Carefully she removed her hat. She seemed both lively and relaxed. She talked of a fair she had been to this morning, a trinket she had bought.
“It’s wonderful to be here,” she said to him, smiling. “I feel so comfortable with you.”
This pleased him enormously. He fussed with his papers. Benucci, he told himself. She loves Benucci. But he didn’t believe it. “Here it is,” he said, not able, really, to meet her eyes. “A grandissimo rondo. You’ll be disguised as the countess, and Benucci is hiding in the bushes thinking you’re waiting for a tryst with Almaviva. But really you love Benucci, and you know he’s hiding, so you play a trick on him and pretend to sing a love song to Almaviva, whom you detest, in order to mock and serenade the man you really love, Benucci, who’s listening. This is that love song.”
“Figaro,” she murmured, studying the score.
“What?” he asked.
“You mean I love Figaro. Susanna loves Figaro.”
“Yes, right, Figaro. So you see it’s really very clever. It’s double-edged. She’s driving him mad with jealousy but in her heart she knows she’s singing for him alone. For Figaro. So it’s two things at once, you see?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s wonderful.”
“I’m sorry. You know all this already. I’m an idiot.”
“It’s all right.”
There was a brief silence. “Well,” said Mozart, turning to his keyboard. “Shall we?” She nodded her assent and they played through it.
Of course it was a wretched aria. Completely wrong. She was a breathtaking singer but she had been wrong in this. He’d known it would be wrong to do a big rondo. So he had composed it in the wrong key. Ha! It was very clever. He’d written it in E-flat. E-flat was entirely the wrong mood. And Benucci’s aria was also in E-flat. One couldn’t have two E-flats in a row. “Deh, vieni” must be in F. But it couldn’t be in F, and be a big showpiece rondo. That would be ridiculous and impossible. So he’d written an alternate aria in F, which was waiting at the top of the piano, a sweet little thing, almost a folk song it was so simple, the kind of song a girl like Susanna would sing to her lover on a hot summer evening, to bring him to his knees.
Anna would not like this one in E-flat. He knew her too well. So he had the other one waiting, the one in F.
It would have been easier to play if she hadn’t been standing so close to him. The aria was wretched but her singing was exquisite. He could see her breast expanding and declining with every breath.
“Well,” he said grimly when it was finished. He almost spat on the score. “There’s your rondo.”
“You don’t like it,” she said.
“What?” he asked. “Why would I write anything I didn’t like?”
She hesitated and wet her lips. God help him, her eyes … “To teach me a lesson,” she ventured. “To stop me from being so vain.”
He broke from her gaze, flustered, and looked at the keyboard. I married Constanze, he told himself. I love Constanze. “Look,” he said rapidly and almost with irritation. “It’s the middle of the night. She’s waiting for her lover. Longing for him. The place is crowded with enemies but in spite of the danger she means to sing for his ears only. In a minute the climax will come, the dénouement, a great hubbub, but for now she’s alone with him. In this grove. In Spain. In summer dark.” He took a long breath. “Do you think she wants to show off her fioratura? Her high notes? She already has him. In heaven’s name they are already married. The aria should be a caress, a breath, an ache in the heart. Anything else is showmanship.”
She was silent for a long moment. He couldn’t see her face. He didn’t know what she was thinking. He could only hear her breathing, the breath that touched her lips and nose and throat, that moved her perfect breast. Then she said, softly, “Did you have something else in mind?”
He swallowed back the lump in his throat. He remembered kissing her in the courtyard, how she had sighed against him, her sweat and her perfume, the silkiness of her dress, how she’d let him pull up her stockings and almost go higher. He reached for the other manuscript. “Yes.” He was surprised at himself, how natural he sounded. “I do have something, as it happens. I have it here. Would you like to try it?”
“Of course,” she said.
“I think it might be just the thing. There’s this part here, you see, where I’ll have the winds cooing, a very special effect, very lilting. I think it will be just the thing to drive Benucci mad.”
“Figaro,” she murmured, correcting him.
“Figaro,” he said. He could not look at her. He could speak quite naturally, but he could not look at her. His own breath was coming quickly, a steady, nervous rhythm—nervous, he told himself, for fear she wouldn’t like the aria, because really he was rather fond of the aria, rather proud. It must be this one, the one in F, with the cooing winds.
They began with the recitative, the dialogue-like speak-singing that led into the aria proper. “At last,” she sang in Italian, “the moment has come when I can enjoy myself without care in the arms of my beloved.” And as she sang this he felt her hand come to rest on the top of his left shoulder.
Her left hand it was. He shut his eyes. She sang, “Timid fears, depart from my breast! Do not come, to disturb my delight,” and stroked his shoulder in three soft circles.
He played the rushing interlude of piano notes, her hand on his shoulder, all his life in his shoulder, and when he got to the last chord of the sequence he turned his cheek to rub against her hand on his shoulder and kissed the top of her first finger. The finger lifted to stroke across his lips and he wheeled around in an agony of desire and buried his face in her breasts.
“Oh, no,” she gasped, urgently, over his kisses—her neck, he wanted to devour it—“Someone will notice, I have to keep singing or someone will notice,” so he pulled her forward and sat her in his lap and played the next chords with his lips nuzzling her nape, her hair, the sweet downy slope of her shoulder. Laughing, breathing against him, she somehow continued the recitative, about the beautiful Spanish grove, the earth, the sky, the night, welcoming and responding to her desires, and then she turned around and kissed him like someone dying of thirst.
She rested her forehead against his and stared deeply and laughingly into his eyes. “The aria,” she whispered. “Now the aria.”
Thank God he had it memorized.
He played the introduction as slowly as he could—slower than it ever should go, and with ridiculous errors—while she kissed and caressed him and fumbled with his trousers. She missed her entrance.
“I’m sorry,” she exclaimed, a little thickly, but clearly enough for anyone outside to hear. “Frog in my throat. Could you start again, maestro?” And as she was saying this she found an opening in the trousers and he gave a scarcely audible groan. He began the introduction again. She turned, resting on his knee, an arm about his neck, the other in his pants, and sang the first phrase. Then she stopped and fell against him and he held her as tightly as he’d held any girl in his life and both of them were laughing breathlessly and silently. He pushed up her skirts, felt again the sweet soft thigh, touched for the first time her strong, perfect rump.
“Such long phrases!” she gasped. She pressed her face into his neck and turned around again so that her back was to him. He caressed her waist, her breasts, inhaled blissfully her sharp, exquisite scent. “We’ll have to try it again. I’m afraid,” she said, sounding remarkably sober, “I haven’t quite the breath to do it justice today.”
“You’re doing very well,” he declared. Lightly he nibbled her ear. “It’s an experiment. It’s so new.”
“Yes,” she sighed, a sigh as if of ecstatic respite, leaning against him in his chair. “And so abominably exposed.”
“You have the best legato,” he said, running his hand up the inside of her thigh, all the way to the top, “I ever heard.” She gasped and thanked him kindly, and wriggled like a fish.
The door was not locked. The house
was full of people. Anyone might come in, without a knock.
“Are you sure?” he whispered.
“Oh, yes,” she said, adjusting herself. “Let’s start again from the beginning. Let’s see—I mean—ah, yes—I mean, let’s see if I have the breath.” She turned the page back to the beginning, to the recitative, and then he was inside her.
It was absurd, sacrilegious, that he could keep playing, and she singing, in such circumstances, with such feelings and motions. Yet somehow they managed. They stopped and started, laughed, made great shows of chagrin and apology. Her tone was perhaps not as strong as it might have been. One or the other of his hands were sometimes occupied with other things. Sometimes she got the tune wrong, because she wasn’t looking carefully enough, and he had to sing it to her, in his soft tenor, moving in time with it, conducting it upon her body. Twice he bit her shoulder—once she broke off singing entirely. It was perfect in F. There had never been anything so right or so whole or so good.
Spring in Vienna
If music were an intoxication, Anna never wished to be sober. Her mind thrummed with melody. At night, in bed, as she had done since childhood, she sifted through all the musical themes running through her head and chose one to fall asleep to that was most like a lullaby.
She and Mozart saw each other every Wednesday, even if it was only for a few minutes. She lived and died for Wednesdays. Sometimes she kept him company while he composed. Now and then he’d ask her opinion—whether she liked this better, or that; whether it sounded best with this tempo, this articulation, or another. Always he was delighted with her answer, even if he did not agree.
When she was with him, her contentment was absolute. But as soon as they parted she was restless and upset. She became envious of his wife, envious even of his little boy. When she was lonely or tired, she could call up some memory of Mozart and that would restore her, but the feeling would not last.
They did not talk of the future. Rehearsals for Figaro had started and they were both extremely busy. Mozart would conduct the first few performances of the opera. He was still finishing the last acts.
“You seem strung rather thin, Anna,” Stephen remarked. “Aren’t you getting enough sleep?”
“It’s my Susanna,” she said. “She consumes me.”
“Your part’s too long,” Stephen declared. “Da Ponte’s got you on stage every moment.”
“But what would we cut? There’s nothing. It all runs together.”
“Trust Mozart not to leave any seams,” Stephen said with a laugh. He was writing a new opera, based on A Comedy of Errors, which he hoped to premiere in the fall. The emperor had said he might have a second chance, and Mozart—in part to be nearer to Anna—had been giving Stephen composition lessons.
Mozart and Da Ponte had wanted to have Figaro ready by winter, but it had been delayed and postponed and now would not be performed until the beginning of May, the very end of the season. Even with the delay Mozart could not write quickly enough. Anna would go to his house, or the house of one of his patrons, to read her part with the others, and Mozart would greet them like a ghost, cracking his distracted jokes and handing them new pages. His fingers were blackened with ink and appeared to grow blacker every time she saw him. When one hand got tired of writing he would switch to the other. In addition to composing Figaro, he was still performing concerts and giving lessons to his students.
The company had divided into factions over the new Mozart opera. On one side, resenting it, were Stefano Mandini, his wife, Maria, and Luisa Laschi. The Bussanis swayed with the winds but were usually found over by the Mandini-Laschi border, leaving only Anna and Michael Kelly solidly championing the opera. Benucci refused to ally himself one way or the other.
The root of the problem came down to matters of laziness and pride, and a reluctance to do anything unfamiliar. Mozart, try as he might to compose in an Italian style, was Austrian, and this bothered some of them. His opera was exceptional in its length and difficulty. They were used to singing dry recitative, as easy and natural to them as speech, easy duets and trios, and simple arias. But Mozart put everything together so that one musical number ran into the next without rest. He did not only require them to sing duets or quartets: he required sextets. Performing one of these elaborate ensembles was like baking a new dish for a king, on pain of death, when none of the proper ingredients were at hand and everyone had only fragments of the recipe. Everything must be memorized and perfectly timed.
“Why must he,” asked Mandini, “make everything so thorny? He’s a splendid pianist and I enjoy his concertos. But an opera is not a concerto. Mozart has his genius. Let him stick with it. How can he be expected to set an Italian text? How can he have any instinct for it? The music is too rich. It sinks with its own weight. And we’ll be the ones who pay for it.”
“Come now,” said Michael. “Anna has the most to sing of all of us, and do you see her complaining?”
“She never would. She’s got Wolfgang Mozart in her pocket.”
“I do not,” she exclaimed. “Signor Mandini, I’m shocked. You know I haven’t any pockets.”
Mandini laughed. “Then you’re keeping him somewhere else.”
“Don’t you dare,” she cried teasingly, flying at him. He shouted and ducked. It was all in jest—at least it seemed so. Surely Mandini didn’t know. Surely none of them knew. There was always this kind of talk and teasing among musicians. But her heart was racing.
“Come,” said Michael. “Enough. They’re waiting for us.”
Mozart and the stage manager were in the saloon of the Burgtheater, a pleasant open hall with the chairs pushed back. The whole company had assembled. They were to rehearse, for the first time together, the extensive second act finale.
Mozart rose, seeming anxious, and said to them, “I’ve been looking forward to hearing this—all of you together. It’s tremendous. I’ve been dreaming of it.”
The action of The Marriage of Figaro took place over the course of a single day. The Count Almaviva wished to claim his droit du seigneur and take his wife’s chambermaid, Susanna, to bed on the night of her wedding with Figaro. Carrying through it all was a subplot involving the page Cherubino, played by Dorotea, who loved the countess. In the section of the opera they were rehearsing now, the jealous count had discovered that Cherubino was locked in his wife’s closet, in a state of undress. After that, various characters rushed in and out until they were all singing together in a frenzy. The finale went on for half an hour without break, and if any element collapsed in its structure the rest would soon follow.
“Well,” Mozart said, after their first attempt. It had gone terribly. He looked at Anna and smiled. In spite of how messy it had been she felt cheerful and pleasantly tired with the feeling that could only come from singing for a half an hour the music of the man she loved. “It could be worse.”
“It’s so fast,” said Bussani. “There’s no time to breathe.”
“Don’t be glum!” said Michael Kelly. “You sound like Zeus himself; you make my bones rattle. If anything it was too slow for you.”
“It must be at least that fast,” said Mozart.
“Otherwise we’ll not be home before daybreak,” said Mandini.
“If I may,” said Bussani, “the short duet between my wife and Signora Storace is most delightful.”
“Isn’t it a hoot?” asked Dorotea. She put her hands to her head. “If only I can get my tongue to obey my brain.”
“Maestro,” said Mandini with soft gravity to Mozart. He stood and took some space among them. “We will spend all afternoon on this one finale alone. It’s not even the finale to the opera—just the second act. We’ve not begun to master it. I guess the length of your opera will be five hours at the very least—I shouldn’t be surprised if it stretched to five and a half. How are we to be expected to know it by the first of May?”
The room had grown still. “Four and a half hours, I should think,” Mozart said at last. “At most.”
“You’re not accounting for encores.”
Mozart passed his gaze over them, pausing when he reached Anna. “I’m aware of that,” he said. He turned back to Mandini. “My opera is so long because it can’t be any shorter. It’s exactly the length it needs to be. I would offer to cut the count’s aria, but you sing it so magnificently—”
“It’s impossibly difficult,” Mandini interjected.
“And you told me that you like it and it suited you.”
“It does, too, by God,” said Michael.
“Can’t deny that,” said Benucci, smiling.
“I’m not suggesting you cut my aria,” said Mandini.
“Perhaps your fair wife’s?” Mozart said. “Yours is perhaps the least important to the plot, madam,” he said to Maria Mandini, “but I would not wish you to leave the opera without an aria of your own.”
“That, too, must remain,” said Mandini. He coughed. “It’s not a question of the arias.”
“Then what?”
Mandini opened his mouth, hesitated, and shut it again. “The whole thing.”
“The whole thing?”
“Some of us”—he hesitated again—“are wondering if perhaps you’ve overreached yourself.”
“Ah,” said Mozart, smiling and leaning back. “Maybe I have. I suppose we’ll find all that out on the first of May.”
Mandini sighed and bowed his head. “I suppose we will.”
“You can’t deny it’s a magnificent finale,” Michael said to Mandini as they were leaving. “I mean, as long as we can pull it off.”
“But we can’t. There isn’t time. I see no good in it and very probably harm.”
Vienna Nocturne Page 19