et incarnatus est, Princess Carlotta glanced sideways at her father and saw that, as with Faglia, tears had come into his eyes.

  Mozart had written no Agnus Dei and so Faglia had composed one in the same style of his own. The contrast was marked, but added to the appreciation of what had gone before. It enabled the prince to leave the church with dry eyes, and afterwards it happened as Bishop Sarlo had feared. The prince asked to meet the young soprano who had so enchanted the whole congregation; he asked in a tone that was at once nonchalant and imperious. The prince had never known a request of his to be refused. Tochetti overheard it: he opened his mouth, but a gestu
re from Bishop Sarlo closed it before a word had emerged. ‘Of course, Your Excellency.’

  ‘And perhaps she could sing for us?’ asked the prince – still nonchalant, still imperious. ‘Something by Galuppi, perhaps, or Paisiello. Or does she only know church music?’

  ‘I shall ask the choirmaster,’ said Bishop Sarlo. ‘I am sure that some small recital could be arranged. This evening, perhaps, after the girl has rested, and when it is a little cooler.’

  *

  Evening came. The bells tolled for the angelus at six, and shortly afterwards the bishop and his curia assembled once again with the city’s notables, and the bishop’s guests, the Prince and Princess Belgioioso d’Este. The conversation was desultory. All waited for the promised entertainment and, when there appeared at the door to the long gallery a girl accompanied by the choirmaster, Faglia, and followed by a nun, they fell silent and stepped aside. The girl, Floria Tosca, walked forward with no sign of shyness. She wore the embroidered dress of a peasant – the same that she had worn at San Lorenzo – clean, colourful, but ill-fitting – a little too short and a little too tight. She walked up to the bishop, curtsied and, leaning forward, kissed his ring. She then turned to Monsignor Tochetti, smiled at her patron and protector, but, as she was about to kiss his ring, saw from his look and the nod of his head that her next obeisance should not be to him but to the resplendently dressed older man standing next to the bishop. She looked up at the prince, then lowered her eyes and curtsied. The prince looked at her kindly – his glance lingering on her constrained bust.

  ‘Your Excellency, may I present Signorina . . .’ The bishop hesitated, struggling to remember the girl’s family name. ‘Signorina Tosca,’ he said.

  The prince leaned forward and with the gesture of a friendly uncle took hold of her hand. ‘Your singing enchanted us, signorina.’

  Tosca gave another curtsy to acknowledge the compliment.

  ‘And I have asked His Grace,’ the prince went on, ‘if you might possibly sing something for us here.’

  ‘As Your Excellency pleases,’ said Tosca – her strong Veneto accent leading the Princess Carlotta to smile.

  ‘The signorina’s repertoire is limited,’ said Faglia, ‘but purely for the purposes of training her voice –’ he glanced anxiously at Tochetti – ‘we have learned one or two arias from the operas of Scarlatti and Paisiello.’ Faglia snapped his fingers. From nowhere, there appeared a lank young man with a lute. ‘With your permission, Your Grace . . .’ The bishop nodded his assent. Faglia gestured to the lute player to sit down on a chair. Tosca moved to stand beside him. All had clearly been rehearsed. The lute player strummed a few opening bars, then, taking his cue from Tosca’s intake of breath, began his accompaniment of her song.

  First she sang an aria from Scarlatti’s Il Pompeo, then ‘Quella Fiamma che m’accende’ by Benedetto Marcello; and finally ‘Vittoria, mio core’ by Giacomo Carissimi. Her voice was both rich and pure; the sounds flew like canaries released from a cage; and, to the dismay of Tochetti, she acted the roles she was playing, the anguish and triumph of the lover alight in her eyes, her body bending and then rising as if the words and sounds were the gusts of a breeze. Her eyes, when they were not raised in supplication to Heaven, or not mistily dreaming of an absent lover, were directed at those who had asked for this command performance, Prince Alberigo Belgioioso d’Este and his daughter, the Princess Carlotta; and if they wandered on to others among the select audience, they avoided those of the coadjutor bishop who watched her acting with a frigid dismay.

  The prince raised his hand. Enough. The performance was over, but Tosca was not dismissed. Quite to the contrary. After a gesture from her father, the Princess Carlotta came forward and took her by the hand as if she were a long-lost sister and, with the familiarity that only a true aristocrat can muster, told Tosca that everything about her was delightful and asked what plans she had to develop her talent and share her God-given gift with the world.

  Tosca pursed her lips and blushed. She was not confused, but she could not give the answer she would have liked. The Princess Carlotta, as if reading the girl’s mind, turned to Faglia. ‘But surely, signor, you are not going to confine the signorina to a church?’

  Faglia leaned forward, a modest bow. ‘It is not for me to decide on the future of Signorina Tosca.’

  Carlotta turned to the bishop. ‘Then you must tell us, Your Grace, what you have in mind for this most exquisite voice.’

  Bishop Sarlo frowned. ‘What I have in mind? Well, no more than it should continue to sing in our choir for the greater glory of God.’

  ‘But surely, Your Grace, such a light cannot be hidden under a bushel.’

  ‘We do not think of our cathedral as a bushel,’ said the bishop drily.

  ‘That is not what I wish to suggest,’ said the princess, with a blush and a glance at her father.

  ‘What my daughter wishes to suggest, I think,’ said the prince, ‘is that clearly Almighty God has endowed the signorina with gifts that might flourish in a theatre rather than a church.’

  Now the coadjutor bishop, Tochetti, stepped forward and, after a nod from his superior indicating permission to speak, turned to the prince. ‘Your Excellency should understand,’ he said, ‘that promises were made to the signorina’s parents that she should reside in a convent and sing only in a church. These are promises that we are not at liberty to break.’

  ‘But perhaps,’ said the prince, in an easy-going manner, ‘the mother and father are not aware of what their daughter might achieve?’ He turned now to Tosca, who had been listening intently to what had been said. ‘And you, signorina? Would you not like to sing those beautiful arias on a stage?’

  Tosca appeared to hesitate before making a reply, but it was not really a hesitation. It was rather that she could not find the words to express what she felt. Never before had this fifteen-year-old daughter of peasants from the Veneto been in such glittering and august company. The seed pearls that lined the bodice of Princess Carlotta’s dress would in themselves have been enough to astonish her; serving merely as a border for one part of a dress of rich silk, and framing an amethyst necklace with matching silver-and-amethyst ear-rings, it seemed as if this girl, only a year or two older than she was, had been dipped in a tub of treasure. Moreover the princess was beautiful and gracious and treated her with a soft kindness that she had not known either from her rough parents or the austere nuns. Added to this, there was the intoxicating effect of praise and applause. Tosca knew she had a fine voice; she had been complimented from an early age. But never before had she seen the effect of her movements and expressions upon an audience. True, Faglia who had taught her the arias had, on occasions, acted out of character – dropping for a moment his tutorial manner, letting slip his usual expression that was dry, even severe. But here, in the prince and princess, there had been no reluctance to surrender to the beauty of what they heard and saw. She had not hitherto been confident that the plaintive sighs and ardent looks that were demanded by the arias about love would be convincing – she who had never known love; but from the expression on the faces of her audience, she saw that they were; and she saw too how the prince’s glance flitted intermittently between her face and her bust.

  Tosca was devout. She prayed every night and every morning to the Virgin Mary whom she found more approachable than God. She knew that Mary was ever-virgin, and that the nuns who had taken her in hand had vowed to emulate her chastity. But Tosca also knew that she was not called to the religious life. She took a delight in her effect on men, even on a man who was old enough to be her grandfather, like Prince Alberigo Belgioioso d’Este. While a Sister Monica might shroud her pale body in the robes of a nun, Tosca was happy that her pretty face and fresh body should be seen and admired. Concurrent with her piety was a peasant shrewdness that told her that everything had a value and so everything had a price. A pretty girl could hope for a better husband than a girl who was plain, unless the gifts of nature were unbalanced
by the size of a dowry. It was not just the eyes of the prince that had lingered on Tosca’s bosom; others too had seemed more attracted to the swelling flesh of the peasant than to the paltry bust of Princess Carlotta, despite its frame of gold thread and seed pearls.

  Thus the question put by the prince: ‘And you, signorina? Would you not like to sing those beautiful arias on a stage?’ had an obvious answer. Yes, Tosca would like to sing on a stage. However, she sensed that she should act with caution. The prince was a Milanese. She did not know the extent of his powers. She was not concerned that her parents would raise objections; everything had a value, everything had a price. But was she not now the ward of Monsignor Tochetti, whom, she knew, would want to keep Tosca for his choir? She, therefore, after the long pause that was not a hesitation, said to the prince: ‘Most certainly, if it was thought right by my lord bishop.’

  ‘And what of his vow to your parents?’

  ‘My parents?’ She looked up at the prince and with a smile conveyed what he, who also understood the mentality of peasants, already knew: that everything had a value, everything had a price.

  ‘Precisely,’ said the prince. ‘They would want what was best for their daughter.’

  ‘She is to be protected from the world,’ said Monsignor Tochetti. ‘That was our assurance.’