by Mary Gentle
Luigi had the look that meant he was engaged in business; Conrad therefore didn’t disturb him.
“I have a death aria for General Chimalli—or Fernando Cortez.” Broad bricklayers’ fingers moved over the keys, and Roberto hummed a solo piece.
Conrad meandered across to the forte-piano. He thought for a moment that the composer was humming brokenly in places for lack of verses to set. Then—the orchestral accompaniment filled in by his mind—he could hear how Cortez would sing as he died, the music filling in the gaps his broken lines, until at last he would fall silent forever, halfway through a phrase, and only the violin and flute would finish the achingly-sad wordless aria…
Silence followed. It took effort for Conrad to shake himself free of the music’s power.
“Cortez is not going to die.” He met Roberto’s shadowed eyes. “He’s the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl; the Aztecs think he’s a god!”
Luigi Esposito spoke up, from the other side of the piano; evidently having concluded his business with the guard. “Corradino, you of all people ought to know how irrelevant that is!”
Conrad couldn’t help a spurt of amusement. He nonetheless glared at Luigi, where the police captain rested his elbow on the forte-piano, reading the pages of the score that were spread out on top of it.
“Whether it’s relevant or not, I want this opera to have the happy conclusion. The lieto fine.”
“How?” Roberto Capiraso’s interruption sounded waspish. He scrubbed his fingers through his hair in a way that he wouldn’t have, in the days before he was permanently short of sleep. His dark hair flopped back over his forehead, the lamp casting shadows to make his expression unreadable. He gave the police chief no attention at all.
Luigi, turning over the pages of the score, matching lines to music, glanced up. “This doesn’t work.”
“Luigi…” Conrad began a warning.
“‘Finale, Act Four,’” Luigi read, tilting the paper towards the lamp. “‘Princess Tayanna gives her decision in her rondo finale’… Here: ‘Tayanna calls on Quetzalcoatl and sacrifices all love except that of her country, swearing to live as a Virgin of the Sun, thus placating the angry volcano.’”
Luigi cupped his chin in his hand, where he leaned his elbow on the piano.
“That’s… No. Really, Corrado! No. That’s bathos. That isn’t going to work. It’d be better if they all died!”
Conrad waited for the wrath of il Superbo to descend on Luigi Esposito.
“No,” the Count acceded. “It isn’t good.”
“Cazzo! It’s what we agreed!” Conrad protested. “The volcano that’s been bubbling in the background—if Angelotti’s done it right—is appeased by the Principessa sacrificing both her love of Cortez and of Chimalli. Instead of lava, the volcano erupts with tropical flowers.”
The silence that greeted that was not one Conrad wanted to hear.
Conrad snapped his ink-smeared copy of the libretto shut, hearing it echo through the Roman mine. “We can be reasonably sure that the black opera will end in tragedy. It’s the easiest way to generate high emotion. We can’t guarantee to do tragedy better, particularly when we don’t know what they’re doing. We can try for reconciliation, peace, and sacrifice; repentance, joy—all emotions which carry a charge, and which I don’t think the black opera will bother with.”
Luigi shrugged one shoulder. “I just give a warning. This’ll leave people cold.”
“I wrote the verses! Signore Capiraso set them! We both agreed this, in the synopsis, weeks ago!”
The piano seat scraped back over bare boards. Conrad glanced around to find Roberto Capiraso standing, closing the lid over the keys.
“The police hireling is correct.”
Conrad would have taken a moment to enjoy Luigi’s expression of outrage, if he hadn’t been contending with one of his own. “Roberto!”
“It looked simple and right in the synopsis. Things change in the writing.” Roberto swept papers off the top of the piano, into his leather folder. The taut line of his shoulders slumped. “The counter-opera will work only if it gives the truth of human passions. Otherwise the black opera will erase what we do. Corrado… You can’t cheat to attain the lieto fine. Cortez has to lose either the woman he loves, or the mother of his son. Hippolyta must choose her son or her people. Tayanna loses Cortez or she loses her country to the invaders. The potential for a happy ending for all isn’t present in what we’ve set up here!”
The Count shook his head.
“We would need to rewrite from the beginning…”
Half a week. Four days, and a little more, and L’Altezza azteca, ossia il serpente pennuto is on stage.
Roberto Capiraso slapped the pages of his score closed, the sound echoing through the cathedral-spaces of the mine.
Conrad groaned under his breath, and gave in. “Very well: it doesn’t work. I admit it. And the final scene is vital—but it is just one scene. Eight minutes! We can revise one scene. We have time. We’ll make time.”
Luigi Esposito abandoned his lazy pose, drawing himself up as if he were prepared to assist in any way possible. “Paolo can take over your rehearsals, Corrado. While Tullio’s ill, I’ll detail off a couple of my men, to make sure you get fed. We can make this right.”
Roberto Capiraso rubbed at insomnia-marked eyes. “Conrad—I’m at your disposal for discussions on the music.”
His frank look made Conrad all but blush.
Member of the società onorata or not, you’ve been honest with me, and I…allowed Nora to do what she wanted.
“We can find the truth of this,” Conrad managed to say steadily.
The Conte di Argente gave a formal bow. “I must hope, must believe, that we can. Because I fear that, if the last scene fails to catch the audience’s emotions, all the rest of the counter-opera will go for nothing.”
CHAPTER 36
Conrad battered his mind against the problem of the finale until the backs of his eyeballs hurt.
Emerging for food, he discovered it to be Saturday morning.
“It’s been four days since they clobbered me.” Tullio didn’t look up from packing. His bruises were green, yellow, purple; and he had ignored Sandrine’s offer of stage make-up. “I’ll be fine.”
“You will.” Conrad realised he spoke more as though it were an order. “This is Saturday; I’ll expect you back by Monday at the latest.”
“Can’t guarantee his Emperorship won’t mess about and keep us from getting back here until the day itself…”
Conrad reached over and took his second best coat from the big man, brushing off the shoulder-capes. “If it weren’t for other factors, I’d stop you going.”
The Oh would you? was written as plain as print on Tullio Rossi’s battered face.
As Conrad suspected, curiosity overcame bloody-mindedness.
“What ‘factors’?”
“I’ll be happier if you’re out of Naples, and… if you choose not to return here with the Emperor, then understand that I won’t blame you for that.”
Conrad laid the coat down neatly in the travelling trunk, and straightened.
Unsurprisingly, Tullio’s dark eyes were fixed on him.
The silence prompted speech. Conrad snapped, “I told you the Emperor’s only here as a diversion! Everybody will be chasing him, not the counter-opera.”
The big man folded his arms and raised his eyebrows, which conveyed his point economically.
“Exactly!” Conrad fought exasperation. “If you’re with the Emperor, you’re one of the people who’ll get that dangerous attention.”
Tullio shrugged.
After a moment, as if he added the comment for Conrad’s benefit, he said, “Not much choice between being chased by the Prince’s Men, or being chased with the Emperor, is there?”
“Maybe not much choice—but you have it.”
Tullio smiled. “I’m not about to point the Emperor at Naples and catch a ship going in the opposite direction,
if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean.” Conrad had a feeling of grinding frustration. And pushed it aside on the grounds that Tullio Rossi is an adult, and capable of taking his own decisions—
Even if he is acting like a fool!
Tullio returned to his packing, pondering over a pair of clean but worn boots.
Conrad dug out a pair of his own that were marginally better and passed them over. “Ferdinand said a while back that returning the Emperor to the north will damage the power of the Prince’s Men. Half his councillors will go to the guillotine, apparently. Ferdinand’s willing to risk whatever might happen to the Emperor with other countries’ secret police, informers, assassins and hired murderers…”
Tullio polished a boot absently on his sleeve, and looked at Conrad from under his eyebrows. “Makes one thing easier.”
Conrad obliged him by asking, “What’s that?”
“Paolo.”
Conrad gave him a querying look.
Tullio smirked. “You don’t know if she’s in more danger here, or in more danger if he came with me. So you won’t be tempted to lay down the law to her. And he won’t be tempted to punch you.”
Conrad pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tullio… Just think on the level of strategy for a moment. It’s necessary that the Emperor get back to the north. It isn’t absolutely necessary that he leave Naples in your company with a trail of pursuers, assassins, banditti, and secret police behind him. You take my point?”
Tullio finally gave way to the grin that had been visibly building for minutes.
“His Majesty the Emperor’s not as innocent as you, padrone, so I dare say he’s got that worked out ahead of time. He won’t march in with flags flying and guns blazing. I expect he’ll be happy if barely anyone notices he’s in Naples before he’s out of it—and no matter who our Ferdinand tips off, that’s the way I’m going to play it.”
Conrad sighed, and shook Tullio by the shoulder. “And I would warn Ferdinand of that. Except that, since he’s sent you to fetch the Emperor, he’ll already have taken account of it. Just… be careful.”
This time Tullio’s smile had teeth. “Oh, I intend to.”
They went above-ground. Conrad walked with Tullio to the harbour, and the S. Gennaro, a small two-masted schooner loaned by a Neapolitan nobleman implicitly trusted by Ferdinand, who could bring the Emperor back from Stromboli to Naples with proper dignity, without at the same time disclosing his Imperial Majesty’s identity, or the hand of the King of the Two Sicilies in the matter.
“Too fond of the brandy, that Emperor,” Tullio muttered, before he boarded. “Expect you’ll need to pour both of us into the San Carlo when I get him back here… Listen. Take care of Paolo.”
Conrad acknowledged his change of tone with a nod. No protestations needed to be made.
The white sails faded into sea-haze.
Conrad dismissed his escort, despite their protests, and they at least fell back to a decent distance. He walked the crowded streets for a while, luxuriating in the infinite blue sky over his head, instead of rock, and the smell of fish, cooking meat, human sweat, and the camellias that burst open with the spring.
The loaded duelling pistol was heavy in his coat pocket.
If the Prince’s Men catch up with me—So much the worse for the Prince’s Men!
It was not self-indulgence, or not completely. The chance to breathe, before going back into the San Carlo; the chance to walk under an open sky, and hear the drama of the streets; all of it stood a good chance of releasing some answer to the conclusion of L’Altezza azteca.
Certainly there’s enough drama on the streets to supply a man with a hundred opera plots.
But I don’t have a hundred, I have this one. Damn it.
Returning inside, the loud orchestra rehearsal in the San Carlo’s pit rattled his concentration. Roberto Capiraso snorted at the suggestion they should go under Naples, but conceded a retreat to one of the stage boxes. He stood, periodically, and conveyed instructions across the auditorium to Paolo in a near-shout.
Conrad stripped off his coat and wrapped it around his head, muffling the noise. He had the score of L’Altezza azteca, ossia il serpente pennuto open in his lap. The ink dried on the nib of his pen.
“How difficult can it be?” Il Superbo demanded rhetorically, taking the seat beside him. He opened his copy of the score at one of the love duets, scribbling a note of the coloratura ornamentation he was devising. “We know the score forward and backward—except where there are more cuts to be made—therefore the ending must be apparent to us.”
Conrad muttered his favoured curses under his breath, and pulled his coat closer over his ears.
“It must be appropriate—your word—and yet surprising; it must satisfy the emotional expectations of the audience, and for preference not be a tragedy. And yet we don’t know the black opera is a tragedy, we only guess that it is!” Conrad dug the heel of his hand into the socket of his right eye, light blooming into dazzles. “What happens if the only possible resolution of the counter-opera is tragic?”
Roberto Capiraso stopped scribbling. His dark eyes blinked. “It’s not.”
The Conte di Argente vaulted over the front of the box before Conrad could formulate an answer that was not vaffanculo! and strode over to upbraid Paolo and the strings.
Three days. Four, including the performance. I can be in the same room with Roberto Capiraso that long without killing him, even a little…
The words and events grew tangled, intricate, and meaningless. Conrad stared at ruined pages, wishing for something to cut through the mess like a sword, and bring him the simplicity the finale of L’Altezza demanded.
As ever, with work in this state, hours inched past. It was still Saturday when he gave up, if past sunset.
Enough!
He ripped up the spoiled pages. Roberto had left him notes, he saw—a dozen minor improvements that the composer wanted to make to the body of the opera, now he had heard the orchestral rehearsal, each of which demanded a shift in the libretto. Conrad put them off, too.
Out of curiosity, he wandered over to the singers on the stage.
Sandrine Furino, sitting on the stage’s edge, leaned on Estella Belucci’s shoulder, reading a revised duet. Conrad knelt the other side of the blonde.
“Damn, this is good. Look at those trills and runs—” Sandrine caught Estella’s expression, and gave an apologetic shrug. “I grant you, the leaps he’s asking for… Almost impossible to sing.”
Estella looked unsure whether she was being complimented or undermined.
“Your range?” Conrad checked.
Estella sounded put out. “The usual dramatic soprano—A below middle C to the C two octaves above middle C. He wants more than that, never mind my tessitura! The jumps! Chest voice to head voice with nothing in between, and back the same way. It’s a soprano-killer. And if he writes anything else that’s good, it’s in my passaggio!”
She wouldn’t be the first soprano to leave the business for good after a role strained her voice too hard, Conrad reflected. And while I don’t know if that actually matters, in terms of what we’re doing here—she needs to think it does.
“I’ll have a word with il Superbo. Remind him he’s showing off a dramatic voice, not slaughtering it on the first night.”
“And I’ll just have to try harder, won’t I?”
The fair-haired woman scrambled up from the edge of the stage and walked over to the piano.
Sandrine stood up automatically. It was a gesture that had been ingrained at an early age, and Conrad knew—from Isaura, if for no other reason—that these things resisted eradication.
“Are you jealous of her role?” Conrad teased.
“Of course I am. One line more for any other singer is one line less for me!” Sandrine gave him a look from under her eyelashes, that returned his teasing with interest. “You should write another aria for the mezzo…”
“A new aria wit
h three days to go? Cazzo!” Conrad rubbed his aching head. “The finale’s enough of a bitch.”
Sandrine chuckled, but tactfully didn’t ask every other member of the company’s question: have you finished yet?
Over by the piano, Estella Belucci’s soprano soared over its notes.
“‘Occhi come chiaro di luna’—”
She put a wrenching sorrow into the aria devoted to her hopelessness over her Aztec rival’s beauty:
“Your eyes of moonlight,
Skin of milk and snow;
Your heart made of disdain—”
Estella reached for the final note and lost power.
Isaura coached her again through the note that fell in her passaggio where chest voice transitions to head voice. Conrad made his way back to the box, and read and re-read the libretto, marking where the most effective music fell, seeing if that would hint at how he might finish the finale.
Nothing.
He took notice of the world again in JohnJack/Chimalli’s “Mad Scene,” when the coloratura bass was encouraged to float an extended note—at the very top of his tessitura—over eight bars from the orchestra, before seamlessly picking up the reprise of the cabaletta with the chorus.
Conrad applauded. So did the stagehands who had stopped to listen.
There must be an answer: what happens to these roles—these people—in the end?
Ah.
Conrad slid into the shadows at the side of the stage. He caught Paolo-Isaura’s elbow, when the short break came.
“I need the last hour of rehearsals tonight.” He continued, before she could protest, “Just the principal singers. It’s necessary.”
She raked her fingers through her short hair, cravat half undone, the picture of a bashful young man. “All right… I’ll tell them.”
Conrad nodded. I should give her more, he thought, and spontaneously added, “You’re conducting on the opening night.”
“But—il Conte—!”
“I understand he has plans to leave early, but, in any case, il Superbo makes the orchestra too nervous. And too murderous.” Conrad caught the acknowledging gleam in his sister’s eye. “I don’t care if you’re discovered and doing it in a skirt, ‘Gianpaolo Pironti’ is going to conduct for us!”
