The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice

by Laurel Corona

  “Your mama told me you wanted a kitty one to match your new dress for the party,” Claudio said. “Do you like it?”

  Donata had already gotten up to run to the mirror, and Claudio turned to his wife, taking her in his arms for a moment before they both broke away to get ready for their guests.

  Chiaretta barely had time to dress before Maddalena arrived from the Pietà with a small group of figlie di coro dressed in their black concert dresses. Chiaretta watched as some of them hung back at the far end of the portego, just as she had done when she was their age. Maddalena stopped in the middle of the room and turned around. “Come,” she urged. “Meet your hostess.” The figlie, most of them in their early teens, approached Chiaretta shyly.

  “Is it true you were once in the coro?” one of them asked, her eyes taking in the brocade and velvet of Chiaretta’s gown and the sparkling jewels tucked in her coils of hair.

  “Yes, it is,” she said, reaching out to remove a stray thread from the girl’s shoulder. The girl looked down, her cheeks coloring with surprise at the tender and unexpected gesture.

  Donata had monopolized Maddalena from the moment she saw her, showing off her new mask and begging her to come see the doll she had named after her. “Maffeo can almost walk!” she said as they headed toward the stairs that led to her bedroom. Maddalena looked over at Chiaretta, whom she had not yet had a chance to greet. Now promoted from sotto maestra to maestra dal violin, at thirty-one Maddalena had hardly changed in appearance in years. Her hair had begun to dull from the rich reddish chestnut of her youth, but her face was only faintly lined and still radiant from within. She gave Chiaretta a helpless smile as Donata whisked her away.

  The figlie di coro had gone to the other end of the room to put their instruments in the corner, and Chiaretta watched them while keeping an eye on the servants putting the first course on the table. A hand touched her elbow, and she turned to see Andrea.

  “Hello,” he said. Chiaretta looked over her shoulder to see if Claudio was watching. “He’s in the sala d’oro with a couple of your guests,” Andrea said. “How are you?”

  Andrea had been away on business for over a month, and she hadn’t been certain whether he would return in time to come that evening. She felt the familiar sensation in her loins that always came over her when she first saw her lover.

  “You’re back,” she whispered. Then she pulled away and arranged her body and face to look the same as it would for any other guest. “Can I offer you a glass of wine?” she said with a feigned tone of impartiality. “Soon?” she whispered, her eyes pleading. “I’ve missed you terribly.” She turned around and motioned a servant toward him, then walked away to greet another guest.

  After dinner, Chiaretta sat down at the harpsichord at the far end of the portego, and Donata stood next to her while they sang a children’s song for the guests. Maddalena stood to one side, watching her niece move her new mask over and then away from her eyes as she sang. Time would tell if Donata had inherited her mother’s talent along with her blond hair, but her coquettish grin and her loud and confident voice left no doubt she had her spirit.

  Then Chiaretta sang a solo accompanied by her sister. “Benedetto sia il giorno, et il mese, et l’anno,” she sang. “Blessed be the day, the month, the year, the season, the time, the hour, the moment, the beautiful country, and the place where I first felt bound to the two beautiful eyes that still hold me.” Chiaretta looked over at Donata, who was standing next to her father holding his leg, and gave her a wink to tell her she meant the words just for her.

  Maddalena played an interlude, and then Chiaretta picked up the melody again. “And blessed be the sweet pain I had in first knowing love, and the bow and the arrows that pricked me, and the hurts that went deep into my heart.” At these words Chiaretta turned away from everyone else in her life, looking only at her sister, whose eyes acknowledged everything they both felt.

  After the figlie performed, Chiaretta and Maddalena linked arms as they walked back toward the banquet table, where plates with small pieces of nougat and candied fruit were being laid out for the guests.

  “Oh, Maddalena, you’ll be interested in this,” Claudio said, pulling out her chair. “Vivaldi’s coming back to the Pietà. It was just decided today.”

  Maddalena reached out to grab the edge of the table. A spoon clattered to the floor, and a servant rushed to pick it up, murmuring apologies that Maddalena did not hear. She stared at the wine being poured into her glass. Reflected candlelight had turned its gilded rim into a tiny halo and illuminated the crimson liquid from within, but Maddalena saw nothing.

  Blessed be the season, the time, the hour... So much had changed since she had seen him last. Enough time had passed to reshape her memories and put them safely away. And now he would be coming back to shatter her tranquillity again.

  TWENTY

  In the corner of the room where maddalena sat working, the coal in the stove popped and rustled as it settled into embers. On the wooden desk lay a thick pile of sheet music, and in front of her was a piece of paper on which she had copied a few notes. The oil lamp flickered on the desk, and she reached out to adjust the flame, moving it closer to get a little more light.

  She looked at a line of the music. “Viola,” she said, humming each note as she wrote it down. Vivaldi had written something beautiful for Benedetta, and as Maddalena dipped her pen in the inkwell, she told herself to concentrate only on how beautiful it would sound. She told herself not to think about the composer at all, although his familiar hand leapt out at her on every page.

  Claudio, she learned later, had not meant to imply that Vivaldi would be returning in person as Maestro dei Concerti. The Congregazione had contracted with him to supply two new concerti a month, which he was free either to send by post or to deliver in person. He had chosen the former and had not, as far as she knew, set foot in Venice in the nearly two years since Claudio’s announcement at the party.

  It didn’t take much to bring back the knot in her stomach and the heaviness in her head when she thought about him. Just copy the music, she would say to herself. Just copy the music.

  But sometimes she couldn’t make herself listen, especially at moments like this, when her fingers stiffened in the cold and she had to stop work to warm them. As she held her hands near the stove, her thoughts wandered to the way she and Vivaldi would stare at each other, perspiration beading on their foreheads, when they finished a piece of music. The way he would lean over her to show her how to adjust her fingering, his red hair catching the light and making the whole room glow.

  She missed him, missed the crackling energy of the coro when he played with them. She even missed his moods and his tantrums. They were to be expected from a man whose being was so suffused with music it left little room for good manners. He was a genius. The coro played the music he sent, and played it well, but it wasn’t the same as having him there.

  How old is he now? Closer to fifty than forty, Maddalena thought. She wondered how age had changed him. It certainly had changed her. The clamor of her humors when she was younger was gone, and she exulted in simple pleasures now—seeing Donata and Maffeo run toward her with outstretched arms, or giving her students a comforting hug when, facing a setback, they struggled to be brave. Though life was exciting when Vivaldi was at the Pietà, his presence and absence were a fair trade, she decided. Less energy, more calm. Less passion, more peace.

  No, she thought, it would be fine if he came back in person, fine if they played music together again, and fine if none of it happened.

  At first Chiaretta had been angry at Claudio for not better judging the impact of his announcement, but Maddalena had pointed out that he could not have known what Vivaldi meant to her. “If I explain, I know he’ll want to apologize,” Chiaretta had said, but they both knew without saying that Maddalena would be embarrassed to have her childhood feelings revealed.

  Maddalena held her hands over the stove, opening and closing them like pincers
. She rubbed them together to keep them warm as she went back to her desk.

  Just copy the music.

  “Viola,” she said picking up her pen.

  A few weeks later, she waited on the balcony overlooking the chapel to catch a glimpse of Chiaretta and Donata, who were coming with Andrea to hear Benedetta play. Maddalena herself was not performing, and rarely did so in the chapel anymore, having time only for the occasional recital in the grand homes of Venice. Making sure the figlie were well taught and well treated gave her a different kind of pleasure than a solo on the balcony, and a far more lasting one.

  Chiaretta, Donata, and Andrea came in, and she watched as Andrea got the mother and daughter seated. The three of them crossed themselves and prayed. How odd it is that they aren’t a family, Maddalena thought. How strange a place this Venice is. She far preferred to be on the gauze-draped balcony, where everything was so much simpler, but she was also glad her sister had a man next to her who tended to her so well. And one whom Donata adored, at least if the way she was tipping her head and smiling at him as she walked her fingers over his jacket was any indication.

  The three of them came to the parlatorio to see her after the concert. Donata’s mouth was sticky with crumbs from the treat she had been offered by one of the figlie, and she smelled of honey as she pursed her lips to kiss Maddalena through the grate.

  “Benedetta was very good,” Donata said. “Someday I’ll be part of the coro too!”

  “You sound just like your mother when she was six, my precious little one,” Maddalena replied.

  Now even Andrea came to the grille to speak with Maddalena when they visited. She had known for some time that he and her sister met once a week in rooms he rented in a palazzo off one of the smaller canals. It had a doorway that opened just off a tiny square, which led to a private entrance. The rest of the house was unoccupied at the moment, making the arrangement as safe as possible.

  When Chiaretta first whispered to her about her affair with Andrea, Maddalena did not know what to think. Marriage was sacred, but Venice had its own ways, and she was glad she did not have to try to understand them. Nor was there any need to judge. She trusted Chiaretta to know what she was doing and gave Andrea the respect owed to someone her sister had chosen. It really wasn’t any of her business, she decided, as long as no one she loved was harmed by it.

  She saw, in her frequent trips to Ca’ Morosini, that Chiaretta’s relationship with Claudio did not appear to be suffering. Whether he knew the truth about his wife and Andrea, Maddalena couldn’t tell, but if he did, he gave no sign of being displeased. Maddalena liked Andrea’s somber bearing and his gentle heart. She liked Claudio also, for giving Chiaretta the life she wanted and keeping her safe in it. Two men loved her sister, and Maddalena was grateful for it.

  Today the parlatorio was crowded on both sides of the grille. It had been the first concert of the fall season, and the figlie and their guests were noisy and animated. Donata had gone off with Andrea to watch someone doing card tricks in one corner, and Maddalena leaned closer to the grille to hear what her sister was telling her.

  “I said,” Chiaretta lifted her voice, “that Maestro Vivaldi has been hired as the impresario for an opera at Claudio’s theater in November.”

  Vivaldi? In Venice? Maddalena knew he came through Venice occasionally for his operas, but not since he’d officially become an employee of the Pietà again. Is he coming back here?

  Chiaretta had turned to locate Donata and Andrea, and didn’t see the anxious look that crossed her sister’s face. She turned back and went on. “According to Claudio, it’s about time. The Congregazione is disgusted with him. He writes about half of what he agreed to.”

  Chiaretta noticed Maddalena’s furrowed brow. “Are you worried about it? I don’t think he’s planning on spending much time at the Pietà.”

  Maddalena shrugged. “I guess I’ve just reached a point where I think I prefer him at a distance.” She thought for a moment. “But it has been a long time. I’d like to see him, and I’d like him to meet Benedetta, and Cornelia, and all the other figlie who play his music now.”

  Her heart was racing as she spoke, and she could hear the tightness in her voice. Anticipation or dread? she asked herself, knowing her mind could not be trusted to give her an honest answer.

  The tavoletta announcing the opening of Vivaldi’s production of L’Inganno Trionfante in Amore was already posted outside the Teatro Sant’Angelo when Chiaretta came to pay him an angry visit. She had just returned from taking Donata across the canal for a music lesson at the Pietà and in a brief conversation with the priora had learned that Vivaldi had not been in contact with anyone there since his return to Venice for rehearsals of the opera a full month before. Maddalena insisted that she had no expectations, but Chiaretta knew her sister well enough to recognize the telltale signs of hurt as the weeks passed without a word or visit from him.

  “Insufferable man,” she muttered to herself as she went through the door of the theater. Vivaldi was waving his arms and yelling at the actors on the stage, and when one of them stalked off, he turned, started toward the exit, and nodded to the patrician woman seated on a bench inside the doors to the lobby without recognizing who it was.

  “Maestro Vivaldi,” she said, following him out into the lobby and lifting her veil.

  “Chiaretta! Forgive me. I didn’t know it was you.” He inhaled sharply with a familiar wheezy hitch.

  “You look well,” Chiaretta said in a stiff voice. In truth, he looked as harried as ever. His complexion was the color of skimmed milk, and his hair looked as if he had cut it himself, but he moved with the same jittery intensity she remembered, as if something too powerful to hold back lay just below the surface.

  “I should have inquired about you when I arrived in Venice,” he said, “but I have been so busy. We open next week—but I suppose you know that.”

  “I plan to be there.” Her tone was icy, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “It isn’t very good. It’s just a pasticcio, and I only arranged the music. Have you heard Anna Girò at the San Moisè? She’s really spectacular.”

  Chiaretta ignored his question. “I’d like to talk about my sister.”

  “Maddalena? How is she?”

  His tone was so off hand she colored with anger. “She’s fine, but it’s hard to imagine why you could have let so much time pass since you returned to Venice without acknowledging she is here.” She took a breath to say more but decided against it.

  Vivaldi’s face clouded. “Surely your husband has informed you of the Congregazione’s dissatisfaction with me? I don’t believe I would be welcome at the Pietà, even as a visitor.”

  “They would certainly welcome you if you were carrying new music with you.”

  Vivaldi stepped back, surprised by the curtness of her reply.

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible for a while. You can see how busy I am.”

  He gestured toward the stage, where a few singers and members of the orchestra chatted among themselves and stagehands erected scenery. Her gaze followed his, and they both stood silent for a moment watching them. Chiaretta thought of Maddalena alone in her room copying his music. He couldn’t possibly imagine how much time there was to think at the Pietà, how anything out of the ordinary was played over and over again in the dark on sleepless nights, how the past was plumbed for the smallest forgotten details, and how much any pleasure to come was anticipated.

  Chiaretta wondered whether he was having the same thought she was. How different the Teatro Sant’Angelo and the Pietà were! In one, he didn’t seem to command much respect at all, but at the other the musicians treated him almost as if he were the doge himself. Does anyone admire him here? she wondered. It doesn’t look like it.

  “When you wrote music for my sister and me, it meant more to us than you could imagine,” she said, surprised at the tremor in her voice.

  “I’m flattered.” He touched his chest in the way she had
seen so often when he had tried to ingratiate himself with dignitaries visiting the Pietà. “You are very gracious to come here to tell me that.”

  Insufferable man! “Maestro Vivaldi, do you think I have come all this way just to deliver a compliment?” She swallowed hard to calm her voice, thinking about how to convey what she had come to the theater to tell him.

  “My sister is maestra dal violino now. She owes that in part to you, I know. But even after all these years, her memories of playing with you are important to her. I just came over to ask whether they were important to you at all.” She gave an indignant sniff and looked away. “Perhaps you have had too many students just like her.”

  “Chiaretta, it’s not that I have forgotten. But—”

  She cut him off. “I’ve said what I wanted to say. Do with it what you will.” She turned and walked out the door.

  Within a week, two concerti were delivered to the Congregazione along with a letter requesting the assistance of the maestra dal violino in the preparation of a major new work for the Pietà.

  “Did you have anything to do with this?” Maddalena asked Chiaretta.

  “I saw him briefly at the theater,” Chiaretta said. “But we didn’t discuss this.” Close enough to the truth, she told herself.

  * * *

  Annagirò’s breasts pushed their way up and over the top of her corset as if they were plotting an escape. Although she was not fat, her body gave off a general sense of fleshiness that most agreed was unlikely to be conducive to virtue. Her face was pretty enough to be a tool to charm wealthy and influential men, although at the moment her stage makeup was caked on so heavily she could have disguised an acute bout of the pox. She had been billed as a twenty-year-old sensation when she came to Venice from Mantua the year before to star in Albinoni’s Laodicea. Scornful reviews of her singing from some quarters were countered by such lavish praise from others that most Venetians had shrugged at the obvious conclusion to be drawn: that La Girò might be offering more than her musical talent to some of the cognoscenti of Venice.