Death on the High C's

by Robert Barnard

  MORE CLUES TO THE EXCITEMENT ABOUT

  ROBERT BARNARD

  “Barnard is an amusing Englishman with an eye for the self-delusion and hypocrisy in all of us . . . and the result is a growing series of mysteries that are entertaining, often quite funny . . . and acutely observing.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “A malicious gusto certain to amuse.”

  —The Atlantic Monthly

  “[Barnard] mixes humor and suspense cunningly.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “There is no one quite like Robert Barnard in his ability to combine chills and chuckles and to sprinkle the whole with delicious irony.”

  —San Diego Union

  “[Barnard is] the most appealing and reliable practitioner of the classic British mystery to arrive here in the last decade.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter I: Some Vocal Exercises

  Chapter II: Mezzo Forte

  Chapter III: Molto Agitato

  Chapter IV: Double Entry

  Chapter V: One Fine Day

  Chapter VI: La Commedia E Finita

  Chapter VII: Gendarmes’ Duet

  Chapter VIII: Producer

  Chapter IX: Lower Registers

  Chapter X: Sinfonia Domestica

  Chapter XI: Black Notes and White Notes

  Chapter XII: Tutti

  Chapter XIII: Bass-Baritone

  Chapter XIV: Etta Giammai M’Amo

  Chapter XV: Recapitulation

  Chapter XVI: Repetiteur

  Chapter XVII: Un Colpo di Canone

  Chapter XVIII: First Night

  Chapter XIX: Finale

  CHAPTER I

  Some Vocal Exercises

  The Pitford Independent Methodist Hall hadn’t known singing like it in many a long day, not since the people of that sorry Manchester suburb had poured their hearts into fervent hymns that kept their minds off poverty, disease, and the temptation of gin. For years, in fact, it had not known singing of any kind at all, and it was on account of its semi-derelict condition that the Northern Opera Company had been able to hire it so cheaply.

  ‘This is one place where you really might bring the house down,’ Mike Turner had said to Gaylene Ffrench, as they rather glumly surveyed the rickety old Independent Methodist caretaker.

  Economy was of the essence. The Northern Opera Company had been going for a year, shuffling between Manchester and Liverpool, and kept alive by a tiny grant from the Arts Council. The powers-that-be in the world of arts’ financing naturally channelled their big grants to London, on the principle of ‘to him that hath’, and they told Mike Turner, director of the fledgling company, that the organization would have to ‘prove itself artistically’ before it could expect a larger share of the national cake. The phrase had been much discussed in the company, and Owen Caulfield, who had done most of the routine rehearsing during the first year, said that the required proof would be that the Prime Minister should choose to miss the Durham Miners’ Gala in order to attend a first night. Others said it would be when Birgit Nilsson expressed herself willing to sing Third Norn in the Company’s Ring. All were agreed that it would be a long process.

  The first new production of the season was to open on 15 September. It was to be Rigoletto, and Owen Caulfield was to be rewarded for the hard labour of the past year with the first new production of his own. Without liking him very much, the company as a whole was glad for him, and felt that the management was nursing up its own talent. Gaylene Ffrench, it is true, pointed out that in view of the sum they were paying their guest soprano the management had been forced to economize on a producer, but that was a Gaylene remark, and nobody took too much notice. The Pitford Methodist Hall was to be used for the early rehearsals, and the company meanwhile had opened its season with more performances of their successful Bohème of last year and a tragi-comic Lohengrin, for which they had secured sets and costumes from the long-defunct Carl Rosa Company. And Manchester was coming. Manchester was sobbing at Bohème, and sniggering at Lohengrin, but Manchester was coming. ‘I’m sure that’s not what they mean by proving ourselves artistically,’ said Calvin Cross, as he took a curtain-call as Rodolfo, and gazed into the dark cheering depths of the Prince of Wales Theatre. And, sadly, he was right.

  It was Calvin Cross who, on a windy day in the middle of August, sang the first real notes in the Pitford Methodist Hall, other than a few chesty hoots that Gaylene Ffrench had let fly experimentally on her visit with Mike Turner. Calvin had the key, because he had lodgings only a few streets away, and when, on that first day of rehearsal, he let himself, Gaylene and Bridget Lander in, he surveyed the dim, cobwebbed interior which the local chars had been able to make little impression on, and with a strong sense of the inappropriate he expanded his lungs and sang to the most distant rafter:

  ‘Bella figlia dell’amo—o—ore.’

  It was a sweet tenor voice, and the hall, which in its time had made hollow, hungry voices sound strong and full, did its best for Calvin’s. It sounded very seductive indeed. He turned with a delighted grin to Bridget: ‘Splendid little hall,’ he said.

  ‘Not so much of this Eyetalian,’ said Gaylene Ffrench, stomping over to the far end of the hall and dumping down on a stray chair the bulging plastic bag that contained her sustenance for the day. ‘We’re doing the thing in English, guest star notwithstanding.’

  She undid the top button of her blouse, threw apart her arms, and bellowed, ‘Land of Ho—ope and Gllory!’ Then she put her hands on her hips, looked at the pair by the door with infinite self-satisfaction, and said: ‘If the hall’ll stand that, it’ll stand anything.’

  Gaylene was a strong, stumpy Australian lass, running rapidly to flesh, but with some brassy good-looks that could go quite a long way in the hands of a capable makeup artist. She had an aggressive bust, and, off-stage, the stance of a suffragette about to heave a brick through a Downing Street window. She had dithered between singing and competitive athletics at school, but when she reached fifteen without making the big time at hurdling or swimming she had opted for the activity in which she would not flower and fade so fast. She was now at full bloom. In ten years’ time she would probably have put on so much weight that her Delilah would be ridiculous, and even as Amneris she would need careful costuming.

  At present it was her recent Carmen with the Welsh National that was fresh in everyone’s mind. Brazen, blatant, torrid and vulgar, it had had some critics reaching for their superlatives, and others simply reaching. She even claimed that one Nonconformist minister had preached a sermon against her somewhere in the valleys, but nobody believed her. It was as well not to believe Gaylene when she said things of this sort. In fact, it was rumoured that when she said she had sung at the opening of the Sydney Opera House, this should be translated as meaning that she had been in the audience and had joined in the National Anthem. People reacted in different ways to Gaylene, most of them hostile, and her career since she came to England eighteen months before had not been unmarked by theatrical rows and upsets: she had once had her face clawed by the soprano soloist in Messiah, as they trooped off the platform, in full view of sections of the reverently applauding audience. Bridget Lander said she could stand Gaylene in small doses, but as Calvin remarked, small doses was exactly what one never got Gaylene in.

  ‘I suppose we’ll be doing the third
act today, will we?’ asked Bridget.

  ‘Natch,’ said Gaylene. ‘Most important act.’ It was the only one she was in. ‘Owen told me in bed last night. Said we’d use nearly half the rehearsal time on that act—the others are more or less plain sailing, according to him.’

  ‘So much for my best scenes,’ said Bridget ruefully.

  ‘Well, so what?’ said Gaylene, putting her hands on her hips as she did when she wanted to let fly with an unpalatable truth, or untruth: ‘You’re only a stand-in. You’ll be out on your little pink ear as soon as Signora Spaghettini arrives.’

  ‘Giulia Contini,’ said Calvin. ‘And Bridget will be singing in the January performances.’

  ‘That’s as maybe. Don’t know that I’ll be in it myself by then. I had an offer from Germany today—they’re wild to get me in Carmen.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Calvin, scenting a lie. ‘Which company?’

  There was a pause which confirmed his guess.

  ‘Bonn,’ said Gaylene finally. It was the town she had heard of most frequently in news summaries.

  ‘Not one of the major companies,’ said Calvin. ‘Hardly worth learning the translation for.’

  The others started drifting in then. Owen Caulfield came, as usual, at full pace, with plenty of noise and bustle. Everything Owen did was a little too loud, a little too fast. Beneath a surface amiability there was a constant need to make his presence felt, his superiority acknowledged. The translation from blandishment to hectoring was too ready, and everyone waited for it, tense. He was medium-sized, lean, edgy, and greying before his years, and people wondered whether he would burn himself out before he really got anywhere. Though today was only a vocal run-through which he was supposed merely to be sitting in on, he was impelled to organize everyone into his own sort of efficiency: little Mr. Pettifer, the repetiteur, was seated at the piano and told when he could start, the cast was bustled into positions around him, and when Owen sat down to listen everyone could feel him itching to produce them. Damn him, they thought: this is a vocal rehearsal.

  The early rehearsals were to be in Italian. Mike Turner, the company’s director, who was to conduct, was insistent on this. If they knew the Italian, this would smooth over the early rehearsals with Giulia Contini when she arrived, and in any case a thorough knowledge of the text helped singers to project the words of the translation. They would change to the English version when la Contini had been to a few rehearsals. So when Simon Mulley, the veteran Rigoletto, began the apparently commonplace dialogue with Gilda that begins Act III, he said: ‘E l’amo?’ and Bridget replied: ‘Sempre.’ It is a simple word, set simply, but there was an immediate stillness. Even Owen seemed for a moment to stop planning moves and gestures and novel approaches and really to listen.

  No one in the company except Mike Turner had heard Bridget before. She had had a great success in a little-known Donizetti opera while still a student at the Guildhall School. It was on the strength of this and a few performances with semi-amateur groups that she had been engaged. She was to sing the tiny role of the Countess Ceprano, and to stand in as Gilda for the distinguished guest soprano until she arrived. Later, as Calvin had said, she would get her chance in the star role. What she would make of it could only be guessed, but even as she and Simon sang that huddled, almost surreptitious dialogue the voice was revealed as clean, pure, and wonderfully controlled. Calvin gave her a look of encouragement and admiration. Gaylene Ffrench gave her a look of quite another kind.

  The introductory dialogue began losing its muffled character as the Duke and Sparafucile entered, and Mr. Pettifer modulated into a surprisingly sprightly account of the accompaniment to ‘La donna è mobile’.

  The action at this point of Rigoletto is one thing about opera that everybody knows. The Duke, lured to a lonely tavern kept by the murderous thug Sparafucile and his sister Maddalena, is watched by Gilda, the girl he has seduced, and Rigoletto, the father who has sworn vengeance. He sings with a libertine cynicism of the fickleness of women, and the music reflects the speciousness and superficiality of his argument and his life: it is lilting, carefree, insincere. Calvin’s first shot was like most first shots: it was a nice enough sound, but a little heavy. When he finished with a passable flourish, Calvin made a scowl of dissatisfaction with his effort. As usual at moments when no underlining was needed, Owen felt he had to make things explicit: ‘You’re supposed to be a libertine Duke,’ he said in that high tone which was meant to be bantering, ‘not a Conservative politician.’

  ‘OK, I know,’ said Calvin. ‘It’s tough trying to sparkle so soon after breakfast. It’ll come, it’ll come.’

  ‘Take it again,’ said Owen.

  Calvin allowed a moment’s pause.

  ‘Would you like me to try it again?’ he said to Mr Pettifer, trying to convey his opinion of who ought to be in charge of this rehearsal. Mr Pettifer just smiled vaguely, and immediately began the accompaniment. A trace of roughness entered Calvin’s second account of the area. When he finished, Owen sat hunched in his seat, his hand meditatively on his jaw, very obviously saying nothing.

  With the entry of Maddalena, the tavern whore, a new urgency enters the music. Maddalena has only a short time in this one act to make an effect, and Gaylene was a singer who would make sure she achieved an effect of one sort or another. The music was racy and seductive, and Gaylene, hands on hips, delivered it with a bouncy vulgarity, too loud. There was something else wrong too, for the voice didn’t quite suit the part: there was a suggestion of British Contralto about it, a touch of the Kathleen Ferriers. The listener felt that she might be better employed telling good tidings to Zion, though Gaylene did not in any other respect suggest a messenger of the Lord, and would not for a moment have accepted her unsuitability for the role of Maddalena if anyone had had the temerity to suggest it. It was a role in which the singer could give full rein to any blowsiness and vulgarity at her command, and Gaylene intended to give it plenty. Vocally she regarded it as her job, in this and any other role, to outsing the rest: Gaylene opened her mouth, and apparently without any physical effort she sang twice as loud as anyone else.

  ‘Gaylene, darling,’ said Calvin as they finished the ensemble, ‘you are bellowing.’

  ‘I am not bellowing!’ bellowed Gaylene. ‘Just try giving it a bit more go yourself.’

  ‘Either I am an elegant aristocrat, or I’m a coal-heaver,’ said Calvin. We’d better make up our minds right from the start. And Verdi thought he was an aristocrat.’

  ‘Well, I’m a whore,’ said Gaylene. ‘And whores are loud.’

  ‘Physically, dear girl,’ said Simon Mulley, in his quiet, polite way. ‘Not vocally.’

  ‘Cut the character analysis, will you?’ said Owen. ‘That’s my business. Try it over again, and give it a bit more power, Calvin, and you try muffling it a bit, Gay.’

  They went through it again, Calvin effortlessly giving it a modicum more volume, his self-esteem tempting him to show that he could, and Gaylene giving full rein to her trumpet tones as before, only on the isolated phrase hushing it to a whisper, with a satirical glance at Calvin.

  Mr Pettifer, the repetiteur, thought it tactful to go straight on into the quartet.

  ‘Bella figlia dell’amore,’ sang Calvin, for the second time that morning, as sweetly and seductively as if he had imbibed honey and molasses with his mother’s milk. ‘Schiavo son de’ vezzi tuoi.’ The tone caressed the air, full of sex and mischief, full of delight and faithlessness. Perhaps it was inadvertence that made Calvin, in the course of these opening lines, turn toward Bridget. Whatever it was, the beauty of his singing didn’t prevent Gaylene hissing at him in a stentorian whisper: ‘It’s me you’re supposed to be bedding at this point, and don’t you forget it.’

  Without batting an eyelid, or turning a fraction in her direction, Calvin continued to the end, and Gaylene was too preoccupied with her own part to make further objections. After her skittish phrases, the pseudo-hesitations of the part-time whore—do
ne in a somewhat flat-footed manner on this occasion—Simon Mulley, as Rigoletto, and Bridget, as Gilda, entered the fray. Now the rest could get a real idea of the quality of Bridget’s voice, as it floated with effortless power over the others’, framing their utterance and seeming to comment on them, by its purity and beauty. The silvery sound, swelling and diminishing, soared to heaven at the climaxes with the sort of poignancy that makes audiences stop their breath and wish that time could be suspended.

  In spite of their preoccupation with their own singing, it gradually got through to everyone in the hall that what they were hearing was not a Mimi-voice. Mimi-voices are very nice, but while they are not exactly two a penny, Britain does rather breed them, as she breeds collies and football hooligans. This was something more. Now Bridget was singing Gilda, soon it would be Violetta, perhaps Leonora. Eventually—who could say? Every heart in the hall was suddenly gripped by the conviction that they were witnessing the small beginnings of a rather splendid career. Not every heart was affected by this thought in the same way, but most of them missed a beat as they thought of the splendours and dangers of such a career, and the ease with which such a voice could be driven to ruin. As the voices threaded the argument to its silly conclusion the singers around Bridget swung towards her and started applauding, Calvin grinning wildly, Simon Mulley, as usual, making something elaborate and formal of it. Raymond Ricci, who as Sparafucile had no part in the quartet and had been lounging over by the old pulpit, looking long, black and saturnine in polo-neck sweater and tight cotton slacks, actually jumped into the air and clapped his hands over his head. And Mr Pettifer, who might have been expected to have grown cynical in a lifetime spent in coaching mediocre voices towards adequacy, beamed with pleasure and banged the lid of his piano in appreciation.

  It was the sort of demonstration that any rival singer with an ounce of intelligence would have made sure that she took a part in. Generosity is a very easy emotion to counterfeit. But Gaylene Ffrench was a child of nature. Emotions flitted over her face like captions in the silent cinema, and she could no more hide her irritations, her jealousies, her contempts, than a dog could hide its interest in a bone. On this occasion she looked in the direction of the little demonstration with ill-concealed scorn, and said: ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. This is a rehearsal, not a mutual admiration society.’