The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  Roberto Capiraso mouthed, “Protestant!” under his breath, went to get his own pen, and continued making marginal notes on Conrad’s papers.

  “It gives us a first scene,” Roberto added. “Chimalli waiting in the palace—they must have palaces!—for his betrothed. His Jaguar Knights with him: bass and high-bass chorus. He confesses his love for the Princess, looks forward to their marriage. A message arrives: she isn’t coming, she’s giving an audience to the stranger, Cortez—this isn’t the first time this has happened. Our Lord-General bursts into a cabaletta of vengeance. Delays the entrance of heroine and hero, which is always good.”

  Conrad seized his pen and began to scribble the synopsis down.

  All right, maybe there’s one drawing room composer with a grasp of the necessities of opera.

  There was little enough of the plot filled in otherwise, so he was not surprised when Roberto didn’t comment again until he reached the end.

  “So, the finale, Cortez and Princess Tayanna…”

  The Count read on without further comment, while Conrad added a beetle to his blot-collection, and gazed out of the window at the sea. Something about the brilliant play of light put him in the frame of mind to form coherent ideas.

  The Conte di Argente turned over the last page, sat for a moment staring at the secret museum, and finally said, “I understand that the end of this opera is particularly important. Do you think that what you have here is adequate?”

  The word made Conrad flush hot. “No. It’s a place-holder. Given how difficult it is to see what an adequate lieto fine might be, I’ve sketched in a tragic ending. Now that the censors allow it, such endings are very popular, and the deathscene of two lovers sacrificed on the step-pyramid—”

  “—Is very like the two lovers going to Madame la Guillotine together at the end of Il Terrore,” Roberto Capiraso pointed out.

  “Are you saying I’m not original!”

  Il Superbo threw his head back in laughter, short beard jutting.

  “Oh, I don’t accuse any opera libretto in a thousand of being original!” He caught his breath. “It’s not what’s wanted by the audience. They like their shocks to come slowly, two or three times in a decade… I merely meant, the end of this opera relies on audience reaction, and it may be a little soon to give them something that was a success de scandale a few weeks ago.”

  That was almost tactful, Conrad thought. “Then we don’t sacrifice the main characters.”

  He reached for the engravings of step-pyramids again.

  “Maybe a tragedy could be our sub-plot? Look, here we have sacrifices of blood with a thousand warriors slain to dark gods—So we don’t want a thousand warriors. Far too brutal. One will do. Or three, if we need two tasteful deaths, maybe one by poison…”

  “Not warriors, either,” Roberto put in, his expression keen. “Who wants to see males in jeopardy? Sacrificial maiden—no, too obvious.”

  Conrad idly sketched with his dip-pen on the back of his notes, playing with designs for step-pyramids as stage-flats. “I’d thought there ought to be a slave-girl, maybe as our soprano role? Hopelessly in love with Cortez, because he loves the Princess—”

  Capiraso prodded the table with a blunt finger. “Now loves the Princess. Before that, he loved the slave, promised her marriage, but now…”

  “Aria of the abandoned lover,” Conrad noted down. “I wonder if we could get away with her having been married to him? That would give us a very good situation: he’s torn between the woman he loves and the wife he doesn’t.”

  “That means no marriage between Tayanna and Cortez until the slave-girl is dead.” The Count continued tapping his finger on the polished wood of the table. His hand was squarish in shape, not at all the epitome of the aristocrat.

  Conrad roused himself from speculations why the hands of a bricklayer might be in the Argente family tree, to hear Roberto Capiraso add:

  “Is our heroine villainous? Might she poison her rival?”

  “Then she won’t deserve her happy ending.”

  “Che cazzo! Very well, suppose no marriage, but she’s now drifting away from Cortez in favour of one of his young captains—didn’t you say there was a tenor role there? Leave a loophole for a happy ending with the right people pairing up. Not that most finale pairs would last six months in the real world…”

  “Cynic!”

  The Count made a production out of ignoring that remark. He finally tapped on the engraving, rather than the table. “We need this high priest, too. But he can’t just stand there like a bump on a log until he makes the sacrifices at the end.”

  “Perhaps Cortez has a priest with him. A Jesuit, like the one who recorded the word lists. He and the High Priest of the Sun could have a duet of two basses, tearing strips off each other.”

  “And trying to convert each other, no doubt? Conrad, do you want the censor banning us? Despite what pressure King Ferdinand can bring to bear?”

  “Somewhere out there is a Church censor with a sense of humour,” Conrad murmured, sitting back in his chair and giving Roberto a grin. “One day I’ll find him.”

  “When you’re in jail!” Roberto Capiraso scrolled up his pages of notes, and slapped them down in front of Conrad, while he himself moved over to the piano. “Write me some verses, poet!”

  Forty-eight hours later, Conrad leaned a hand on the desk to read the stretta of Act 1 Scene 6 over Il Superbo’s shoulder, frowned and shook his head.

  “The final scene doesn’t have enough power. Put as much effort into it as you would the end of the second act!”

  Roberto Capiraso looked first bewildered, and then annoyed. He scowled, as if temper might hide any momentary weakness. “Very well, Signore Professional Librettist—why the second act?”

  Conrad raked his fingers through his hair, and realised he did not look Romantically dishevelled, like the English Mister Lord Byron, but like an urchin come in from fighting in the street.

  “Where does the interval come? The interval!” Conrad persisted. “When they go out to eat and drink and gamble, and talk to their friends, and maybe don’t come back to hear the rest of the opera? True, yes, you want word-of-mouth after the final act, friends telling friends how good the opera is and that they should see it. But if you don’t get bums back on benches and bodies back in the Pit after the interval, you’ll never make the third day when the run breaks even!”

  Roberto Capiraso scowled again. Even if Conrad did note the corner of his mouth turn up.

  “Very well. As much effort as would be necessary to nail a professional audience to their benches…”

  The Conte di Argente dipped his pen-nib in the inkpot, crossed out half a page, and began to write on the staves again, slowly, with long pauses between phrases.

  Two days after that, Roberto Capiraso, Conte di Argente, entered GianGiacomo Spinelli’s lodgings, disguised from any observers in soundly middle-class clothing.

  He tossed a sheaf of papers on the table. Conrad recognised it as the current synopsis (to Act III) and partial draft of Act I, annotated with suggested remaining voice-roles for the working-titled L’Altezza azteca, ossia Il serpente pennuto—The Aztec Princess, Or, The Plumed Serpent.

  Conrad made introductions to Spinelli and the others present, and allowed the Count the pleasure of telling Sandrine Furino that she had a part in The Aztec Princess.

  “As the Aztec princess,” Roberto confirmed—seeming rather charmed by this slight, dark-haired, well-dressed woman, and the look on her face at the news. “Princess Tayanna, inheritor of her father’s throne, ruler of the Aztec lands. Essentially a mezzo role, but I’m told your tessitura includes a strong contralto base?”

  “Oh yes…” Sandrine beamed blissfully.

  JohnJack patted her shoulder as he found his own seat around the ancient parlour-size grand piano. He read with Sandrine, since most of their first duet was in place. Velluti, who should have been present, apparently thought he need not join rehearsals just yet; Co
nrad resolved to have a word with the man about that.

  Conrad also thought he might need to step in between Gianpaolo-Isaura and the Count. However, Roberto graciously allowed the boy to play the piano, on the grounds that he needed to examine the shape of the music without distraction.

  “It’s the end that’s insufficient,” he muttered afterwards, while the rest were engaged in tea. “What on earth do you call this, Corradino? If you wanted to be a famous writer, you should have stuck with comedy; didn’t you write a couple of successful comic operas for the Naples audience?”

  Conrad found himself amused that il Conte di Argente had picked up Isaura’s nickname for him, and used it without apparently noticing.

  “By which you mean, all I can write is low-class Neapolitan dialogue? And Spinelli is “just” a comic bass used to singing in dialect?”

  “No…”

  It was interesting that Il Superbo did not particularly want to insult JohnJack—possibly, Conrad thought, because he made the Count’s music sound sublime.

  Lightly, Conrad remarked, “I’ve said it before, Count. You don’t understand how we do it in commercial opera.”

  “And what would an atheist writer of bedroom farces understand about art!”

  Conrad laughed. I could like this man.

  “I do write more than one act comedies,” Conrad said mildly. “Let me hear it. What’s the problem?”

  Roberto Capiraso might have been startled, Conrad thought, at how fast the others crowded back around the piano once he started playing. He adjusted the position of the lamp, so the light fell on the score—he had the libretto open at Cortez’s entry, with his men, into the court of the Serpent-Queen. The pages were thoroughly covered in pencil with the freckles of musical notation.

  The Count ran his fingers over the keys, calling up a jaunty march tune.

  “…Not bad.”

  He nonetheless sounded dissatisfied. Conrad suspected it wasn’t the ancient small forte-piano’s overtones he was unhappy about.

  “It’s not at all bad. But—” JohnJack Spinelli looked wary of outright criticism in front of Il Superbo.

  There’s that “but,” Conrad found himself thinking; a chill in his belly.

  Yes. Not that I have the musical literacy to tell him what’s wrong, but… There. Some of what I hear from him has the bad habit of—pulling back from commitment?

  Conrad frowned.

  Is it possible that Roberto Capiraso might be out of his depth? A mediocre composer, in fact?

  Or does “Il Superbo” conceivably suffer from lack of confidence?

  The Conte di Argente slammed the piano’s cover down, jolting Conrad out of his listening.

  “No damn gravitas,” Roberto muttered, apologetically.

  JohnJack said instantly, “Yes it has. Play it slower.”

  “That’s the oldest trick in the book and it won’t work—!”

  Conrad noted that the Count nonetheless opened up the lid of the piano, and let the fingers of his right hand briskly pick out the melodic line.

  “—You see, nothing! Complete rubbish—”

  The basso shook his head. “No, much slower!”

  Roberto Capiraso re-seated himself and brought his left hand up to the keys. What had been a seaside banda march tune evolved and slowed under Capiraso’s fingers, passing through a haunting aria of love—

  Sandrine Furino wrinkled her nose. And got out her mirror to check her maquillage.

  “Still clichéd,” she said, apologetically.

  —And at its slowest tempo, the music underwent a sudden change into something that shivered the hairs all down the back of Conrad’s neck.

  “That’s an anthem!” Paolo-Isaura whispered.

  As silently as he could without disturbing Roberto, Conrad took back his libretto pages from the top of the piano, drew a line through the military chorus, and added four lines of a Hymn for the Aztec Priests:

  “We compel our spirits

  Out of our earthly bodies;

  We ask of the Sun our God,

  Who are these strange white half-horse men?”

  Roberto Capiraso craned his head to read. With a complete unselfconsciousness that Conrad decided he admired, the Count sung both the High Priest’s and Chorus’s parts, in a rough tone straining to imitate bass, so that each voice-part overlapped his music and came in on each other like a peal of bells.

  “Need a soprano voice part.” Spinelli looked as if he were startled at his own unselfishness. “Set off the bass.”

  Conrad noted “Seconda donna?” on the page. Roberto alternated the melody between the priests and a la-la-la in falsetto harmony for the soprano—for all the potential comedy of that, the music made Conrad’s chest ache. The structure of it came clear: melody stopping to let the voices carry it, and then singers halting to let the orchestra pick it up, and then all together.

  The silence in the lodging rooms rang after Roberto stopped and lifted his hands off the keys.

  “Write the orchestration down before you forget it!” Conrad couldn’t help the grin that stretched his mouth as the other man grabbed sheet-music and furiously scribbled. “Sounds to me like entrance music! And we could even reprise it as the seed of the end of Act One…”

  Conrad realised that the quiet was intense. The apartments around Spinelli’s had ceased arguing over trifles, quarrelling at meals, and gossiping over hanging their washing. There was an air of people listening, if no one yet went so far as to break into applause.

  Because so far we have only snippets, out of context.

  Conrad sat back from the gossiping group and made a mental note.

  The secret museum’s too small, once we get a whole cast. Paolo needs to find us a more out of the way place for rehearsals.

  Because we need to rehearse, but the traditional gathering in the composer’s or singers’ lodgings won’t work. “Hide in plain sight,” yes. But not where this quality of music can be easily overheard.

  CHAPTER 13

  Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily came the following day to JohnJack’s lodgings, miraculously without a tail of servants and aides. The elderly piano, tuned, but past its natural lifetime, gamely accompanied the first rehearsals.

  The King followed when Roberto Capiraso eventually left the singers and wandered over to the large table where Conrad had spread out his lists for Ferdinand to see.

  It’s il Conte’s business as much as anybody’s, Conrad reflected, joining them and turning over the top page.

  When he saw the King frown, he said, “You were right, sire, about how many singers have been scared off. Then again, when there’s little to choose from, the casting process happens more quickly. We don’t have Signore Rossini and Donna Isabella Colbran, but we’re lucky enough that we do have Giambattista Velluti. My cousin Gianpaolo—”

  Isaura bowed as Conrad waved a hand to introduce him to the King.

  “—Who’s acting as our secretary, confirms that he’s now signed the contract.”

  “Finally,” Roberto muttered. “Taken over a week.”

  Conrad guessed that il Conte di Argente had not spent much of his time on the opera board in contact with actual singers.

  Ferdinand, on the other hand, nodded, his expression showing pleasure at the world-class castrato’s name.

  “And in Signore Spinelli, we have one of the better up-and-coming coloratura basses in Italy.” Conrad unearthed a preliminary cast list, one with roles rather than character names. “Velluti for the hero, naturally. Madame Sandrine’s mezzo, set against his contralto tessitura, will make her an ideal heroine.”

  The King didn’t blink, but as Conrad was learning, that didn’t mean much.

  “And naturally enough, Signore Spinelli for the male villain. We have little in the way of capable tenors, so minor roles for them unless one turns up in the next week. We do have a very strong chorus here in Naples,” he interrupted himself, “and none of them show signs of backing out.”

  Roberto Cap
iraso leaned over and tapped the paper. “We have no main soprano, and no female villainess.”

  About to say something curt, Conrad realised, if only from the tension in the bearded man’s shoulders, that he was not wilfully pointing out flaws. Damn. I think he’s trying to prove himself worthy.

  “We may have to have one singer fill both gaps, as things are going. You understand, sir,” Conrad turned to the King, “Signore Gianpaolo has written to every reputable singer in Italy and the Northern Empire; but word has evidently got around that this production is marked out as dangerous.”

  Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily gave him a look remarkably like Tullio Rossi’s, on similar occasions; it plainly meant Tell me something I don’t know…

  “This is dangerous,” Roberto Capiraso said bluntly. “But—I recognise that name you have written there, Corrado. Is that wise?”

  Damn, I was hoping he wouldn’t have heard…

  Equally bluntly, Conrad said, “We exhausted wisdom some time back. We’re now working with desperate ideas and hoping they pay off. That name is there because it occurs to me that a singer whose career is on a knife-edge might be willing to sing for us.”

  He glanced over at the King again.

  “As far as possible, sir, I’ve been choosing those principals that I think will be willing to work as part of an ensemble. No singing over the other partner in a duet just because they can; that sort of thing. Singers who’ll be willing to showcase another singer in their star turn, because they’ll get their own bite at the cherry—I’m very deliberately writing it in that form. We can’t be a company of a dozen prima donnas who sabotage each other all the time.”