Vienna Nocturne

by Vivien Shotwell

  Marchesi was supposed to be a prisoner in chains but he wore a plumed golden helmet and was impeccably powdered and pomaded. He was supposed to have an injured arm, but he gestured with both arms vigorously. He had talked through her aria. He had trod on her foot. And the whole of Tuscany was there.

  “All you have to do is hold the cadenza and make sure the cellist waits for me,” she told Stephen. “He never pays attention.”

  “Ludovico Marchesi is the most famous castrato in the world,” said her brother, as if fending off the devil.

  “Just make sure you hold that cellist.”

  The Pergola theater in Florence was smaller and more refined than the Royal Opera House in London. In the boxes the aristocrats lit their own candles and feasted on their own food trolleys. Ladies beat the air with lacy fans. Nowhere was superb singing more prized than in Italy. The Italian audiences spoke of certain singers as though they were gods.

  In all her years of trying, Anna had never been able to contrive a convincing impersonation of Rauzzini. She was a fine mimic, but his voice was too different in color from her own, and his manners too elusive. But Marchesi’s every word and action were steeped in contrivance, and made him as easy a target as any.

  She was standing alone on stage toward the end of the final act. As if from a great distance, the orchestra began the introduction to her aria. I am Ludovico Marchesi, she thought, hearing in her mind his honeyed voice. She had had no time to practice. Someone would have suspected. But she had imagined what it would sound like, and how it would feel.

  Even before she began to sing she felt the change in the hall like a great warm wave. She pretended to take some snuff. Somebody laughed. Then they were all laughing. She had them. She was Marchesi and yet she was not Marchesi, she was something charming and light, and she had them. She could keep them as long as she wished. She strolled about the stage like a languid cat. She sang without consonants. She remarked, aloud, during the orchestra’s ritornello, in her perfect, ringing Italian, that she was not in good voice tonight—that she had eaten too much rum and pudding. She sang a few extravagant and unnecessary ornamental roulades, and though they were ridiculous, they were also impeccable, the technique flawless and clean. Then it was time for the cadenza. Composing herself, and dropping, at last, the appearance of nonchalance, she took to the front of the stage. Stephen, at the second harpsichord, sweat beading down his face, put up one hand to hold the cellist. Anna took a breath and stretched out her arms. This was her triumph. For she sang a voletta of her own, having never practiced one in her life, a bomba di Storace, just as quickly and accurately as Ludovico Marchesi himself, up and up by semitones in leaping octaves, all the way to the high C, a great victorious scream, as if the top of her head had popped open and light was shooting from the middle of her forehead, and it was the feeling that counted, of being a hollow body full of rushing air, empty and full all at the same time, and it was the surprise, the unfettered joy, in her brother’s face, that counted, and the knowledge that Marchesi was listening to her match and ridicule and best him, and that everything would be all right at last because they were on their feet, the Florentines, stamping and hollering her name, until she heard nothing else—“Brava La Storace! Brava L’inglesina! Brava, brava!”

  Of course they fired her immediately. The manager apologized, for in spite of her temerity she had been a thrilling success. But Marchesi was primo musico and had powerful friends and backers. Anna requested her fee for the evening’s performance and was granted it—more money than she had ever made for a single night. Marchesi would have made ten times more. Her mother was in tears and would not speak to her. Stephen thought it was all his fault. But the next day Anna’s name was in all the papers, and on everyone’s lips, and there was a letter of invitation from La Scala to sing prima buffa—leading lady—in the spring.

  Several months later, from the port city of Livorno, Stephen departed for London. He would address their debts there, organize the family’s possessions, and sell the house, as Mr. Storace had intended. Anna and her mother went on to Milan, stopping along the way to concertize.

  La Scala

  They had two clean rooms in Milan, with a sitting room between them, up three flights of stairs. Another singer lodged next to them, an Irish comic tenor named Michael Kelly, whom Anna had met in Florence. He was a slight young man of about twenty, with long, flaxen hair and a round, birdlike face, and specialized, he said, in “Lechers, windbags, and doctors.” He had taken a room next to theirs on purpose and promised Anna’s mother that he would protect them from thieves and scoundrels. Mrs. Storace said privately to Anna that she was not convinced he could protect himself. Michael spoke with great rapidity and his dress was extravagant and costly, often at the expense of his food. His voice was penetrating and reliable, not particularly winsome, and he was fond of cards.

  “Isn’t it grand?” he asked Anna downstairs at the inn over a chicken. Her mother was upstairs with indigestion, having had a disagreeable reaction to her first Milanese water. “Here we are kings and queens. I don’t think many young fellows from my town would’ve imagined themselves singing at La Scala.” He stretched his arms behind his head and grinned.

  “Have you met the other singers in the company?” Anna asked. “Are they nice? Are they very old?”

  “Oh, yes, jolly fellows all. Trust them with my life. There’s Mandini and Benucci who are much alike. Mandini’s not as good as Benucci but he’s an upright fellow, elegant, lean. Benucci’s tremendous. He’s a cannon. Great fun. What, how old? Middling of age. Younger side of middling. Then there’s the basso, Bussani, great booming fellow, and his pretty little wife, Dorotea. She’s the only other lady, almost as young as you, I should think, but not nearly as good. She’s a good old ham but the voice isn’t much. She goes with Bussani, you see. Then there’s you and me.”

  “I hope they like me,” she said.

  “They won’t be able to help it, my dear!”

  “Is Benucci the primo buffo?”

  “Him or Mandini. You’ll look well with either of them. Mandini you don’t have to worry about, he’s got a wife. Oh, she sings, too; I forgot about Mrs. Mandini. And Benucci—well, he’s a good chap, sings like a cannon.”

  The following morning Anna and Michael went to La Scala to sing through the first act with the rest of the cast. Michael had been there a month already, and the others longer, but the former prima buffa had departed for another engagement. The opera was by Antonio Salieri, visiting from Vienna. He did not know Anna’s voice but she had told him its compass in letters. She had received one aria by post in Livorno, but otherwise today would be her first encounter with the opera. The first performances would be in four and a half weeks and the other two acts were still being written.

  Opera buffa was the new, modern comic Italian opera, born from commedia dell’arte. The music was natural and the language conversational. Serious opera, opera seria, was in the old, grand style, the plots complex and often mythological, vocal prowess the most important element. The singers in opera seria sang their long, demanding arias in turn, one after another, without much interplay between them. The plots were so complicated, and at the same time so similar, that it was not worth the effort of the audience to follow them, and the words were often distorted almost beyond comprehension by the feats of vocalism—fioratura and roulades, ornaments and cadenzas—which were among the greatest arts of the castrati.

  But artifice now was out of fashion. These days, one could go to the opera to laugh. One could see ordinary, lower-class people on the stage, in natural, comical situations, such as were encountered every day. The ordinary man could be as entertaining as Zeus—and everyone knew an ordinary man. The music was simple, transparent, and tuneful; everything that music should be. One could understand the words.

  Anna—a clever girl with a witty stage presence, a fetching figure, and a talent for comedy—had arrived at the perfect time. She would play cunning maids and dexterous sh
epherdesses, girls of the peasant classes who fell in love with noble gentlemen, outwitted all those who plotted against them, and finished their lives in happiness.

  Mrs. Storace went with them to the theater, though Anna wished she would not. Still they were almost late, having gotten held up by a fish cart, and arrived out of breath at the small rehearsal hall where the other singers, the stage manager, and Salieri were waiting for them.

  “Are we late?” shouted Michael, in his quick, Irish-inflected Italian, pulling Anna by the hand. “Fish cart, fish cart! But I’ve brought her, here she is, our new girl, and her excellent mother.”

  The singers had been loosely arranged at the harpsichord, and now as Anna and Michael went to meet them—her mother took a seat to the side—they rose to greet her. Anna, flustered and nervous, received these impressions of them: that they were friendly and kind, loud and informal; that Mandini was refined; that Bussani’s young wife had a lack of grace that only increased her charm. Salieri had a tight face and a drawn-down mouth. But he, too, seemed kind, or kind enough. Indeed they were all happy to see her there, and she was immediately reassured. But when Francesco Benucci took her hand she felt a shock to her heart—so firm was the touch and so warm—and she flushed red and hot.

  “You must be my Dorina,” he said.

  “Am I?” she asked, and everyone laughed.

  They began the rehearsal. Anna could read almost anything by sight, and Salieri was experienced enough that he had written nothing that would show her ill. She was aware of them all listening to her—the opera would largely fall on her shoulders—but the feeling invigorated her and only made her want to sing her best. As soon as she began, she saw the other singers smile and whisper to one another, and she knew then that they liked her.

  After that it became simply a matter of play between them, a game of words and music and physical exertion that they embarked upon together. They were strong singers, with swift minds and open good humor—arrogant enough to think they could stand on a stage and dogged enough to have done the work to get there. They earned their way with their voices and bodies. It was changeable work and fickle, which time and fashion would remove, but which they loved so much that none of them would have changed it.

  At first Anna could hardly look at Benucci. Everything Michael Kelly had said about him was true. He had thick, dark brows and dark hair, and alert, warm eyes spaced slightly far apart. His expression was energetic and intelligent. He had a firm jaw, a wide, infectious, dimpled smile, and a reverberant and unself-conscious laugh. His voice was as beautiful as it was powerful, his neck and torso broad and strong, ideal for singing. He was taller than Mandini but shorter than the giant of Bussani. And Anna saw that Benucci was loved by everyone, and that he made them laugh and lighten. She saw that they all looked to him, that even Salieri looked to him.

  She had never had to play a lover before, not as she would have to now. She had never kissed a boy or gentleman as a lover would. She had hardly even been to a ball. And now Francesco Benucci was beside her, with his laugh and his smile, with his voice that was one of the strongest and most beautiful natural male voices she had ever heard, and she would have to pretend to be in love with him, to be his match and his ideal.

  By the end of the rehearsal she had become more comfortable, as though they all were friends already. But every time Benucci looked at her, she felt as though she might fall over.

  “Who was your teacher?” he asked quietly.

  “Venanzio Rauzzini.”

  He gave an approving nod and leaned back on his heels, his hands loosely at his waist. “I knew him in Rome. Fine singer. Fine lineage. Porpora taught Rauzzini. He did well by you.”

  “You knew him?” she exclaimed. “What was he like?”

  He smiled thoughtfully but did not have a chance to answer, because Dorotea Bussani was coming over in her carefree way to say how well Anna had sung and how much fun they would have. “You aren’t stupid,” she declared, clapping Anna over the shoulders. She was a striking girl with a long face and reddish hair; everything about her seemed lanky and open. “We always get stupid girls who stand like poles, it’s agony, can’t do anything except prop them up and wait for it to be over. But you’re smart and we’ll have such fun. You know how to entertain! You know what it’s all about!”

  Dorotea had grown up in a family of traveling performers, which was where her husband had discovered her when she was only fifteen. There were almost thirty years between her and Bussani. He was a comic bass of the first class, with a rumbling voice and a sardonic manner.

  “Marvelous,” said Stefano Mandini in velvet tones, taking Anna’s hand to kiss it. He had an aquiline nose and a broad, steeply sloping forehead. Everything about him was precise and well contained. Anna had liked his singing very much. His voice was not as beautiful as Benucci’s, nor as loud, and his manner was less passionate, but the technique was without flaw. Mandini could probably sing anything he liked, and he gave one the impression that he did so not to entertain, as Dorotea did, but because it was a physical challenge that happened to provide him with an income. “I think we’ll find ourselves lucky to have you,” he said. “I think you’re the piece we were missing.”

  “Brava,” said Salieri with a wry smile. “When I heard how young you were, I was afraid you’d embarrass me. Now I’m afraid I might embarrass you.”

  “Oh, never!” said Anna.

  “Look it over, tell me tomorrow if there’s anything you want changed. There’s not much time, but time enough.”

  “You sang prettily,” her mother conceded on their way home. “And you looked well.”

  “She was an angel, madam,” cried Michael Kelly. “Those are the best buffa singers in the world and your daughter holds her own among them.”

  “You are too kind, sir,” said Mrs. Storace. “I enjoyed your aria, as well. Very nice Irish tenor.”

  “I thank you, madam,” Michael declared fervently. “I am neither a large man, nor a great one, but with my voice I hope to seem so.”

  “That is all one can ever do,” said Mrs. Storace, and she talked with Michael all the rest of the way home and through dinner. She liked having a gentleman to speak English with. Anna, lost in daydreams and fatigued by the rehearsal, was glad to stay quiet.

  A few days later they began staging the opera. They memorized their parts as they went along. They were well trained in memory and the music fell into familiar tropes and patterns. Sometimes Salieri would alter something or other. He was a dry, thin gentleman, with a square head and a habitual, wincing frown; a man at once smooth and sharp, who held the rigor of an ascetic while yet, at least according to Michael Kelly, enjoying his women and his drink.

  The men all knew one another from previous engagements and acted like brothers. They were scrupulously courteous with Anna and Dorotea. Only Michael treated Anna as a friend, with frankness and unreserve. She supposed this was because he was not handsome, although he had a pleasant expression, boyish and birdlike. At any rate, she could be easy with him.

  Benucci said very little to her. He let the others talk. He seemed, on purpose, after that first day, to situate himself far from her when they weren’t rehearsing, and whenever she caught his eye he would find a reason to turn away and say something to Mandini or Bussani.

  Nevertheless Anna felt his presence keenly. He would tap her shoulder and say, “Well done,” or, “Very fine,” and when she found in their staging some interesting motion or turn of phrase, his approval was open and genuine. When they sang together there could be no appearance of reserve. They must look into each other’s eyes, argue and exclaim, laugh, dance, despair, declare their love and their hatred, and then again their love renewed. On stage they had a rapport, a secret, silent dialogue that could be indulged in nowhere else. They spoke in glances, in movements of head and hands, in inflection, in touch—all there, on the open stage. Dorotea remarked to Anna that she had never seen a leading couple so well matched. They acted as if they a
lready knew each other, she said. She had never seen Francesco Benucci better than he was now. All the other sopranos had been too dumb—they hadn’t known what to do with him.

  Anna shook her head and demurred, but in her heart she felt it was true. Francesco Benucci had found his match. That was why he wouldn’t talk to her, and why, on stage, his hand seemed to linger in hers a moment longer than was necessary. It was wonderful and strange. She thought only of him. Her only project was to make herself better, for him. Her Dorina would be sparkling, vibrant, bright—everything he deserved. She slept with the windows wide open and in the morning the air was filled with honey. It seemed impossible that this should be her life, that she had made it this far, and no one had told her, not even her mother, that she must go back to London. Young ladies of sixteen were not supposed to live like this, in the honeyed air, singing on the stage with men. Yet it was so.

  Love’s Confinement

  In the bowels of the theater were all the magnificent ropes and gears and pulleys of the stage machinery, as complex and fine-tuned as any clock or warship. These great works of wood and rope were pulled and pushed and held down by stage workers, moving the flats of painted scenery to create spectacular effects. It was a dark, churning space, crowded with men who must work in silence at the limits of their physical strength, and whose any mistake might kill someone.