The Violinist of Venice

by Alyssa Palombo

  I smiled and looked away from him. “Not at the moment.”

  As we passed one of the great houses on the Grand Canal, I heard snatches of a lovely melody, accompanied by a lute. I pulled back the curtains of the felze and peered out.

  A young man stood in a gondola beneath the balcony of a palazzo, playing the lute and singing a song about a lady of such beauty that Venus blushed in her presence, and that Zeus himself would be jealous of the man who held her affections. On and on the song went, praising the beauty and grace of the unnamed lady, whom I assumed resided in that palazzo. As the young man reached the end of his song, spectators in nearby boats applauded. Then the balcony doors opened and a lady appeared, dressed in evening finery, and blew a kiss to the ardent young man below.

  “Ah, yes,” I heard Tommaso say behind me. “Donna Grimaldi will never want for admirers, it would seem.”

  Based on the glimpse of Donna Grimaldi that I had seen—she was possessed of hair that shone like gold, a heart-shaped face, and a figure for which women would sell their souls—I could only agree.

  “The young man is her suitor, then?” I asked.

  Tommaso laughed. “I should hope not, for the lady is married to Senator Grimaldi. He is a friend of my brother’s.”

  I raised my eyebrows incredulously. “And yet a man dares pay court to her anyway?”

  He smiled. “I forget that you have not been out and about in society. It is very much the custom for men and women to play at courtly love, to exchange poems and songs and small gifts, whether they be married to others or not. Likely that young man—or another young man like him—escorts Donna Grimaldi to the opera and the Ridotto and to parties.”

  “And her husband does not mind?”

  Tommaso grinned. “Hardly. He will take it as a compliment that another man should so admire his wife. Sometimes such a cavaliere servente might also be a woman’s lover, but these things are usually chaste.”

  I was silent as I turned this new information over in my head. The idea of love as a game played purely for show, for display, for the consumption of others, was completely contrary to my experience of it. And yet if I was to make my way through Venetian society and keep my secrets, I must learn to play the game, and play it well.

  “I have a confession to make,” Tommaso said as he drew near to the theater. “I instructed my gondolier to bring us here the long way around, so that I might have a bit more time alone with you.”

  I smiled, a tad uncomfortable but unwilling to show it. “It was a lovely ride.”

  Once we docked, Tommaso helped me from the gondola himself, and we joined the large, milling crowd gathered outside the theater. There were many finely dressed ladies and gentlemen: patricians, wealthy businessmen, foreign dignitaries, all manner of members of the privileged class. I also noticed several courtesans on the arms of wealthy men, their dresses cut low enough that their bare breasts were exposed to the night air. Then there were theatergoers who were neither noble nor wealthy, identifiable by their plain manner of dress: just ordinary Venetians indulging in their love of music.

  When we stepped inside the theater, Tommaso had a brief conversation with the concierge, and then led me up several flights of stairs until we reached the box.

  The Foscari box was easily the grandest in the theater; it was positioned directly opposite the stage, allowing for an unobstructed view. A chandelier made of thousands of sparkling pieces of Murano glass hung from the gilt ceiling above us, a ceiling that boasted an almost overwhelming display of frescoes and carvings.

  I spread my fan, using it to hide the wonder and delight on my face as I took a seat at the front of the box and looked around. It was beautiful, this temple devoted solely to music. I knew that there were other, more richly decorated opera houses in Venice, but this one had a claim on my affections before I had even seen it.

  This was Vivaldi’s theater.

  I felt my excitement growing almost unbearably as I looked down at the orchestra. Though his distinguishing red hair was hidden by a powdered white wig, I recognized Vivaldi at once. As if he could feel my gaze, he turned and scanned the row of boxes until he saw me, a smile stretching across his face. He shifted in his seat and audaciously raised his bow, pointing in my direction, a salute.

  My wide answering grin was hidden by my fan, so instead I winked boldly in reply.

  Beside me, I was startled to hear Tommaso say, “I wonder who the Red Priest knows up in the boxes?”

  I lowered my fan and gave him a look of wide-eyed innocence. “Who?”

  He nodded down at the orchestra. “The solo violinist,” he said. “His name is Antonio Vivaldi. They call him il Prete Rosso, because of his red hair. Have you never heard of him?”

  I shook my head, maintaining a look of polite bewilderment.

  He smiled. “Well, then, as a former violinist yourself, you will certainly appreciate his skill. He is phenomenal; if there is a better violinist in Venice, I have not heard him. Anyway, just a moment ago, he gestured to someone in one of the boxes, and I simply wondered who it was that he knows. Probably some wealthy patron he is courting. He is a composer as well, or so I hear.”

  “No doubt,” I said vaguely. I raised my fan again and snapped it open to hide the smile that had crept back onto my face.

  We had not been in the box long before several of Tommaso’s friends and acquaintances came in to greet us, and we moved to the seats in the back section of the box to speak with them. Tommaso introduced me to all of them, in a flurry of names that I could not quite keep straight. There was Bernardo Contarini, about Tommaso’s age, and heir to another of Venice’s most powerful families. He introduced us to Count Sandro Farnese, visiting from Rome. There was elderly Senator Guicciardi and his wife, who begged Tommaso to give their regards to his father. Then came Tommaso’s friend Giovanni Somebody-or-other, who had on his arm a woman I suspected of being a courtesan, as her dress was cut perilously low and Giovanni did not introduce her.

  We were also visited by a close friend of Tommaso’s, Paolo Cornaro—or was it Corner? He bowed over my hand and paid extravagant compliments to my beauty, much to the displeasure of his new bride, a girl named Silvia, who would have been a raving beauty had it not been for the seemingly permanent sour look on her face.

  “I declare, Donna Adriana,” she said to me, as Paolo and Tommaso were rapidly conversing about a friend of theirs who was apparently in dire straits after too much gambling at the Ridotto—honestly, and the sin of gossiping is laid primarily at the door of women—“I have heard your name spoken, of course, but cannot recall ever crossing your path in society.”

  “Nor would you, donna,” I replied, “for I have not been about in society until very recently. My mother died several years ago, you see, and it has made my father somewhat overprotective.”

  “I see.” She sniffed, snapped open her fan and began languidly fanning herself, as if the very action bored her. “Well, men do love a mystery—while it lasts, that is.”

  I drew back as though she had slapped me.

  Fortunately, I was saved by the arrival of Tommaso’s brother, Alvise, and his wife, Beatrice. Since I had not been introduced to them at the ball, Tommaso quickly made the introductions. Alvise was a quiet, serious, reticent man; a man many considered in line to be elected doge someday. Beatrice was kind yet reserved; Tommaso later whispered in my ear that his sister-in-law had always been shy, and was much warmer once she knew someone better.

  From the floor of the theater, I could hear the sounds of the orchestra tuning as one, ostensibly in preparation to begin, and it sent excitement scurrying through my veins. I glanced up at Tommaso, assuming we would be going to take our seats now.

  “You would do me a great honor, both of you, if you would join me in a hand of cards,” Paolo was saying to Tommaso and his brother.

  Tommaso reached for my hand. “I would, amico mio, but this time I must decline,” he said. “Unfashionable though I know it is, I would very much
like to see at least some of the opera.” He turned and smiled at me, which I must confess caused my knees to weaken just a bit. “And I daresay that my lovely companion feels the same way.”

  “We can hardly blame my brother for eschewing our company in favor of that of Donna Adriana,” Alvise Foscari said, bestowing on us what I sensed was a rare smile. “In that case, I shall certainly oblige you, Don Cornaro.” So that was Paolo’s surname; his family, too, had produced several doges over the years. “I will be ordering dinner for us shortly, fratello,” he said to Tommaso. “Hopefully the two of you can be persuaded to join us?”

  “Of course,” Tommaso said. “Do fetch us when the time comes.” He led me back through the curtain separating the seats from the rear of the box and helped me into a chair.

  “The fashionable practice,” he explained to me, “is to spend one’s time at the opera doing anything but watching the opera—except, of course, when one’s favorite singer is onstage, or when one of the characters is about to die a dramatic death.” He grinned. “I seem to be the only one in my circle of acquaintances who actually comes to the opera with the intention of seeing most of the performance and hearing the music.” The look he gave me then was a companionable one, as if we were coconspirators. “And I believe that you feel the same way, yes?”

  My answering smile was genuine and warm. “Yes,” I said. “To ignore such music and spectacle, why, it seems almost sinful.”

  “That it does,” Tommaso said, “and we can only hope that all these poor souls will confess as much to their priest tomorrow.” With that, he settled back into his seat for the beginning of the opera.

  I realized, with a certainty that made my entire body go cold, that Vivaldi had been right, in a way. Of all the men in Venice whom my father would consider serious contenders for my hand, Tommaso Foscari was the one best suited for me—perhaps perfect for me. And I genuinely enjoyed his company. But this only made me want to push him further away.

  The moment the opera began, however, I forgot everything except the music. The prima donna strutted onto the stage to thunderous applause as the orchestra struck up the lively opening bars. She was arrayed in an elaborate Grecian costume, and weighed down with so much gold jewelry that she positively sparkled in the light from the stage lamps. She inclined her head regally in acknowledgment of the applause, then launched into the first aria.

  Her voice was strong and full, yet also light. She would reach the highest notes in impossibly rapid passages, only to embellish them with a series of trills and ornaments. The cadenza at the end of her aria earned her a round of near-deafening applause.

  With the conclusion of her aria, other singers came out onstage, and the plot of the opera began to unfold. I was lost in the music, the intricate arias, the back-and-forth banter of recitative, the tender love duets and elaborate ensemble numbers. But unsurprisingly, it was the orchestra and Vivaldi in particular that truly enthralled me.

  It was new and somewhat strange to see Vivaldi playing for an audience, and in the service of a much larger whole, rather than hearing him play when we were alone, when he played just for me. I had never played in such a way before, and the tricks of blending and balancing intrigued me as I watched him.

  When, after over two hours, the curtains fell, signaling the end of the first act, the audience applauded, and everyone rose from their seats to seek out their friends and acquaintances during the intermission.

  “Tommaso, fratello,” Alvise Foscari called, poking his head through the curtains that separated the seats from the rest of the box, “I have held off on our dinner as long as possible, but we will wait no longer for you, I am afraid!”

  I began to rise, but Tommaso placed his hand atop mine to keep me where I was.

  “Stay,” he murmured. “You will want to hear this.” To his brother, he called, “Just a few more minutes, Alvise. The lady and I wish to hear the concerto.”

  I threw him a questioning look.

  “At the intermission, it is customary for the orchestra’s soloist to play a concerto, or some such thing,” he explained. “Remember what I was telling you about this man Vivaldi? Now you will see what he is truly capable of.”

  “I have been watching him through much of the performance thus far,” I said. “It seems he is just as skilled as you say.”

  “You would know better than I,” Tommaso said.

  Just then, as if on cue, Vivaldi rose from his seat and began to play.

  I drew my breath in sharply when I heard the opening notes; I recognized them instantly. It was the first movement, the allegro, of the A-minor concerto he had taught me to play.

  I glanced quickly at Tommaso, afraid that perhaps he had noticed my reaction, but his attention was fully on Vivaldi. I gratefully turned my gaze to the same place, feeling my heart beginning to thrum excitedly in my chest.

  Vivaldi played it a thousand times better than I could ever dream of playing it, or so it seemed to my ears. And as though it were not an exquisite piece of music already, he embellished it a great deal, adding impossibly rapid ornaments and difficult cadenzas throughout, just as the singers did in their arias.

  Once he reached the end of the allegro, he paused just briefly before beginning the next movement, the largo. It would always sound like a love song to me, whether he played it just for me or I for him, or whether he played it in an opera house before hundreds of people, bold and unafraid in its quiet simplicity.

  As he reached the end of the movement, I realized I had been holding my breath; when he paused again, I let go a small, soft sigh, hoping Tommaso had not noticed.

  The third movement, also an allegro, he played with a seemingly impossible speed and ferocity. Again he included elaborate ornamentation throughout, and toward the end he added a long, complicated cadenza that caused my breath to catch in my throat once more, as though I could see the notes falling through the air and was left to wonder where they would land.

  As he finished and took his bow, I noted the substantial volume of applause that his performance received. Though most operagoers seemed to consider the social aspect of the experience the most important, they at least knew remarkable, exceptional music when they heard it. They—we—were Venetians, after all.

  Once I awoke from the beautiful spell that Vivaldi’s music had cast over me, like a maiden in a fairy story awakening from an enchanted sleep, I found Tommaso watching me expectantly, waiting for my reaction.

  I smiled, flattered by his obvious desire that all I saw and heard should be pleasing to me. “Incredible,” I said.

  He smiled in return, then reached over and took my hand between his, squeezing it gently. “I am so glad that you are enjoying yourself this evening,” he said.

  I was saved from further intimacy by Paolo, who stuck his head through the curtains just then. “We have started eating without you, lovebirds!” he called. I heard Beatrice shriek at his impropriety, and I felt myself flush with embarrassment as I realized what we looked like. What if Vivaldi had looked up to see my reaction to his performance and saw us, the color in my cheeks and my hand in Tommaso’s?

  There was no help for it now; I rose and followed Tommaso into the back section of the box, where a table had been set up and a veritable feast laid out. We all sat to eat, and I was soon quite lost, trying to follow a flurry of gossip about people I did not know. Tommaso, bless him, kept up a whispered commentary for my benefit, explaining who each person they spoke of was and how each was acquainted with him or her.

  Our dinner lasted through much of the second act, until Tommaso begged his companions to excuse us so that we might see the finale. To my surprise, the entire party rose and filed out into the front of the box to watch the end.

  When the opera concluded and the singers came out onstage to take their bows, I enthusiastically rose to my feet with the rest of the audience to applaud. The prima donna received a shower of flowers, and small pieces of parchment—no doubt love notes and poems. As the members of the
orchestra got to their feet in turn to be acknowledged, I applauded even louder, unable to stop an enormous smile from stretching across my face.

  Once the applause had ended and the performers had begun to leave the stage, Tommaso turned to me. “So what say you, now that you have seen an opera?”

  “It was wonderful,” I said. “I shall never forgive my father for having deprived me of this particular pleasure for so long.”

  Tommaso laughed. “You need depend on him no longer,” he said, “for I shall escort you to any opera in the city, any time you wish to attend.”

  “That is very kind of you,” I said, both grateful for and unsettled by his offer.

  “But now you must answer a question of mine,” he said, as we left the box and moved toward the lobby. “Do you remember what I asked you at the ball, when first you agreed to accompany me tonight?”

  “Yes,” I replied, knowing what was coming.

  “Then now that you have seen an opera, I would beg you to revisit that question,” he said.

  I was silent, considering my reply. I had guessed that he would bring this up, yet still I had not prepared a suitable answer. “Certainly the prospect of hearing such excellent music—and so well performed—will play a part in my desire to attend such events in the future,” I said truthfully. “Yet to be quite frank, I enjoyed your company this evening, and find you to be a perfect gentleman.”

  He grinned boyishly. “I thank you for your compliments, madonna,” he said. “And please know I found your company absolutely enchanting, and that I think you the most gracious and elegant of women.”