The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  “I do commend your strength of will. I know men who would be halfway to Rome in a fast carriage by now—with the woman who warned them.”

  Poised to protest that he was not afraid of the criminal societies, the last comment caught him entirely unaware.

  “She didn’t intend to come with me!” As raw as the honesty felt, Conrad managed a sardonic smile. “It isn’t the first time Nora’s wanted to see the back of me. Even if this time it is for… for old times’ sake, I suppose.”

  Enrico gave a bark of laughter. “If you suppose that…”

  The grey-haired man’s incredulous amusement turned to sympathy.

  “Conrad, women don’t defy their husbands, secretly, just to beg a man they no longer care for to go into safety. I imagine if you were willing, her next offer would be to take you there personally. So I commend you that you can hold off for the week more that we need. What you do after that—is between the three of you and God.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Hours passed, neither day nor dark. Conrad took refuge with Tullio while the older man healed. That gave Tullio a guard as he slept, and spared another man for the outer entrances to the underworld.

  Count Roberto was for once ahead of Conrad in composition: sketches of music easily suited to quatrains or couplets. Conrad threw himself into the libretto—and was not surprised when Act IV’s finale refused to come into shape.

  How can it, when I’ve blocked off the parts of me that feel?

  It would be easy to create a tragedy by the numbers. Fernando Cortez is stabbed by a jealous rival and dies; General Chimalli is poisoned by the treacherous High Priest; they are buried in twin monuments in a joint funeral, and Princess Tayanna sings a finale in which she begs to be laid to rest between the two men who loved her, and drops dead of heartbreak as the curtain falls. United in death.

  Tragic cliché is always easier.

  I need a satisfying resolution that is not tragic.

  He couldn’t have said what made him so sure. The instinct had grown stronger the more he heard about the Prince’s Men.

  Emerging in the San Carlo allowed him to discover it was Thursday, five days before the deadline—six, if the day of the performance counted. I can see us rehearsing into the early hours every day!

  He sat in one of the stage-side boxes, scribbling notes as Velluti set the stretta into motion. Two verses, and then Sandrine and JohnJack picked it up in a flawless duet—

  Paolo rapped her violin bow against the tin candle-shield on her music stand, and launched into an enthusiastic debate over another—another!—possible change. Conrad leaned back, gazing up at the overhead rails and flats behind the proscenium arch, closing his eyes against the creak of the stage boards as the chorus seated themselves on the base of Angelotti’s step pyramid.

  “Corrado?”

  Conrad sat up, mildly annoyed at being taken by surprise—and aware that if he had more sleep and less trauma, he would have been very annoyed.

  Enrico Mantenucci closed the box door behind him. His footsteps were soundless as he came to gaze out at the stage and the empty auditorium.

  “What is it?” Conrad rubbed his eyes. “It’s not going to be good news, is it?”

  “His Majesty thought you should know, and decide how to tell them—” A tilt of the iron-grey head towards cast and crew. “—Before they read it in the Gazette.”

  Conrad pushed himself to his feet, the padded chair scraping back. He moved to the back of the box, where he could be sure of not being overheard. The Commendatore joined him.

  “Well?”

  Mantenucci plainly put his brusqueness down to strain over the opera. “Conrad, there’s no good way to say this. First—first, Signore Vincenzo Bellini has been found dead in France.”

  “Bellini, dead?” Conrad felt himself pierced through by unexpected pain. “Dead. How?”

  “Under circumstances that may or may not be suspicious.” Enrico Mantenucci’s expression voted for suspicious. “It’s taken time for the news to be made public. It appears he was staying with local minor nobility in Puteaux, as a guest, a month ago, and came down with cholera-fever. No physician was called to the house. I think his hosts panicked, and ran away. What’s certain is that they abandoned Signore Bellini in the house for two or perhaps three days, and when it was finally investigated, he was found dead.”

  “Such a waste!” Slowly, stunned, Conrad said, “I Puritani will be his last opera. And he’ll be what, thirty-four, thirty-five? Dio! We should all end with such a master-work…”

  “There’s more.” Mantenucci’s expression darkened. “The timing of the news is coincidental, since it came through the diplomatic bag and has been two weeks on the way. The report is from his Majesty’s ambassador in England. Maria Malibran suffered a riding accident outside Manchester. She is now dead.”

  “…Are you sure?” Conrad’s head swam. “I apologise, you will have checked; that was stupid!”

  Sombrely, he gazed across the stage at Paolo and the singers. The vast space of the San Carlo auditorium made the singers and musicians seem small. The stage lighting singled them out.

  “Your army and police guard have been doubled,” Enrico said gruffly. “I don’t envy you, telling the cast.”

  Conrad nodded, numb. “Both Malibran and Bellini… Wait—is this just human stupidity? Do you think—Is it possible that Signore Bellini may have been composer to the black opera?”

  The police chief gave him a sharp look of approval. “Almost certainly. His death, therefore… It argues they no longer have a use for him. Any final alterations to the score will have been done.”

  They’re ahead of us, Conrad realised.

  “And Malibran?” he questioned.

  Enrico shrugged. “I can’t imagine even the Prince’s Men killing a principal singer on the eve of a production. But, they will have been preparing longer; they’ll have understudies for each role. If she was trying to get out of being involved? She knew important men socially. She may have threatened or blackmailed the Prince’s Men with that fact. It may have been necessary to make a lesson out of her…”

  The cold reminder of the way the Camorra and Mafia operated served to focus Conrad’s mind. He shuddered.

  “Or this may be a coincidence.” Enrico didn’t sound too confident. “I’m cooperating with the English authorities to look into it.”

  The police chief folded his arms, gazing at the bright costumed singers, his eyes taking on a distant look.

  “Murder can serve multiple purposes. What better way to send a warning to us? What we’re doing can’t be a secret by now. What can be more undermining than knowing these criminals are willing to assassinate one of the first singers of the age, and a premier composer, to show that nobody is safe?”

  “It may frighten them.” Conrad heard himself sound harsh. I’m shooting the messenger. “That doesn’t mean they’ll give in to fear. They’ve already proved they’re brave. If you ask me what the company will think—they’ll think that, no matter what the Prince’s Men might intend with the black opera, this is a senseless shattering of things that are irreplaceable.”

  Conrad vaulted over the front of the box onto the stage, walking towards Paolo.

  He did not soften the news. Or soften the likelihood that it was a warning. He only tried to pass on to the others his absolute disgust at men who do not care who or what they hurt.

  “Or care when what they destroy is unique,” he finished, looking around at appalled faces. “I’m starting to think that the black opera won’t have any truth to it, no matter who they got to compose or perform it.”

  He left them trying to bribe the guards to bring in copies of the Giornale.

  “Conrad.” Roberto Capiraso stepped forward, score under his arm.

  It was the first time Conrad had been unable to avoid speaking to Argente since the man’s wife kissed him.

  I’d feel better if I didn’t understand him.

  “Conrad, do you think�
� Am I in competition with something written by Vincenzo Bellini?”

  Once again when expressing strong emotion, Roberto sounded operatic—this time like a bass throwing up his hands in horror at some haunting spectre or Gothic graveyard.

  He’s as bad as an Englishman at expressing his feelings! Conrad snorted inwardly. He had the urge to ease the man’s fears. Whether it came from guilt or sympathy, Conrad didn’t know.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “You think not?”

  “I suspect Felice Romani authored their libretto,” Conrad countered grimly. “We can only do what we can do. But it has to be the best we can do.”

  He made his way back to the stage box, corrected the verses for Act IV, and, ironically, found them flowing easier.

  Either because my emotions are now raw, Conrad thought. The scab ripped away. Or else because rhymes and poetic images are a refuge… from fear over when the next attack will come.

  Outside the San Carlo, the Sun set.

  Inside, the great chandelier had its candles lit, as well as the lamps and candles by the stage, for a lighting rehearsal.

  The continual shouts of men moving the stage flats into place finally sent Conrad and the singers below ground, to the mine where Paolo-Isaura commandeered the forte-piano.

  “Act Three, final scene.” Conrad slapped the written and much amended pages down on the rickety table. He announced, “Cuts.”

  The singers drifted up to cluster around the table, like bees around a hive: apparently lazy but in fact obsessed with collecting their own honey.

  “So few lines?” Lorenzo Bonfigli whined, mock-pathetically.

  Paolo’s alto snort sounded from where she uncovered the piano keys. “You have a good male role and you’re a tenor! Listen, it’s only a couple of decades since your sort was confined to singing old men and nurses!”

  Conrad overrode Lorenzo’s mutterings about how the chest-voice high C was the note of the future. And Isaura’s comment that if she had another good mezzo, she’d cast her as the hero, as is proper.

  “I’ve taken out the evil Priest wanting to sacrifice the Amazon’s son,” Conrad began, “since we don’t have Armando any more.”

  Roberto Conte di Argente gave an absent nod. “Those verses are considerably shortened. I suppose I can adjust the score…”

  He sounded doubtful. Conrad just prevented himself from screaming.

  Any cut, with an over-run of fifty minutes, must be good!

  Co-opting one of the wooden chairs, Conrad sat and spread the papers out across the folding table. “I’ve also cut the Jaguar General Chimalli bribing the High Priest to give a false prophecy—”

  JohnJack muttered something unintelligible.

  “—But we can keep Chimalli’s message to Cortez—that, on the condition that Cortez refuses to marry Princess Tayanna, his child will be spared evisceration on the step-pyramid.”

  Roberto waved a dismissive hand. “The music’s agreed for that, and for the Amazon wench when they take her child away. And for Thalestris throwing off her disguise and proclaiming herself Hippolyta’s mother and the Queen of the Amazons.”

  Conrad nodded agreement, trying desperately to frustrate those parts of himself that were at war. One part fervently wished that he might enjoy working with his horse’s arse of a composer, since—for all he deserved the name Superbo—Roberto was also a man for whom one might feel some slight respect. Every other part of Conrad’s mind replayed Nora’s impulsive kiss.

  He could convince himself he regretted it had happened.

  We have five—four?—days. Can I not wait that long!

  Glad that only one lamp remained lit on the table, hiding his face in shadow as he leaned back, Conrad turned over pages of the brightly-lit score.

  “We have to lose the Princess’s aria confessing that if she doesn’t do what her High Priest demands, there’ll be a revolt by the superstitious mob. Sorry, Sandrine. So we go straight to the chorus preparing the ceremonies for the wedding day. The Amazons and the child are brought out of jail in chains. Tayanna enters with flower-maids. And then—new verses—the shock entry for the ending of Act Three—”

  Conrad, pleased with himself, couldn’t help sounding so.

  “—The wedding ceremony begins, but is cut short. All of a sudden, we hear trumpets! A ship has landed. Visitors are proclaimed. A splendid parade of armed European soldiers enters—”

  Conrad leaned forward into the circle of light that illuminated the singers’ faces.

  “—And that’s going to be made up of every warm body that isn’t actually singing in this scene in the procession, right? Right down to Angelotti’s apprentices! So, the procession of men in armour, with banners, and at their head is none other than—Charles the Fifth, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain! Who is Fernando Cortez’s King and master.”

  Paolo interrupted from where she sprawled on the piano-seat. “Because people nip across the Atlantic every day…”

  “There’s nothing to stop Cortez’s King arriving.” Conrad made an expansive gesture, the chair creaking. “We need that impact on the audience! The great King-Emperor Charles, Carlo Quinto, il Re Carlo, has arrived to ask why Cortez hasn’t yet conquered the Aztec lands as the ‘New Spain of the Ocean Sea’…”

  Conrad turned the annotated score around so that il Superbo could read the alterations.

  “So il Re Carlo immediately bans the wedding. And we here have another verse on love and duty. The King tells Cortez he must choose between being the King’s Viceroy in the New World, and marrying the native princess, and it’s clear which option he expects Cortez to pick. Cortez begs for pardon from his liege lord on his knees—”

  “I beg your pardon?” Roberto sat up. “Fernando Cortez wouldn’t!”

  Conrad lowered his voice, so that Velluti would not break off his argument with Bonfigli. “But Giambattista would! Anywhere he can slip it into a performance. I know he can’t act, but he can sing ‘O mi perdono, Re Carlo!’ so that the Pit will weep.”

  The Conte di Argente fumbled among books and scores and came up with a pencil to scrawl across his copy. He added something under his breath about vulgar mobs that Conrad chose to ignore.

  “So, here is where we shorten Act Three.” Conrad reached over and turned two pages of the Count’s score. “We can lose Thalestris telling Hippolyta that she must choose between duty to her nation and her love for a man. Lose Cortez agonising over whether he can marry Tayanna. There’s yet another love-and-duty verse not much further on… Here! It was High Priest Mazatl, but we killed him off, so it’s just General Chimalli warning Princess Tayanna that Cortez is worming his way into her confidence so the Europeans can take over the kingdom. She must marry a strong man of the tribe immediately; Chimalli tells Tayanna he loves her; she sings that she must choose between love and duty.”

  Roberto’s dark brows lifted. “So?”

  “So—” Conrad thumbed over another page. “—Look, you have everybody on stage here. I have a suggestion. Take all the love-versus-duty out of everywhere else in the last half of the Act, and put it here. Make the end a sextet.”

  “Che momento!” Roberto leaned over the pages, his expression keen as a hound’s. “General Chimalli, Queen Thalestris, and il Re Charles on the side of duty—bass, contralto, and tenor. Princess Tayanna, Cortez, and Hippolyta singing all for love—mezzo, castrato, and soprano. Yes…”

  Conrad leaned his chair momentarily forward on its front legs to read what Roberto scribbled on the libretto. The oil lamp cast sufficient light to make that possible, although it only accented the darkness of the tapering ceiling of the mine. He pushed away momentary claustrophobia in favour of watching the Conte di Argente rapidly adapt the melodies he had written.

  Paolo-Isaura snatched the pages away almost as soon as they were altered, ink smearing her thumb, and was soon one of a circle of heads at the piano bent over the new version. Voices tried a proposed line or two, with insufficient powe
r to strain any vocal cords.

  “I never realised that was in there.” Conrad listened to a fragment of melody, compulsive now that it was not drowned by counterpoint. “I’m going to be hearing it all day… night…”

  He pulled out his watch, which was uninformative.

  “…Whichever it is now. I’d give money to see what Il Giornale del Regno delle Due Sicilie would write in a review of L’Altezza!”

  Roberto Capiraso, who had his head tilted while he listened to the piano, shot a glance that chilled Conrad. “It occurs to me, sometimes… That we do all this for something that will, at best, have one performance.”

  That silenced Conrad for a moment.

  “One significant performance,” he countered. “If we succeed, more of them later on.”

  Il Superbo’s gloom turned sardonic. “Very well. Shall we hear some of this significant sextet?”

  Conrad stood and clapped his hands for attention.

  “All right, let’s try it, shall we? Sextet end of Act Three, on the one hand, in support of love, Fernando Cortez—” It was always wise to mention the primo uomo first. “—And Princess Tayanna, and Hippolyta. And on the side of stern duty, Brigida, Amazon Queen; JohnJack, and Lorenzo. Lorenzo, you’re the King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, could you remember that, please?”

  The tenor responded to Conrad’s exasperation with a grin. “Act One, High Priest Mazatl’s acolyte—and corpse—Act Two, Captain Diego—and corpse!… Acts Three and Four, il Re Carlo, who might even survive! Why would I have any problem remembering that?”

  Conrad sorted out copies for the recitateurs and passed those over.

  The unsubdued racket that followed sent him retiring to his stone chamber for wine and olives, no matter what time of the day or night it might be.

  He slept an hour, and chatted with Tullio, and came out into the mine refreshed.

  The new sextet, in its variously good and bad attempts, had temporarily ceased to echo through underground Naples. Conrad found no one present but one of Mantenucci’s guards, deep in conversation with Luigi Esposito, and Roberto Conte di Argente picking out notes on the piano.