My plan unfolds.
And he charges them with his chivalric code, in which noble blood must be partnered by noble deeds. Let them henceforth be bons, sages et cortois, preux et vaillans. And as an act of good faith, he pledges himself to the service of the Christ of Chivalry, and in only slightly less degree to the service of his Queen, as the Vessel of his Honour, the scabbard of Caliburn. The scene ends when the Knights bind themselves in the same terms to their Ladies.
This was received with warm approval by the audience, and Darcourt began to feel somewhat more at ease. But—what is this? Darcourt knew, but the audience did not, and Darcourt could not have foreseen their astonishment when, with no interfering curtain, and the barest minimum of mechanical sound, the scene changed visibly from Arthur’s Court to a nearby chapel, where Morgan Le Fay and her son Modred were plotting the theft of the scabbard of Caliburn. What happened, if you knew, was that the twelve wings that flanked the court scene were drawn silently back out of sight, and wings suited to the ruin were left in view; at the same moment a drop scene was lowered at the back of the stage, and the great hall seemed to have melted imperceptibly into its successor.
“Those nineteenth-century people knew a trick or two,” whispered Hollier.
Indeed they did, thought Darcourt, but he said nothing, for the scenery-applauders were hard at it, and Yerko’s Claque were quietly reducing them to silence. Morgan Le Fay and her son plotted. Good stuff, thought Darcourt, as Modred—Gaetano Panisi, a splendid bass, though a stumpy figure—gave velvety utterance to his scorn for Arthur and the chivalric ideal:
…Let him lean
Against his life, that glassy interval
‘Twixt us and nothing: and upon the ground
Of his own slippery breath, draw hueless dreams,
And gaze on frost-work hopes.
Back to the hall in the Court—another swift transformation. Back to Arthur, charging his Knights to undertake the Holy Quest for the Grail, which shall be the heart and splendour of his new chivalry. He lifts the great sword to ask a blessing on it, and while he does so Morgan Le Fay steals the scabbard. Splendid scene of mounting vigour culminating in a great Chorale of the Grail, almost Wagnerian in conception.
“Going well,” said Hollier, as he and Darcourt made their way up the aisle. But when Darcourt went into the little room behind the manager’s office he found Geraint, drinking whisky in huge swigs, and furious.
“What in the name of God do those morlocks think they’re up to?” he said. “Applauding the scenery!”
“Its very fine scenery,” said Darcourt. “Most of them have never seen such scenery. It was outlawed sixty years ago when there was all that blethers about letting the audience use its imagination. A fat lot of good that was!”
“I think it’s the acting they like,” said Hollier. “Do you remember what Byron said? ‘I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.’ You must remember, Powell; you’re a great Byron enthusiast. That little chap Panisi is marvellous. And Hoizknecht, too, of course, but one always admires villains more than heroes.”
It was plain that Hollier had something on his mind, and after he had accepted a drink he overcame his diffidence. “Geraint, about curtain calls—I suppose it will be expected that those of us who have provided the libretto for the opera should make some appearance? Not that I am anxious to do so. I really hate all this sort of public nonsense. But if it’s expected—?”
“Just go around through the pass-door when the final curtain comes down,” said Geraint. “Gwen will show you what to do, and you’ll have lots of time, because there will be plenty of applause—that’s guaranteed. When Gwen shoves you on, you’ll be blinded by the lights, so don’t fall into the orchestra. Try not to look any more of a mutt than literary people usually do on a stage full of actors. Just bow. Don’t do anything fancy. And don’t leave the stage till all the hullabaloo is over.”
“You’ll be there, yourself, of course?”
“I may, or I may not.”
“But you’re the director!”
“Indeed I am, and since this afternoon at four o’clock I have been the most unnecessary creature involved in this opera. Nobody needs me. My work is done. I am wholly superfluous.”
“Surely not!”
“Surely yes! If I cut my throat at this minute the opera would progress through its appointed number of performances not a whit the worse.”
“But you’ve made it.”
“I have not made it. Hoffmann, and Gunilla and Schnak, and all those singers and musicians have made it. And even you fellows have made it. I have supplied the trickery and whoredom of the show. The stuff that appeals to people who don’t care much for music.”
“Rubbish, Geraint,” said Darcourt, who saw a fine Powell tantrum coming. “You’ve been the energy and encouragement of the whole affair. We’ve all warmed ourselves at your fire. Don’t think we don’t know it. You’re indispensable. So cheer up.”
“I know you, Sim bach. In a minute you’ll be rebuking me for self-pity.”
“Perhaps so.”
“You don’t know what an artist is, you nice, controlled, reasonable man. You don’t know the shadow of the artist—the sieve of vanity, the bile of bitterness, the bond of untruth that is bound with icy chains to all the sunlight and encouraging and hes-a-jolly-good-fellow of being an opera director. I am exhausted and I am not needed. I am sinking into such a slough of despond as only an artist whose job is finished must endure. Go on, both of you! Go back to your seats. Float in the warm waters of assured success. Leave me! Leave me!” By this time he was drinking straight from the bottle.
“I really think we’d better go,” said Darcourt. “I couldn’t bear to miss what’s coming next. But do try to pull yourself together, Geraint bach. We all love you, you know.”
What was coming next, to begin Act Two, was the scene of The Queen’s Maying, over which Powell, and Waldo, and Dulcy had toiled and contrived for months. As the curtains drew back, after a brief and lovely prelude, it seemed to the audience that they could see immeasurably deep into a grove of hawthorn trees in snowy bloom. Far in the blossom-misted distance appeared Queen Guenevere, mounted on a black horse, riding at ease in her side-saddle, as a page led the horse forward. One by one, wearing white mantles, the Ladies of the Court made their way into the front of the scene, but never so far as to obscure the figure of the distant Queen. They did not sing; they seemed enchanted, as the whole scene was one of enchantment, and while the music rose and fell, they grouped themselves in a tableau of expectation. They carried garlands of May blossom. Something truly wonderful was happening.
Darcourt knew how the effect was achieved. He had attended most of the rehearsals and heard many of the arguments during which the notable scene had been planned. Nevertheless, he was caught in its magic and he understood, what he had not known before, that much of the magic of a great theatrical moment is created by the audience itself, a magic impalpable but vividly present, and that what begins as trickery of lights and paint is enlarged and made fine by the response of the beholders. There are no great performances without great audiences, and this is the barrier that film and television, by their utmost efforts, cannot cross, for there can be no interaction between what is done, and those to whom it is done. Great theatre, great music-drama, is created again and again on both sides of the footlights.
He enjoyed the extra pleasure of the man who knows how it has been done. It had been the suggestion of Waldo Harris, not to the casual eye an imaginative man, that for this scene the forty-foot depth of the stage should be increased by opening the huge sliding doors to the storage rooms, and beyond them into the workshops, so that in the end a vista of a hundred feet could be attained. Not a great depth, surely, but with the aid of perspective painting it could be made to seem limitless. And—this had tickled Waldo and Dulcy so that they giggled for days—when first Queen Guenevere was seen, at the farthest distance, on her black steed, i
t was not Donalda Roche, a woman of operatic sturdiness of figure, but a child of six, mounted on a pony no bigger than a St. Bernard. At a point perhaps sixty feet from the footlights the midget Guenevere rounded a grove of trees to be replaced by a larger child, mounted on a larger pony, led by a larger page. This Guenevere, forty feet from the footlights, disappeared for a moment in May blossom and it was Donalda Roche from then onward, on a black horse of normal stature. Behind her, pages led two magnificent white goats with gilded horns. Waldo and Dulcy had played with this illusion, and refined it, until it changed from a simple trick of perspective into a thing of beauty.
Of course, it would not have been possible without the finest pages in Schnak’s score. There had been three related themes, obviously meant as the foundation for an extended piece of music in Hoffmann’s notes, and Schnak and Gunilla had decided that these should be developed into a prelude to Act Two, a preparation for the scenes of love and betrayal in which Guenevere and Lancelot, under the malign influence of Morgan Le Fay, would consummate their passion and suffer a double remorse, for Lancelot had also been tricked into a union with the maiden Elaine. But when Geraint heard the first developments of the prelude, he demanded that it shouldbe the music for The Queen’s Maying, and overbore the musicians, who of course wanted it as pure music. This was the passage which, at her examination, had persuaded Schnak’s examiners (all but the difficult Dr. Pfeiffer) that Schnak was certainly a doctor of music, and probably a good deal more than that.
So here it was, not as a symphonic piece, but as an accompaniment to an act of lovely trickery, or, if you prefer, a masterwork of stage magic.
When it was being rehearsed, some of the singers were not pleased that what was probably the finest part of the score made no use of their voices. Nutcombe Puckler, indeed, referred to it as “this silent music”, and Hans Hoizknecht had some hard words about pantomime. But it proved itself masterly in performance.
The audience, partly quelled by Yerko’s Claque, which had been stealthily teaching them to wait for their cues, and partly because they were enthralled by what they saw and heard, were still as mice until the end, when the Queen, joined by her special Knights, bearing white shields, moved gently off the stage to the place where Gwen had cleared space for what was—Queen, horse, Knights and Ladies—rather a crowd which must on no account be halted in its progress. Then they broke into three minutes of sustained applause. Three minutes is a long time for furious clapping, and when the first minute had passed Yerko let loose his forces in every part of the house, and their cries of Bravo were so heart-lifting that several non-claquers joined in. But as they were not trained mid-European bawlers, they had little chance against the professionals in approbation.
Was a voice heard to cry, “Bravo, Hoffmann”? There was, and it was the voice of Simon Darcourt.
Gunilla, though not by inclination apt to recognize an audience except with frosty courtesy, bowed again and again.
Gunilla was, after all, a great artist, and such approbation is very sweet to the performer’s ear.
“That’s fetched ‘em,” shouted Hollier in Darcourt’s ear. “I think we’ve got ‘em now!”
We? thought Darcourt, applauding till his hands smarted.
Who’s we? What had you to do with this? What had I to do with it? The music, of course, is Hoffmann-cum-Schnak, and very fine, too. But this magic belongs to Geraint Powell, and to Dulcy and Waldo, whom he fired and inspired with his own sense of theatre.
And to Hoffmann. He had raised his voice for Hoffmann.
Not solely Hoffmann the composer, who might not have been as good a musician as Schnak, but Hoffmann who lived and died when Romance was blossoming in all the arts. To the spirit of Hoffmann, indeed. This was certainly the Little Man who had been aroused by the Cornish Foundation and all the people it had touched.
The Second Act moved rapidly. The scene outside Merlin’s cave, where the enchantress Morgan tricks the good old man into the revelation: Arthur can only be destroyed by one born in the month of May. The exultation of Morgan, for it is her son—also, by incest, the son of Arthur, though Arthur does not know it—who is the May-born. The fateful words of Morgan:
The trembling ray
Of some approaching thought, I know not what
Gleams on my darkened mind…
And Modred’s response:
I feel it growing, growing
Like a man’s shadow when the moon floats slowly
Through the white border of a baffled cloud:
And now the pale conception furls and thickens—
The temptation of Guenevere by Lancelot. His declaration of love and her sad cry:
Oh no! I’ll not believe you; when I do
My heart will crack to powder.
The revelation to the lovers Guenevere and Lancelot that the Maid Elaine, whom Lancelot deflowered when under Morgan’s evil spell, must die of her love, but die gladly:
Oh, that sweet influence of thoughts and looks!
That change of being, which to one who lives
Is nothing less divine than divine life
To the unmade! Love? Do I love? I walk
Within the brilliance of another’s thought
As in a glory.
And Lancelot’s recognition of the treachery of his love, and his bitter acceptance of implacable destiny:
I never felt my nature so divine
As at this saddest hour.
The audience—not, one would have supposed, greatly susceptible to Arthurian romance—were now wholly in the grip of the opera, and the buzz of enthusiasm at the interval was heartening.
Darcourt had something very much on his mind.
“Penny,” he said, cornering her in the foyer, “will you let Clem have your seat for the Third Act? I’d like you to be with me for at least a part of this.”
“Nicely said, Simon, but I know what you mean. I’ve been talking with Clem, and whatever he has been dousing himself with, he’s overdone it. I was almost asphyxiated, and I know what you must have been going through. ‘A bundle of myrrh is my well beloved to me: he lieth all night between my breasts’. But not if I can help it. I’ll be delighted to relieve you. We’ve pulled it off nicely, don’t you think?”
We, again. What have you done? thought Darcourt. A few sessions of bitchy criticism of my work.
“My guess, for what it’s worth, is that our Snark is really a Snark, and not a speck of a Boojum. Did you ever hear such enthusiasm? In Canada, I mean, the Home of Modified Rapture.”
“It is certainly going well,” said Darcourt, who had sighted Yerko leaning, with pachydermatous elegance, over a very small but excitable lady with orange hair. “Let’s go in. Third Act any minute now.”
The Third Act was very much as Geraint had outlined it, so long ago as it now seemed, when they had dined unhappily on Maria’s Arthurian feast. Perhaps inevitably the emphasis was different. The music for Merlin, when he denounced the villain Modred, was arresting:
Thy gloomy features, like a midnight dial,
Scowl the dark index of a fearful hour…
And later:
Transparent art thou as a poisoned glass
Through which the drinker sees his murderer smiling.
Then Modreds unrepentant, properly villainous death:
Why, what’s the world and time? A fleeting thought
In the great meditating universe;
A brief parenthesis in chaos.
But it was Hans Hoizknecht, as the King, who had the best of it. Fine actor, fine singer, he drew the most from the shattered Arthur’s recognition of his unrecognized incest, the bitterness of his son Modred’s hate, and—heaviest of all—the betrayal by his beloved wife and his beloved friend. But his invocation to Love, as a charity beyond even the poetry of fleshly possession, was his best moment, and his conclusion—
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to
mind,
In body and in soul can bind.
–moved many of the audience, somewhat to their embarrassment, to tears.
Walter Scott is very good, but Schnak has raised him to another level, thought Darcourt. I wonder if she really understood what she was setting to music? If so, there’s hope for her, tormented child as she is. But with musicians you can never be quite sure.
At the death of Arthur, the scene melted magically again to the shores of the Enchanted Mere, which had not been seen since the Overture. But it was not quite the same scene, for this was deeply autumnal; leaves, and a few snowflakes, scudded across the stage where the Knights stood, leaning on their swords. They sang:
The wind, dead leaves and snow,
Doth hurry to and fro,
And once, a day shall break
O’er the wave,
When a storm of ghosts shall shake
The dead, till our King wake
From the grave.
The body of Arthur—but not the living Hoizknecht—was placed in a shallow craft in which it sailed across the water, and as it disappeared Merlin flung after it Caliburn, now safely in its scabbard, and an armoured hand rose from the waves and seized it. The great chords that had introduced the opera were heard again, and the curtain fell.
Marshalled by Gwen Larking, Penny Raven, Clement Hollier, and Simon Darcourt appeared during the final curtain-call. Nobody knew who they were or why they were there, but at the end of every operatic first night a few people make inexplicable appearances, and the charity of the audience includes them.
Geraint, surprisingly steady on his feet, was thunderously applauded. He appeared to be in excellent spirits and looked wondrously romantic in full evening dress. He and Gunilla were, indeed, the commanding figures in the rather untidy tableau at the final curtain.
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