They were all like little Paulines in this way, as I hoped to be soon.
We must choose your dress tonight, Natalya said, eyeing the trunks.
As various toilettes were held up and considered and taken from their papers, Maxine continued her patter of observant and condescending resentments, somewhat confusing, for she was still quite actively helping me all the same, a task I knew she saw as beneath her. She seemed both scornful and jealous, handing items to Firéne and Natalya as if they worked for her, and I didn’t know why she was leading the unpacking until I understood she did it for what she hoped to find. I was most likely about to be exposed. All that would be required was for her to find something I’d forgotten about, some incontrovertible proof—much as I knew her kind, I was sure she knew mine.
The door across the hall opened then, and the tenor emerged to see who had come to visit, knocking on my door and calling my name. My trio abandoned me to go meet the famous tenor, and I finished dressing alone. I chose the opera dress I’d once scorned, one of my first, the dark blue with the machine-embroidered bodice, fine but not too fine for a night in a private home. I called for Natalya—I’d liked her right away—and she helped me fasten the back. She returned, and as I entered, I saw how they tried to test themselves on him. His celebrity, his previous relationship to Pauline, his good looks, any of these would have made him desirable, and I could see they envied and even resented me a little for whatever fortune it was that had brought him to me.
Please, I nearly said to them. Do your best.
I wondered, if I were to meet him now, if I would flirt with him and then remembered the night I’d first met him when I nearly had. That was the smile I used as I walked to his side, and he took my hand, smiling back, and kissed it, his eyes only for me. Which I did all while not looking once at Maxine, so she would know; I had my edges, too.
§
The Théâtre du Thiergarten, as it was called in the handwritten program we were given later as we entered the salon that evening, announced it was proud to present Le Dernier Sorcier, an operetta by Ivan Turgenev and Pauline Viardot-García, as if it could do anything else. The room had been transformed since my earlier visit. The enormous green curtain confidently divided the salon, behind which oleander branches painted white peeped at the top. A fire was set in the fireplace, and the elegant chandelier lit, both somehow aloof to the curtain’s provocation. A beautiful piano sat directly under the chandelier at the room’s center and was lit by a lamp as well. The effect was a kind of suspenseful charm. If the forest beside Turgenev’s villa that led up into the mountains was magical, the entrance to that magic forest seemed to be here, behind the curtain.
The salon was the heart of the house, much greater in height than the other rooms, almost like a chapel, and faintly visible from here were the library and dining room. The audience was a small one, intimate—perhaps twenty or thirty people—and distinguished. The tenor was quickly busy in an animated conversation with the Prussian ambassador to the Baden-Baden court, and no sooner had I said hello, in a halting German, but I was introduced to Giulia Grisi, the famous retired soprano my fellow students had spoken of, who asked for us to be excused, drew me away, and sat me down beside her with a proprietary air. She told me she was visiting with Pauline, who’d told her all about me, and how excited she was to hear me after I’d finished my training. I love a Falcon voice, she said. Her interest in me bewildered me, and I tried to understand it as she went on about how she lived mostly in Florence but loved Germany and Pauline’s Baden-Baden set, and came often. She was a formidable woman, if not a tall one, with the appraising air of an assassin that vanished only when she smiled. Her dark hair sat in a severe crown of braids coiled on her head. Her black velvet gown, trimmed in black lace, nearly made her seem to be in mourning except I could not imagine her wearing anything else. She looked as if she might be an aunt to the Comtesse, and I was sure they knew each other—now she was admiring the tenor’s figure, telling me how handsome he must have been onstage at the Théâtre-Italien, and wasn’t I proud? I nodded and said I was.
Christmas is very charming in the Black Forest, she said, and patted my hand with hers. You must be sure to be here if you do not have plans. The way they celebrate it, one can imagine Christ being born again just to see for himself.
I said I would.
I’d not thought of a Christmas in some time. The idea was strange to me, as strange as choosing where to spend the holiday, all of it entirely alien. I’d spent exactly one Christmas in the Cajun Maidens—I recalled mulled wine that night in the food tent, and goose, as I recalled, and a tree lit with candles at the center of the wagons—and then it seemed as if I had not celebrated it since, except I must have. But the record of my time since then seemed not to reach all the way here, as if it had been cut somehow. My dress felt correct, though, and this reassured me: it was fancy enough to make me presentable without making me too much of an outsider, not so much with the other guests as with the other students, who had vanished, no doubt to prepare. I was anxious to adapt as quickly as I could to the prevailing culture of the household, though as I sat there, I was very aware I still wore my crinolines—a dress made for them would look woefully deflated without them, it seemed to me. I would need new clothes, and I made the note to myself even as Giulia, who’d been examining the tableau in front of us, returned her attention to me.
How fortunate you are to be about to begin your training with Pauline, she said.
I nodded.
How fortunate indeed. I think I might have sung longer if I’d had her as my teacher, she said. But who can say. What a life it is, she said. You will never know each day if the voice is any good until you begin your practice. Each morning could announce the end. But I shouldn’t frighten you, forgive me, she said.
What do you do when it leaves? I asked.
She held her hands up, palms facing up, and gestured to the scene around us with a smile. You see friends, she said. Be sure to have friends. And if you are lucky, you can give a farewell concert. But sometimes there is no chance, not if the voice goes quickly—for you want to be remembered at your best, always. Nothing less can do.
A wand tapped against the piano’s music stand, and then there were three knocks on the floor behind the curtain. The crowd went silent, and the curtain parted for Pauline, who smiled as we applauded. She then announced that the evening’s performance was to be dedicated to her guests of honor, and would we please stand and be welcomed. I waited for the tenor to stand first, and he was greeted with much affection and a few shouts, and then he gestured to me, and I stood also as my name was said, and Pauline announced I was her newest student. I waved as I had seen my hero, Adelina Patti, do, and then curtsied; and as I did so, I noted Giulia’s approval.
Pauline then sat down at the piano, and as she began to play, the curtain drew back, revealing the oleander trees to be in pots, enormous flowers made of paper, and the outlines of what looked like a little house, inside of which sat Krakamiche, the last of the sorcerers, who was received with much applause, for he was Turgenev, smiling to the audience before resuming the aggrieved face of a sorcerer on the wane. He opened his mouth to sing, and I heard a delicate soprano voice appear, to the laughter of the crowd, for it could not be his, high as his voice was—another was singing for him somewhere in the wings.
The tenor who sings for him could not be here, Giulia whispered to me.
Stella, the sorcerer’s beautiful daughter, was played by Maxine, who clearly relished the major role and was beautiful in her modest costume as the unmarried noble daughter supporting her father during the decline of his powers.
An opéra-bouffe-féerie, Le Dernier Sorcier told the story of an aging sorcerer living in a small hut in the woods with his daughter, Stella, who has enchanted a young Prince, Lelio. The Prince, having seen her while hunting in the woods and fallen in love with her, cannot find her to woo her and despairs, but luckily for him, he is overheard by the Queen of the
Fairies, the ruler of the woods. She is plotting to make some mischief at the old wizard’s expense, seeing him as an interloper she has longed to be rid of. She knows of the beautiful Stella and offers the Prince a magical rose, which allows the bearer to be unseen, though only at night.
Giulia continued her asides to me, explaining who it was I saw as they appeared, the delicate girl in the costume of the Queen of the Fairies—a rose wreath in her hair, a diamond star flashing at its center—was Pauline’s daughter Claudie, and the girl acting as the head fairy, Verveine, was her other daughter Marianne. Krakamiche’s no-good, troublesome servant was played by Paul, Pauline’s son—he would sing an aria, to my delight. Prince Lelio was Natalya, who made a surprisingly handsome young prince. This left Firéne absent, but only she could be singing as the voice for Turgenev’s Krakamiche, it seemed to me.
The diminutive Queen, having helped the handsome young Prince in his pursuit of his love, plans some mischief. She sends a delegation of her most loyal fairies, disguised as Cochinese, claiming to bear a gift for the wizard—a magical grass that will restore the sorcerer’s youth and powers. When it instead causes him to dance a waltz that leaves him weak and humiliated, he vows revenge. The second act opens with him hunting through a book of Merlin’s spells for a spell that is a protection from all other magic, the most powerful spell of all. The beautiful Stella tries to get the sorcerer to be content with his decline, saying he has all he needs there in their modest house; but as he won’t hear it and instead keeps searching feverishly, she begins to sing to herself. After two verses, Prince Lelio, made invisible by the rose’s magic and hidden near her, sings the third verse in response, causing her to startle and then, when he drops the rose and is revealed to her, to smile. But this only convinces the sorcerer that his spell has succeeded and his powers are restored. He tries another, summoning a monster to rid his hut of this intruding prince, but instead a goat comes up from the earth and runs from the hut.
This, of course, was Pegasus the pointer, horns hanging from his neck as he struggled to rid himself of them.
In despair, the sorcerer collapses: his daughter and the Prince comfort him. In the final scenes, Stella and Prince Lelio marry and bring the sorcerer out of the woods to live in the Prince’s castle. As they depart, the Queen and her fairies celebrate having the woods entirely under their control again.
The green curtain rang down to much applause and then was parted by the sweetly shy face of Claudie smiling as she led the faeries out to calls for encores. The grateful room shouted bravos and bravas as she curtsied and her diamond star flashed. Cheers changed to laughter when, as the rest of the cast emerged, Turgenev appeared at last in his wizard’s robes, and the laughter increased as Firéne came out behind him, smiling gamely as he touched his throat and pointed to her. Pauline gestured to the tenor and me both, thanking us for making the occasion of the performance possible, and he blew her a kiss while I could only stand still in amazement.
That poor man, Giulia said softly, under her breath.
Thank you for these calls for an encore, but I think we must go, Pauline said. To dinner! Pauline called this from the stage as if summoning us to a charge, and the crowd, already standing at attention, made its way out through the back into the cold garden, the women accepting shawls offered by Pauline’s maid and all of us following the lanterns hung to guide us along the way.
Giulia had relinquished me, off speaking now to someone else, and the tenor appeared at my side, smiling as he gave me his arm. Do you feel honored yet? he asked, and I said I did. This might be all I ever thought to dream of, he said, and as I took his arm, he planted a single kiss on my cheek. The warmth from it stayed there at least half the way to the other house.
The entire performance had moved me deeply, from the well-mannered, beautiful voices of Pauline’s children to Pauline’s continued command of the entire night and, it seemed, the world around her. The story struck me as quite clever, the music also. One thing troubled me: I knew from the expressions of dismay visible on some of the royals around me during the performance that as Turgenev played the sorcerer in his decline on the stage they felt it beneath him. Another decline happening in front of them. This saddened me. I already felt protective of him and thought of him as my friend.
Pauline and he and the rest of the troupe were still in costume, walking just ahead of us, and in the dark garden, they looked as if the opera would now continue to a new chapter, as if we were on our way to the castle to see the wedding of the prince and Stella.
This was the first opera with a happy ending I’d ever seen, and despite the contrivances of Fate at work in it, this one I could see staying inside of, as they did now. We entered the Viardot villa to find Pauline’s real husband, Louis, at the table, smiling genially. He was introduced and apologized for being late. He had been feeling poorly but was now a little better. He was quite small in stature by comparison to Turgenev, who kissed him on both cheeks—Louis looked a bit like an old fox in evening dress, his whiskers and sharp eyes quizzical as he took me in—all of his weight was in his eyes, his gaze—all of his body raised up so he might see. I had no sooner finished our pleasantries than Turgenev appeared at my side, picking at the sleeves of his sorcerer robes, rolling them back so he might eat.
La Lapinard, he said, smiling. How did you enjoy your show?
An enormous pleasure, I said, thrilled to be reminded of my new title. Your soprano voice was a miracle of tone.
Indeed, I thought much the same, he said, and laughed. She is wonderful. I look forward to when you join us there. Which can only be soon, I’m sure.
We looked to Louis then, who was smiling at Turgenev with real affection. He drew back a chair and sat down and urged us to the buffet. The true dernier sorcier, then, I understood, here, setting his napkin into his lap, at home in the castle with the two lovers.
§
Dinner was cold hams and a salad of potatoes the tenor told me was traditional to Germany served with a cool red wine. Seating was informal, in Pauline’s salon, with small tables set throughout with candles and crystal. Giulia reappeared to sit with me at one of them, gossiping about how the imposing woman speaking to Pauline, strangely anxious to be at her ease, was Queen Augusta of Prussia, there unofficially, now a patroness of Pauline’s. She has just commissioned an opera from her, Giulia said.
I tried to be interested, but instead I could only watch as Maxine sat beside the tenor at the table and did the same with the tenor as she had with me, going through her questions as if she were at a briefing. She was interested in him differently, more intensely than the other girls, who had only wanted to flirt. The effect for me was like watching a mouse dance in front of a cat, thinking it was the cat. The prospect of their pairing amused me such that I smiled, and Maxine noticed this and this confused her—her confidence dimmed. The tenor noticed and looked to see the source of her discomfort.
I nodded. He grinned back and took her hand, holding it up.
I smiled at this, and he laughed and turned back to her as she struggled to regain her previous air. Giulia smiled also and we resumed our conversation.
I understood that to Maxine I was already living the life of dramatic love and connection she and the other students hoped for after they finished their education, but it would be some time before I understood that my apparent indifference to losing the tenor passed as confidence, or sophistication, and urged Maxine to greater lengths. I had not yet learned to be possessive of a lover I did not love. Instead, whenever I thought of it or noticed her at her game, the absurdity of it would freeze me in place with the same mix of fear and hope each time.
Maxine would never quite believe I was who I said I was, and at times she treated her mission of seducing the tenor as a kind of rescue of him, as if he’d been led astray by a pretender. She would try to captivate him for a very long time after that night. And one day, many years from now, she would succeed a little because I allowed it.
Until tha
t time, when I thought of Maxine, I mostly would hear her say that strange greeting of hers from our first meeting. It would stay with me for years.
Tragedy belongs to you.
Soon I would say it to myself.
Tragedy belongs to you.
Two
MY FIRST LESSON with Pauline that morning was a lesson in all I did not know about my voice and singing.
I went to her music room, and she invited me to sit beside her at the piano, and so I did. As I sat down, I saw we did not wear crinolines at Pauline’s because we needed to sit beside her on the piano bench.
I would direct the tenor to place a dress order for me immediately afterward.
I have heard a story, she said, of your audition for the Conservatoire, but I would hear it from you directly.
I told her about singing my Nabucco aria and the reactions and comments of the jury. And the warning.
I wouldn’t dare ask you to sing such a thing for me today, she said. What else can you sing?
I suggested the Lucia, and she shook her head.
Let us be very simple, she said. Why don’t you sing your vocalizes for me?
I had none and admitted as much.
Ah, she said. He really did poorly by you. I will have to punish him! We will find something suitably humiliating, I’m sure. Perhaps I will teach him to teach. Here, and she played a simple progression for me. Now follow along, singing on each tone just the letter A. Do not push or strain; let the tone be natural.
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