The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  Conrad had barely finished eating when footsteps trod up the stairs again, and he heard a knock on the door.

  Tullio lifted an eyebrow. “More appointments?”

  His caution made Conrad conscious, suddenly, that he himself was wary of an unknown caller. I don’t suppose that’s too surprising. Not with the Inquisition and everything the Prince’s Men did to Castiello-Salvati.

  “No, I was done.” Conrad watched as Tullio went to answer the door. “I’ve hired everybody I know here who are good singers or stagehands.”

  There had been something of a local dearth of the latter, too. The King’s first attempt at the counter-opera, secret though it supposedly was, had scared a lot of people off, Conrad’s more peripatetic friends among them.

  “Well, padrone, I don’t suppose the secret society of assassins would knock…”

  “The Dominicans did!”

  He found himself still nervous while Tullio was out at the front door.

  “Man to see you,” Tullio reported back. “Don’t know him. Young chap.”

  “Show him in.” Conrad moved the short distance from the table to the chairs by the fire. “If I’m lucky it’s a world-famous tenore di grazia…”

  A well-dressed young man in his early twenties followed Tullio back into the room, removing his tall hat. His hair was of that colour neither brown nor blond, he wore narrow white trousers, black boots, and a cut-away dark blue tailcoat with wide lapels; his neck-stock was spotless linen. Conrad found himself frowning.

  I know that face…do I? Surely…

  The youth bowed, hair flipping energetically. “Gianpaolo Pironti at your service, cousin!”

  This would be that one of Baltazar’s sons, Mother’s nephews, and… my cousin? I know I haven’t seen most of my cousins for years, but… No. I don’t think so. No.

  “And you’re here because…?” Conrad prompted.

  “I’ve just done two years in the Conservatoire in Catania.” Gianpaolo Pironti beamed. “Eventually I want to join the opera world as a composer. I have no patronage—so I appeal to nepotism! Can you help me, as a member of the family?”

  Conrad went for a delaying action. “That would depend on how good you are.”

  Cousin Gianpaolo looked hopeful.

  Conrad gave up and asked directly. “And, also, on why you’re a girl dressed up as a man?”

  “Ah.” Pironti looked startled. “I thought I was good enough not to be spotted.” The slim figure had nothing to betray her in her body, the slightly padded coat shoulders distracting from any bust. If she looked young to have graduated from a Conservatoire, that was the only consequence of her having no facial hair.

  Conrad snorted. “I’m in opera!”

  He waved a hand at her male clothing.

  “I’m used to seeing women in britches roles, and male castrati singing men disguised as women. Our last production, we had a soprano dressed as a woman singing the heroine, a mezzo dressed as a man playing the hero, and a contralto dressed as a man but playing a woman disguised in male clothing. If I can keep that lot clear while they’re singing their trio—and the love-duet—I can certainly spot a woman off-stage when I see one! But you do look like my cousin Gianpaolo… like family…”

  She gave him a fishy eye. “That’s because I’m your sister, you berk.”

  Conrad blankly stared at her.

  He realised his mouth had fallen open, and shut it. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Tullio looking slightly relieved. Was he truly afraid of a visit from the Prince’s Men?

  “You are Isaura, aren’t you?” Conrad examined her in quiet wonder. “Isaura… I haven’t seen you for… oh Lord, is it nine years?”

  He stood up before he realised he was going to do it. The cross-dressed young woman looked apprehensive at first—and as he moved towards her, threw her arms around him, and hugged him as tightly as he gripped her. Despite being of a height with him, she felt small in his arms.

  “Nine!” She sounded as if she were laughing and crying together. “You came home after Papa died.”

  He put her back at arm’s length, and she rubbed the heel of her hand across her face, the gesture all boy. Her words brought back the past: coming home, after his father Alfredo had been dead for some months, and finding the house was in the process of being sold to cover a little of Alfredo’s debts. Conrad had arranged for his mother Agnese to live in a house her maternal uncle Baltazar could loan her, after arguing that it would disgrace the family for them to be on the streets. And Baltazar Pironti had consented, provided Conrad added him to the list of Alfredo’s most pressing creditors.

  “I remember it was Cousin Gianpaolo who eventually persuaded Baltazar into a compromise that at least let me eat.” Conrad’s mind was still in the past. “Paolo writes to me every year or so and tells me about our finances. But you… I remember you as this dark, withdrawn, fifteen-year-old beanpole of a girl, always standing behind Mother’s skirts, and now…”

  “It isn’t Paolo. It’s me. I write to you.”

  Conrad opened his mouth to contradict her, and shut it again.

  All the minuscule doubts of a decade—Does Cousin Gianpaolo Pironti have either the talent or the energy to cope with Law and finance, never mind any ability to go against his father Baltazar?—vanished like dead leaves in a fire, supplanted by the instant realisation that this is his sister; his sister, telling the truth.

  Isaura Scalese folded her arms. “Paolo wouldn’t touch account books if you paid him! I borrowed his identity. Later on, he wanted to go to Paris, so he was happy to leave me his name so I could go to the Conservatoire. And I wasn’t ‘withdrawn’ when you came home! I was off spending half my time as a boy!”

  Conrad saw Tullio unashamedly lean his arms on the back of the striped sofa, so that he could listen in comfort. It made him want to splutter his disbelief.

  But I can’t. I believe every word.

  “You didn’t see much of me because that was the first time I seriously dressed up as Gianpaolo. So I could sort out Mother’s business affairs. Paolo himself is useless! Uncle Dario will never come back from America—”

  Conrad thought that a shrewd assessment of Alfredo’s brother.

  “—And I wasn’t going to let Uncle Baltazar get his hands on anything we still had…” She chewed her lip. “But in the end there was nothing, and I had to appeal to you to come home—”

  “That was you? I thought that was Mother.”

  “I forged the letter. Anyway, once he let Mother have that house, that town was far enough away from Uncle Baltazar and the rest of the family that I could carry on being ‘Gianpaolo’… One advantage of being in the part of the family in disgrace. And I’ve studied and written music, and now I want to compose opera!”

  Conrad was for one ice-hot moment full of jealousy of her lack of responsibilities.

  He pushed the feeling away as unworthy.

  It left him regarding his undeniably female sister, at home in coat and trousers, with her gloves, hat, and cane left with careless elegance on the coat-table by the door.

  It’s not a charade she’s playing, he realised. She’ll pass anywhere, for people who don’t already know.

  “Why don’t you want to run a salon?” he demanded, almost at random. “You could be a drawing-room composer like Malibran’s sister, what’s her name—”

  “Viardot! Pauline Viardot. I bet you don’t forget Rossini’s name! Or Donizetti’s, or Pacini’s!” Familiar grey eyes, very like his own, narrowed in disgust. “Why would I want to compose an opera for a handful of my friends? Or for some nobleman in his palazzo, and have to bring in a core of ‘guest’ singers from the opera houses because none of his friends can sing a note!”

  Tullio’s low rumble broke the silence. “I think your sister wants to be a professional opera composer, padrone.”

  “Yes, I did get that impression!” Conrad waved a hand in apology. “Isaura, this is Tullio; we were in the war together. You might have
met him when I came to Catania.”

  Isaura had been all outraged youth. At Tullio’s interjection, she sat down in the other chair, moving as if men’s clothes came perfectly naturally to her, but looking at him with an expression that reminded Conrad forcibly of the little endlessly-talking girl that he had held by the hand in Prussia and St Petersburg and a dozen German kingdoms.

  Isaura studied Tullio Rossi with unfeminine directness. “I remember you. You nearly caught me in Paolo’s clothes several times. I borrowed your walk when I went to the Conservatoire—” She moved in illustration. “—From the shoulders.”

  Another man might have been bewildered, Conrad thought, but Tullio, having been used to the opera world for at least a decade, grasped the point—and the compliment—at once.

  “Glad to have been of help with your role.” One corner of Tullio Rossi’s mouth turned up. He set about serving the last of the tea with milk and cream, and went to Isaura first to put the recently-chipped cup on her small table.

  Conrad took his own damaged cup and sighed. He leaned his other elbow on the arm of the chair, and rubbed at his chin.

  “If you want a career—one that women can and do have, as independent businesswomen—why not become a singer rather than a composer? Thousands of women do that.”

  Isaura glanced at Tullio, who was now aimlessly clearing the main table and shamelessly listening, and turned back to Conrad. “‘Una voce poco fa qui nel cor mi risuonò; il mio cor ferito è già…’” She broke off.

  “That was…” Conrad helplessly searched for a word.

  “…Ouch! My heart is already wounded,” Tullio echoed the aria of Rosina from Il Barbiere di Siviglia, “never mind my ears! I’ll pay money, I swear, if you never, ever, sing again!”

  “You know, most people say that…” Isaura grinned, clearly not at all insulted. “I’ve never had that trouble with instruments—piano and violin, I’m fine. I can carry a tune in my head, and write it down. Just not sing.”

  Conrad found himself exchanging glances with Tullio and knowing precisely what was in the other man’s mind. Bellini had an opera produced at seventeen, while he was at the same Conservatoire in Catania: it’s not impossible that anyone might come out of their training with a similar genius…

  And I don’t recall anyone asking Bellini if he could sing. Conrad indicated the small upright instrument crammed into the far corner of the room. “I think the piano needs tuning, after our ecclesiastical visitors, but suppose you play as best you can?”

  She mouthed “ecclesiastical?” in bewilderment, but evidently put the question aside in favour of the more-important piano. Conrad found himself assessing her as if she were a stage-role. There was nothing female in how she flipped aside the tails of her coat and sat down, or how she addressed the keys. She took a sheet of music from inside her jacket, presumably of her own composing, and Conrad leaned back, listening to her play.

  …She has talent.

  Enough talent, even, to set some recitatives or other connecting material if the deadline gets short. But as for starting at the top, with a whole opera—especially one sabotaging a secular prayer designed either to compel God’s attention, or make active whatever the true natural phenomenon of a miracle is… No.

  But how do I say that?

  Tullio hitched his hip up to rest on the back of the sofa while he listened. He nodded. “In a few years. Maybe as few as five, if you want it bad enough. And if it’s there.”

  Conrad tended to freckle slightly in the summer. He wouldn’t have been reminded of it had Isaura’s face not been pale enough now to show a few sun-dots, dark over the bridge of her nose.

  For all that, she was smiling.

  “If it’s there,” she echoed. “I wish I knew if it came by hard work, or by being there to be uncovered—like coal…”

  She nodded an acknowledgement to Tullio, and shot a glance that Conrad caught, which said plainly as day, Why doesn’t my brother say something?

  Because your fool brother doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘Gianpaolo’ wandered across the small room to the desk, her gaze evidently picking up the gist of those letters he still had to copy and edit for King Ferdinand. Her curiosity was so innocent Conrad found it impossible to resent.

  Her head came up; she looked at him brightly.

  A woman who can look me directly in the eye, like a man. I wish I could find one who wasn’t my sister!

  “Here’s something I can do for my keep, if you let me stay,” she offered frankly. “I handled productions at the Conservatoire; I liked it. I could be your secretary.”

  He had no heart to turn her away. For all he was looking at a young man about town, the ghost of a fifteen-year-old beanpole kept getting in the way.

  “You could,” he said measuredly, “if I have your sacred promise, on the grave of our father, that you’ll keep everything you see secret.”

  Isaura blinked. “It’s important, isn’t it? I’ll give you my promise. But—you know the old fraud would have gambled any information away for money as soon as look at it.”

  Conrad was aware of Tullio’s stifled choke, somewhere in the corner of the room.

  He ignored it. Something of an idea was taking shape in his mind. It emerged out of a mist and became solid.

  “I do have a violin, too.” He went to the lockable cupboard and took out the case that had survived the Dominicans’ intervention. The deep gloss of Alfredo Scalese’s rather-more-than-serviceable violin greeted them. He pushed the case towards Isaura.

  After a little preparation, she put it to her shoulder. Conrad closed his eyes, letting the sound take him over. Once not distracted by the silhouette of the slim young man-woman…

  She finished with a small flourish.

  Conrad opened his eyes.

  “Now, that you could do professionally. Right now. Today.” The room seemed very bright. “Your professors must have told you this.”

  “Yes.” The stubborn set of her mouth was utterly familiar, transcribed up to the age of five-and-twenty from somewhere near five. “But I intend to compose opera.”

  Conrad made a gesture towards Tullio. “But not today. And while you’re working towards it… I do have something you can do for me, as well as help me with those fornicating letters. If you’re willing.”

  Isaura-Gianpaolo shrugged questioningly, her hands held out from her sides, entirely Neapolitan.

  Conrad closed the violin case and pushed it towards her. “The first attempt to have this opera put on has been—prevented. Consequently, every composer worth paying has left town without, in some cases, waiting to be paid.”

  Isaura’s eyes opened very wide.

  “Whatever composer we get is liable to be—inexperienced.” Conrad reached for the kindest word he could, and saw all the others reflected in her gaze. “I want him to have all of his concentration on the music. I know the composer usually conducts, perhaps for the rehearsals, and certainly for the first three performances. I want you to do that.”

  She protested. “If not the composer, then it’s the first violin who conducts.”

  “And I want you to be my first violin.”

  Isaura glanced from him to Tullio and back, as if dazed. “…Truly?”

  “Promise!” Conrad responded as automatically as if he had still been the fifteen-year-old boy crammed into a too-tight-this-year formal coat, holding on to his little sister’s hand as she swung on him and gazed in awe at the Prussian kings. “But there’s danger—”

  Ignoring that, Isaura threw her arms around him, hard enough to make him grunt, and hugged him like a brother. And, like a much younger sister, gave release to her excitement in a soprano squeal.

  “I’ll show you a first violin!” she exulted, eventually letting go, looking as if she had vital Galvanic current running through her veins. And before he could open his mouth, narrowed her eyes and dropped suddenly into quite another tone. “Corrado, what are we involved in? Is it the people we don’t ta
lk about?”

  Conrad couldn’t help a snort. “In your case, it’s the people you don’t know about!”

  He sobered.

  “Most of the singers, hands, costumiers, face-painters and the like will be told the Mafia or Camorra are the danger we face. If they won’t defy organised criminals, they certainly won’t stand up to the people we’re up against, so it’s better they leave.”

  He rested both hands on his sister’s shoulders, and looked down into her eyes.

  “I’m authorised to brief only those who must know. You’re one of the closest to me; it would be pointless not to trust you with what you’ll see. I know I can trust you. Make your mind up what you can take an oath on. Swear silence, and I’ll tell you what’s happening here. If not; if you want to go elsewhere…no one would blame you.”

  “I would.” Isaura held up her hand as if in court. “I swear. Now tell.”

  It took a while.

  “The fire at the Teatro Nuovo was a coincidence,” Conrad finished briskly, “and whatever these Prince’s Men happen to believe, there is no Deity for them to change the nature of!”

  “There might be, if they get their opera miracle,” Tullio rumbled.

  Isaura looked wide-eyed, which on Gianpaolo’s face made her seem twelve years old. “You still got the opera house struck by lightning, though, Corradino.”

  “Say I have—” He jabbed a finger at her. The aggressiveness of the gesture clearly startled her.

  Conrad immediately sat down on the couch beside her, giving up the advantage of height, and trying to make himself seem more approachable.

  The girl’s been here five minutes and I’m already subjecting her to the ‘asking a question in the Royal Society’ Conrad Scalese. How about Conrad-the-brother? I doubt she’s been spending her time lately reading the history of the heretical American Mr Franklin.

  “Say it was a miracle,” Conrad went on, more conciliatory. “What does that mean?”

  Isaura watched him carefully, as if he might be an escaped patient from a lunatic asylum. “People usually say that means God did it.”

  “God did it.” Dear God.