Hidden Voices

by Pat Lowery Collins

  “Perhaps it was the more disapproving of the two, Signor Ricci, and not his wife at all,” I say. “He was the one, if truth be told, who conjured the odious pact to keep me from my lover. Or it could have been the farmhand who first noticed us together. If it were he, how bold he was to speak up to Signora in that way.”

  Anetta sighs most heavily. She chews her bottom lip and twists her fingers.

  “What do you think?” I ask. “Who do you think betrayed us to Signora?”

  No longer as clear-eyed as before, she looks at me when it is obvious I’m through divulging my discordant feelings and speculations, and takes my hand in hers.

  “You have a gift, Luisa, that is much greater than you know. I think you realized a little of this at a time when others chided you for boasting. Do you remember how I never faulted you for that, believing always that you had the right?”

  “I do indeed recall it. You and Rosalba. You were the only two who came to my defense.”

  “How the others envied you, and do so still.”

  “I do not pay them any mind.”

  “Because you know at last the truth of what I say.” She whisks away a leaf that’s fallen on her apron.

  “But what of Alessandro?” I ask.

  “I think — though of course I do not know — that you are much too young to make an assignation. And from what you tell me of the boy, he is not ready yet to take a wife.”

  “All that is true. I see the sense of it. But how do I forget the feelings for him that I harbor?”

  “I think . . .” she begins again. “I cannot tell this for certain, for, as you say, the kind of love you speak of is unknown to me. But still, I do believe that love, once rooted in the human heart, will stay there, for as long as you should choose to keep it.”

  Though she has not said so many words, the ones she speaks have made me feel as if a little of the weight upon my sensibilities and mind is lifted.

  Quite suddenly, however, an expression appears upon her face that makes me think she’s harboring some private grief; her countenance becomes excessively disquieted as though she suddenly despairs. I am alarmed to hear great sobs escape her throat and see her bosom heave as if in pain.

  “What is it, dear Anetta? What afflicts you in this way?”

  Her words come slowly, and she does not glance at me at all. In fact, she looks away so I can’t see into her eyes.

  “It is this,” she states after such a while that I thought she’d been struck mute.

  When I reach up with my free hand and turn her face to mine, she clears her throat and looks down at her lap. She starts again.

  “It is this. I am your betrayer, Luisa. I am the one who told Signora Mandano of your love for Alessandro.”

  I pull my hand away from hers. I ask her to repeat what she has said, for I cannot conceive that it is true.

  “Why?” is all I manage after she has thus obliged me.

  “Because, heaven help me,” she sobs out, her voice grown loud and turbulent as if a storm is welling in her chest, “I do know the love you speak about, the love of man for woman, woman for a man. By some strange twist of God’s design, my love for you is of a strength unmatched by any liaison that one can name.”

  She stops to catch a breath.

  “And I possess the envy of a lover, too. It is that which caused me to betray your trust. That and the conviction deep within my soul that you are destined for most wondrous things, that there’s a world in waiting for the voice that has meant everything to me.”

  Stricken at first to my own silence, the only words I finally thread together do not address this awful knowledge I have gained of something she has borne alone for all these years.

  “But what of trust? Both things I swore you to keep secret you have told to someone.”

  “I did it for your better good. I swear. For your career.”

  For my career! I am not sure now how I feel about the glittering prospects close at hand at last. I am not certain any longer what to feel or think or even wish for. Does having a career mean giving up the other things in life I cherish? Will my voice become the mistress of my life and dictate all of my pursuits? Does a career justify the betrayal by my friend, the cold and calculating actions of my mother, the forced separation from the one I love?

  Something more than anger infects me till I almost cannot breathe or voice these questions or move. Could I lash out, it would be to flail at all the objects of this rage that now present themselves to my imagination. Anetta, being so close by, would surely bear the brunt. I did not ever ask for her protection nor seek her great devotion. I merely counted on her trust.

  But as I sit and simmer here, attempting to assuage my temper, one thing occurs to me — that if Anetta could retain for years a love so unrequited as her own for me, should not a love reciprocated fully such as mine for Alessandro last no matter what the difficulties? I am so cheered by this last thought that I turn back to Anetta, who sits forlornly next to me and has not raised her eyes or changed her bent position.

  “Anetta,” I say. “Friend — for friend you will continue to be because we share too much.” My anger unappeased as yet, I’m amazed at my forbearance and at what I’m able, after these first few words, to add. “And I begin to see the reasoning behind your disregard for my confidences and how neither offense was for self-gain.”

  “That is exactly what I prayed you would understand.”

  She tilts her face up till her eyes are resting on me once again.

  “I’m sorry you have suffered for my sake,” I tell her then. “I never knew before how painful such a love, even if returned, can be when the object of it is so far removed . . . in one way or another.”

  “It is not so very bad,” she replies, “now that you’ve assured me that I keep your friendship, it is truly not as bad as some might think. In some ways, I have grown quite accustomed to it.”

  I am both comforted for her and shocked to hear it, for that’s precisely what I will not ever do.

  “You made a promise to me not so long ago.”

  “About Rosalba’s child?”

  “And I, in turn, will make a promise, too.”

  “You said yourself that there is no need of promises.”

  “Well, I will make it nonetheless. It is a promise to myself.”

  She laughs and says with great good nature, “I should have guessed.”

  I rise from the bench and stand above her, taller than her by a head this once. I put my hand upon my breast as if to swear.

  “I will visit this voice of mine upon the world,” I tell her, “just as you and Father Vivaldi and Mother and all the others have convinced me that I should.”

  For fear it would inflame the envy I have quieted, I do not tell the rest of it — how I will never become accustomed to my loss of Alessandro, how I will bring my love for him into every opera house I travel to, will gather it into whatever bed I sleep upon, how I’ll hold it close for all the many years we cannot be together until I put it back again into his open heart.

  I WOULD HAVE called her Rosa.

  It is her birthday, and I think of how she must be talking now and running down the halls when given a chance, and will soon be playing tricks, as I used to. I wonder if she has my heavy hair, my black eyes. I wonder if Anetta has spoiled her and if she and Concerta are like true sisters. I wonder if she is musical. But she must be, for I willed her that gift with my whole being while she was still a part of me.

  Winter in Vienna is quite different from winter in Venice. I have experienced three winters here and am no longer surprised at the deep snowdrifts by my door and the difficulty in getting about the streets. I employ a carriage on the stormy days, always thinking back to that first frigid time when I arrived here with nothing but my oboe, the worn clothes upon my back, and the address that the Red Priest had given me one awful day when I was singing in the streets.

  This is a musical city, much like Venice in that, but very different from it in ot
her ways, as it lacks the waterways and gondolas. The wide cobbled streets have a beauty of their own. The man whom Father sent me to booked me at once when hearing of my training at the Pietà, and it wasn’t long before I was playing solo parts, some of them the same as I had played at the Ospedale, for Antonio Vivaldi’s work is known and highly favored here. I have also had occasion to play work of Maestri Corelli, Bach, and Geminiani, and another Venetian named Tomaso Albinoni. Soon I was able to afford a nice apartment and a mantua maker, who draws upon French fashion and favors exotic silks. A modiste attends upon me often as well. She brings me petticoats and caps and ribbons and such, and curls my unruly hair with hot irons. Someday I may even have my own maîtresse couturière.

  I favor rather solemn fabrics generally, preferring not to draw attention with anything except my music. I do, at long last, own a lavishly embroidered black velvet cloak with a lining of red satin, something I saw Luisa’s mother wear once and longed for inordinately. My occasions to don such a cloak are not infrequent, as I am escorted to the theater or a ball from time to time by any of a number of distinguished gentlemen. (Often we travel in a carriage as elegant as any gondola, with ornamented wheels, brocaded silk interiors, and windows made of glass.) One suitor in particular has taken my eye, but has not turned me lovesick, I am pleased to say. I gaze on all of them with a more level scrutiny that Anetta would indeed approve of.

  It has been mentioned in the newspapers when, on occasion, Father Vivaldi has come here on his way to visit his publisher, Estienne Roger, in Holland, or to mount another opera in Vienna, but we have not met. I like to think that he has sometimes been in the audience when I have performed, and I imagine the places in my solos with which he would have found fault, where he would have instructed me to make some small improvements, the sections he would have complimented.

  When his first oratorio, Moyses Deus Pharaonis, was performed at the Pietà, I chanced upon the program notes that one of my musician friends had procured. But when I looked for Luisa Benedetto’s name within it, I was surprised to find that Anastasia had sung the part of Sapens Primur that had been written for Luisa. The part of Moyses had been sung by Barbara; that of Aaron, by Candida. Even Silvia and Michelina had been chosen for small parts.

  I’ve lately heard that Father has been named maestro di concerti, as well he should be, since he has truly filled that role ever since Maestro Gasparini resigned a few years past. He also plans, I’m told, another large oratorio, this time to stir up patriotism for the Venetian war against the Turks in Corfu. It will be called Juditha Triumphans. On hearing this, I thought how, if she is not ill again or has no more contact with the Ospedale, it might be possible for Luisa to be featured at long last in this grand production. I’m even told that four or five arias have basso continuo and full string accompaniment that includes the viola d’amore.

  “Five more minutes, Signorina della Pietà,” Gregor, the stage manager, calls through my dressing-room door. I have been closeted here between performances that feature my playing of an oboe concerto by Albinoni. Staying true to the habits of the Ospedale, I never rehearse right before a concert or at an intermission, but try to keep my mind and body as unfettered as Father Vivaldi always cautioned us to do. What better way than to reminisce about my friends there and to call up that magic time.

  There is recent talk of a new young singer at the opera house with an astounding voice who they say was trained at the Pietà. Perhaps one day soon I’ll be a member of the orchestra when she performs. Perhaps I’ll look up from the pit during a section when my instrument is idle, and it will be Luisa standing there upon the stage, and I’ll hear her full, resplendent voice resounding from the rafters and shimmering through the glass chandeliers. Perhaps I’ll meet her afterward in the wings and we will hold each other and cry a little, and she will tell me of my Rosa, and I will tell her of my life singing on the streets of Venice and how I wanted Rosa to have something more than that. We’ll talk about Anetta and our many lovely days, the three of us together at the Ospedale, when we and all the other girls so privileged, sang and played for supper and for sustenance and, if we had only known it, for our very lives.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  In this book, I chose to concentrate on six pivotal years when Antonio Vivaldi worked as a violin teacher and ultimately maestro di concerti at the Ospedale della Pietà. These were the years before Vivaldi’s fame as a musician began to grow and make his life more public. I framed my novel in this time period in order to provide a clear window into the life of the orphanage and Vivaldi’s role there. I focused on three fictional members of the privilegiate del coro, which included only those girls chosen to play and sing in the concerts of the Pietà, concerts that were to become renowned throughout Europe. It is assumed that these more privileged students were picked for the coro because of talent and musical ability. They were also given privileges such as the ability to earn spending money as maestre, the right to pass judgment on their own tutors (which could affect a teacher’s income), and even the opportunity to sing operatic parts occasionally in professional productions outside the Ospedale. The main characters of my story grow in disparate directions as they come of age within the highly evolved social service system of the Republic of Venice under the doge. Minor characters often possess the same names as students who were at the Ospedale during the years covered by my book, and I sometimes identify them by the instruments they actually played, but they are fictitious in all other ways.

  The work of eighteenth-century composer Antonio Vivaldi is played frequently today, but his folios had actually been forgotten for two hundred years, only to be discovered in 1926 in an Italian monastery. And although scholars have been able to document many of the performances of his work that occurred during his own lifetime, the details of that life are somewhat sketchy. We do know that he lived, well into adulthood, with his parents and siblings. The campo, or small square, their apartment looked upon still holds the church where Vivaldi was baptized and is very close to the Ospedale della Pietà.

  To find out as much as I could about the Ospedale, Vivaldi, and eighteenth-century Italy, my reading material included books and websites about the composer, his contemporaries, his music, and the political history and social service system of that day. I also traveled to Venice, where I discovered the Hotel Metropole on the site where the Pietà once was. Situated on the Riva degli Schiavoni, the Pietà faced the lagoon between the Grand Canal and the San Marco Canal — very near Saint Mark’s Square and the Palace of the Doge. Because of its location, the orphanage must have provided a view of the very center of Venetian life, which was in stark contrast to life within it. Ca’ Rezzonico, which houses the Museum of Eighteenth-Century Venice, was an excellent source for a sense of those times.

  The chapel that I refer to in the text was reconstructed in 1745, and the Santa Maria della Pietà still exists today as a church building designed primarily for musical performances. For the purposes of my story, the interior of the original chapel, the school, and the Ospedale itself are imagined. Some reports state that the main building was occupied by as many as a thousand students at a time. The present hotel structure, which is said to correspond to that of the Ospedale, is so small, however, that perhaps this number is an exaggeration. Saint Mark’s Square is much as it was in Vivaldi’s time, as is Saint Mark’s Church itself and the Palace of the Doge. In fact, most of Venice appears to be very much the way it was in that Baroque world in which I thoroughly immersed myself.

  To care for the illegitimate and abandoned children in Venice at that time, four ospedali for both girls and boys were established as part of an advanced social service system that provided some surprising opportunities for these orphaned children. The foundling wheel itself was an innovation from the Middle Ages, and it is interesting to note that it’s being replicated today in hospitals such as Rome’s Casilino Polyclinic, where something closer to an incubator-type drawer has recently been introduced.

  Althou
gh some boys were apparently educated until their teens at the Ospedale della Pietà, it was principally considered a school for young women. Girls in the figli di commun, whose musical education was not so intense, learned skills such as lace-making, dressmaking, and nursing. Those in the figli di coro, however, could become maestre before or after they left the Ospedale or paid performers if they chose not to marry, but they couldn’t perform anywhere within the La Serenissima, the Republic of Venice. From what I could discern, although Italy was a Catholic country and the orphans were somewhat cloistered, the ospedali were not convents. The students were free to follow a religious vocation later if they so desired, but only in a convent outside Venice. It was a time and place when music was considered a necessary part of a superior education offered even to foundlings, a concept very much in conflict with our present educational system in the United States, where the arts are often considered an appendage or even expendable.

  For four years I was a day student in an all-girls boarding school, so the issues, concerns, and problems that come up in a highly charged, predominantly female atmosphere are very familiar to me. Also, as a singer with Cantemus, a chamber chorus north of Boston, I have sought in this narrative to combine my musical knowledge with my writing and storytelling skills.

  Ultimately, within these pages, I’ve been able to indulge my great interest in the music of the Baroque and to live for a while in a period that spawned many innovative musical talents and continues to excite my imagination.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grateful thanks are due to the members of my writing group — Ellen Wittlinger, Nancy Werlin, and Anita Riggio — who listened to this book chapter by chapter and gave sage advice and unflagging support. I’m also indebted to my husband, Wally, for entering into my search for Vivaldi and the orphans with gusto; to Betsy Lebel and Lenice Strohmier for their careful attention to the first draft; to Chris Brodien Jones, Laurie Jacobs, Donna McArdle, and Patricia Bridgman for advice and encouragement; and to Ed Monnelly for useful information. I was also inspired by the talented members of the chamber chorus Cantemus, and by our conductor, Dr. Gary Wood, whose teaching abilities and musical knowledge infused my interpretation of Vivaldi. I have a deep appreciation as well for the informed eye of my editor, Hilary Van Dusen, and the guidance of my agent, Lauren Abramo.