The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  The steel of her breastplate catches light, and glows with the colour of the dust clouds. Not a property armour, but one from Egg Castle made for a large man, and it fits her; and Conrad sees at last why they call bright steel “white armour,” taking every bit of light and reflecting it the colour of milky ash.

  Brigida sang, “How long have I wandered—and to find my daughter so!”

  They came up to the new lines that Conrad had talked her through as they scrambled over rock and ash, leaving Pozzuoli. He found himself holding his breath.

  “Solo una memoria, curò teneramente ed adorò… Just a memory, cherished and adored.” She voiced it flawlessly. “I will take home with me this token of your love, your son.”

  The voices flowed in and about each other.

  JohnJack lifted his head.

  “Fratello detestato!” His deep voice reached every highest terrace of the amphitheatre. “Nemico valutato!”

  Detested brother. Valued enemy. Conrad caught a sideways glance from Roberto Conte di Argente, where the man conducted.

  I never thought…

  It lost itself in the music, with the knowledge that very often one does not think; the applicability to personal situations is only apparent afterwards; and in some senses, a libretto is always a story that the poet tells himself, only to be truly read after it’s finished and other people sing it back to him.

  All four of the voices sang. Here and there a silent bar, where Lorenzo or Estella should have come in—Conrad found his throat too tight to give voice, reminded painfully of those parades after the war, in which the cavalry formations led a horse with an empty saddle, to mark all the fallen.

  It is those silences that underscore the sadness of glory and joy that is the last stretta of The Aztec Princess. Far more than what Leonora is singing, her coloratura moving as unnaturally far below the female voice as Velluti’s is above the male, but it doesn’t matter, Conrad sees and hears.

  The attention of the Dead is not divided.

  They are not partisan between one opera or another. Inexplicable as it seems, he thinks—

  The people of Naples regard both these operas as one and the same work.

  But what else are they to think? Conrad realised. All singers are on the one stage!

  They clap and compliment all equally. Leonora’s is not the solo star voice. It is, Conrad hears, the accompaniment to what the quartet sing. JohnJack’s “I regret,” Sandrine’s “I love.” Brigida’s “I grieve,” and Velluti’s “I burn with the fire of ambition.” For a stanza, Leonora is the comprimario voice which throws all of theirs into sharp relief.

  She realised it, he saw, but there was nothing to be done.

  Conrad began to sing, very quietly, in the tenor which would never be professional, no matter how much as a young man he had tried. Sang softly enough that surely no one could hear him, but sang, because it was beyond him not to be a part of this.

  He walked forward, finding himself behind Paolo-Isaura, who sent her bow over the strings in ferocious pursuance of the score. She whipped out notes as if the violin bow were a sword; reinforcing Roberto’s control of all the singers of the counter-opera as she walked, as if all the gathered singers were one instrument, and could be played like one alone.

  Tullio Rossi took the score from Conrad and walked beside her with it open in one hand, and an army bayonet in the other. He stared alertly from side to side for threats, acting as if he were the one man present not involved by the musicodramma—but Conrad saw his feet fell on the cinders in the rhythm of the major part of the music.

  It changed.

  From quartet and comprimario to an ensemble of all five singers—Leonora’s superb unearthly voice winding in and out of the others, joining in unison now with Velluti, now with Brigida, now with JohnJack and Sandrine, until it was not possible to say whether she sang for the black opera or against it.

  Even more troubling, Conrad found as he dropped his efforts to sing, blasphemous in the face of this kind of quality, there was no way to say if the San Carlo’s quartet sang for the counter-opera or against it.

  The stretta of the finale ultimo became something else with a life of its own. He lost his breath at the sound of it. Velluti and Leonora without hesitation and on the same note changed roles, so that Nora’s voice rang out triumphantly on “O Re, mi perdono,” and Giambattista Velluti portrayed more emotion in his voice than he ever had in acting, and sang at the lowest extent of his range, “We will live as one, all together, as we ought.”

  Nora sang coloratura improvisation around the melody that Conrad had heard when he dreamed of storm-riven seawater sinking into sand. He cannot recognise it—should not, because what does that say about the universe?—but he does.

  He tried desperately not to be swept away.

  He failed.

  His heart clenched under his ribs with a sensation of emotional vulnerability as the chorus joined her, and soared up into air thick with destruction. He forgot that it was Roberto Capiraso—husband to the woman I love—who had created this music. Forgot that it was Nora singing—lying treacherous bitch—and felt something in himself aching, reaching out, gathering himself and his energy as the orchestra and singers began building by note and phrase.

  The voices of il Principe’s tenor and contralto joined her inhuman voice, making something—heart, lungs, soul?—swell inside his rib cage until Conrad became breathless. Not inhuman! he protested his own thought. But not human either.

  Orchestra and other singers paused in an aching moment’s silence. Nora’s soprano rang out:

  “Non perdoni! Io non pento!”

  Isabella of Castile’s declaration, when her plans of murder are irrevocably committed:

  “Do not forgive! I do not regret!”

  Her audience cheer, shout, loud enough to drown the instruments—the strings, which for Conrad are the soul on which opera rests; the brass for emotion, and the drums are the heartbeat.

  All of it’s nothing without the voice, and now’s the time to find out if that’s true, he thinks. Because, here, we have almost nothing else except the voice—

  Conrad would laugh if he wasn’t weeping. He stifles that, so he can feed even his own weak tenor into the chorus. A little ragged because not rehearsed, but forgivably human against Leonora’s inhuman perfection.

  The score passes without a break into the finale ultimo.

  Words slotted seamlessly into sound, the stresses falling on the important emotions and knowledge—the surge of the chorus coming to lift the whole body of the work up—he smeared tears from the corners of the eyes with his sleeve. The stretta shifted to a different level: words and lines repeating—he heard the distant drums and trumpets of war—the aching desire of love—the words carried beyond the music by one singing voice—

  Music and choir crashed back down in a secular hymn, an anthem that set shivers down the hairs of Conrad’s nape.

  Everything acted on his nerves, as if he had no skin: the interplay between soloist and crowd—the part the orchestration played in echoing back the words—everything complex and complete to the last decorated words and music. All the singers’ voices lift all up, and buttress the poignant voice of the soloist—desiring, balked in that desire, but searing up to completion despite all. Even the pain is enjoyable, or it would not be possible to leave a performance streaming with tears and yet searingly happy.

  Conrad’s head throbbed, hearing Leonora’s melody and that of L’Altezza twine around each other, join and climb, all five voices lifting like the skylark that flies up and up into the hot skies of June, flies upward until it can sing no more and falls out of the sky—every effort given, every heart emptied, every exposed emotion naked—and the dead of Naples stand up on the amphitheatre steps, where their ancestors cheered blood, two thousand years ago, and they shout, calling in a confused mess for each of the singers by name, Velluti, Spinelli, Lorenzani, bella Sandrine!—and Contessa!, too; Leonora!, Conrad hears; the audience g
iving their loud validation not to one or the other but to both, as if the only way to defeat the black opera were for black opera and white opera to become one.

  “The finales are different!” Conrad shouted—going completely unheard. Reconquista will be tragic death and then triumph: Ferdinand of Aragon’s death, and the apotheosis of Isabella of Castile, free to rule and reign. And L’Altezza Azteca… will have forgiveness.

  It felt like a physical weight on his shoulders. Roberto composed both of these, so the difference is in the word, my words—

  The thought was swept away in a moment. Dramatic soprano and male soprano clash against each other. No, Conrad forced himself to remember. I wrote the emotion, but it is how they interpret it.

  It is on Tullio’s face that Conrad sees the first change.

  Sees him soften, caught up without his own wish, as, a few yards away, Velluti began to truly sing.

  Some of his voice was male soprano. Some down in the natural range that castrati normally sing: a rich and flexible contralto. Some of the notes drop low enough that they must be out of Velluti’s tessitura—

  And they are.

  “Sandrine!”

  Conrad stared at the mezzo, hearing Sandrine picking up the role of the hero, to give voice to all that she is—both upper and lower ranges of her stupendous range. She did not risk jumping from one to the other, or finding some passaggio, but she sung in a mezzo that mirrored Leonora’s flawless soprano, and then dropped to a strong tenor to out-sing il Principe’s man, her coloratura brilliant enough that the Prince’s Men applauded.

  Tullio said in deep appreciation, “God damn.”

  A soaring note rose from Leonora, up into the smoky air, buttressed by the male voices. Her coloratura roused Alvarez’s shackled hostages to shout in appreciation. Conrad found his eyes free of volcanic dust as water welled up and ran down his cheeks.

  No one has ever heard such singing, Conrad knows. Or ever will again. Whatever power there is in musicodramma, this is the zenith of it. Rocket-showers of notes cascading into the thickening air, spangles, bright as thrown gold coins, joyful as bells—the unearthly sound bringing the taste of ash and char into Conrad’s mouth, as she reaches notes not attainable by the human voice.

  A capella, Velluti and Sandrine and Brigida sung with the joys and pains that belong to mortality, love, and pardon.

  The slim figure of Leonora, so still against the background of swirling ash and smoke; she sings with the joy that comes of being freed of the pains of mortality, Conrad knows.

  No wonder she sings Non perdoni! Who has a right to pardon her?

  Time doesn’t constrain her any more: she has all the time in the world. Death isn’t an end: death is endless life to her—endless existence, anyway. If she finds herself in pain, she need only wait, and sooner or later it will end. For all intents and purposes, she is immortal.

  The two sets of voices soared, and he was not certain, now, whether they fought, or whether they supported each other: Leonora’s fire, Velluti’s slender beauty, Sandrine’s pure open joy in singing, JohnJack’s utter masculine resonance, and Brigida’s amused confidence. Their voices have all the joy and aching pain of being alive in them, heightened so it is more bearable than mere everyday living.

  Leonora’s voice soars, luring them to follow—

  Velluti’s voice broke.

  It cracked and tore, with a sound no human throat ought to make.

  Conrad had a split second to think, Velluti will be lucky if he ever speaks again, never mind sings—

  Leonora is still standing. Triumphant, opening her mouth, singing her coloratura victory at them.

  Not higher, but more able to penetrate the dull everyday and carry the hearer away. Not louder, but more intense; soaking up every part of the one who hears it, and impelling emotion into them.

  Leonora began to walk forward—towards them—as she sang.

  Conrad glanced back—saw Roberto Capiraso stop conducting—and Paolo-Isaura flawlessly pick it up in mid-bar—

  Roberto walked forward until he was almost at the crumbling edge of the gap. He and Leonora stood some eight metres apart, across the gash in the earth. Close enough to see expressions, even the most subtle; close enough to hear what is spoken, if not what is whispered.

  Incalculably far apart; the gap cannot be bridged.

  Conrad couldn’t stop himself. He left the singers and went towards the crevasse.

  “Leonora.” The Count’s voice sounded ash-clogged.

  Her voice reached up, overcoming all the ambient noise. She lifted her head, as if the shrieks of applause blew in her face like a warm summer wind.

  She sang, her voice inhumanly caressing the pure notes that the human voice cannot reach, going far beyond the mortal

  “We could never win against that!” Conrad swore, frustrated.

  Roberto’s fists clenched at his side. He didn’t look away from his wife’s face. “You’ve realised that, have you?”

  The last note of the finale ultimo swelled up, soaring over the fumes and smoke of the Burning Fields.

  Leonora prolonged the final note far beyond the ability of a living singer. Conrad listened and let it run through him, never staggered by Roberto Capiraso’s work as much as he was now.

  A silence fell, like no other.

  Silence after the great anthem of the finale—silence padded by the volcanic ash that still sleeted down over the Burning Fields, covering the stone of the Amphitheatre and the men and woman who stood inside it.

  The ash-born crowds of dead men and women turned as one, every head simultaneous; from those on the highest tier of the amphitheatre to those a dozen yards away.

  “Padrone.” Beside Conrad, Tullio’s whisper sounded taut. “Why are they all looking at us?”

  A crackle of friction-lightning echoed through the amphitheatre. The thunder that rolled around the eruption pillar of Vesuvius shook the stones.

  The lips of the Returned Dead moved in unison.

  The voice, from each ash-dry throat, spoke.

  “You have summoned the Living God—and I am here.”

  CHAPTER 54

  Conrad found himself speaking before he realised that he would.

  “I don’t know what you are, but I do know you’re not God!”

  Commotion. Many living voices speaking. Many Returned Dead speaking in unison, speech interwoven so that all—including the voices of the most distant—seemed to arrive simultaneously in his ear.

  The unified voice demanded, “How do you know this?”

  “I don’t know it, the way you mean ‘know,’” Conrad said, surprisingly buoyed up by that conviction. “Not to be certain. I’ve no proof. But it seems to me the most likely theory.”

  Paolo-Isaura muttered, beside him. “You mean you’re positive that you’re not sure.”

  Conrad’s declaration was drowned out by Dominicans—Luka Viscardo the most vociferous. And by the remaining living Prince’s Men, hailing the vocal apparition as the Prince of this World.

  And by a number of the King’s riflemen loudly praying; crying that they should have brought a priest.

  Only Ferdinand looked amused at Conrad’s willingness to debate theology and philosophy in the middle of something aching to turn into killing violence.

  The throng of Returned Dead stood shoulder-to-shoulder in ranks on the tiers of the amphitheatre. They—or it—ignored the prayers, praise, and cries of heresy issuing from the Prince’s men, to focus on Conrad.

  “For all I know,” Conrad added, “since you’re speaking through all our voices, you’re something that comes from our dreams.”

  He half-hoped he might be given some clue to Nora’s music.

  Instead, the Voice of the Dead visibly pondered.

  The risen earth shook under their feet.

  Conrad eyed those of the Prince’s Men with rifles—those he could still see. They had mostly abandoned the upper levels of the ruined amphitheatre, he noted, almost with amusemen
t. As if guns would be harmless for all the future. The lower archway entrances seemed crowded with men who still carried guns, and who could cover King Ferdinand’s small force without effort.

  “Now it begins.”

  Leonora’s voice filled the air without effort. Conrad caught sight of her, suddenly, not twenty yards away; standing on the arena floor and gazing up at the Returned Dead of Naples.

  “What is she doing?” Paolo asked.

  Conrad turned his head, looking for Roberto Capiraso, and found the Count standing with his hands clasped behind him, as if he stood at the back of an opera-box like any gentleman, watching the finer points of the performance. “Roberto?”

  “They’ve given the Prince of this World the ability to over-ride the rules that the Creator-God set in place.”

  Capiraso’s lips quirked in a dark, oddly self-mocking, smile. To Conrad it said, How could I ever have believed in this?

  “In a moment, the requests will begin. I beg your pardon: prayers. And then we see how different a world the Prince will make.”

  Leonora lifted her head, gazing up at rank upon rank of the Returned Dead. Conrad expected to see more kinship with them. He thought she still outshone every one.

  “You are free!” Her voice came as triumphant as when she sang. “Prince of the World, you’re free—tell us how you’ve healed this world of its pain?”

  Silence.

  They’re wondering what to tell her first.

  Conrad surveyed row upon row of Naples faces. The kinship of being Returned was too subtle for him to see. What was plain—entirely plain—was that no mouth even intended to open to speak.

  Leonora stared.

  Only that motion, as her head came up, but he recognised the stillness in her. Nora, when trapped, thinking rapidly and desperately for an escape.

  “Of course,” Roberto rumbled quietly, his voice desolate. “I should have seen it.”