Vienna Nocturne

by Vivien Shotwell

  “Harm? It’s opera, Mandini. We are not going to war.”

  “Your part is nothing. If we fail, it’s I who’ll get egg on my face, I and Benucci and the prima donnas.”

  “The opera is superb,” Benucci declared. He touched Anna on the back and she looked at him with surprise and gratitude. “Best thing I’ve ever sung. I won’t soon forget it. Wait until you hear my aria in the second act, Mandini. The man makes me sound like a god.”

  “You always sound like a god,” said Michael happily.

  Mandini snorted. “Where’s your loyalty, Benucci?”

  “With the music, ass. I don’t mind anything if the music’s good.”

  “Barnacle,” drawled Mandini. He gave Benucci a push. “It won’t be any good if we can’t sing it.”

  “We can sing it.”

  May 1, the day of the premiere, came too soon. As they assembled in the familiar round of the Burgtheater there was within the cast of The Marriage of Figaro a degree of nervous tension not usual for them. There were obstacles of vocalization and memorization. The instrumentalists were out of their depth. Mozart had used his opera orchestra as he used it in his symphonies and concertos, but the orchestra of the Burgtheater had never played such symphonies. He’d meant for the instruments to be in dialogue with the singers, nearly their equal, commenting on their action, but too many of them had not sufficiently learned their parts. They were not yet moving in the same breath, with the same mind. Everyone felt uneasy and unmoored.

  Anna stood backstage holding hands with Benucci in the dark. She had taken his hand because she was frightened, and he’d accepted her touch without a word. Of them all he was the most composed. But Anna perceived him taking measured breaths to calm himself. It was always like this with a premiere. One didn’t know it well enough. One could not anticipate how it would go over.

  After a moment she transferred her hand to the crook of his arm and let him take a portion of her weight. On her head was Susanna’s wedding cap. Her shoes were pink. They could hear the chatter of the audience and the fiddling of the orchestra. It was not yet dark outside—there must be an hour or two left of daylight.

  “Why do we do this to ourselves?” she asked Benucci in a low voice. “I’m ready to faint, if you weren’t here holding me up.”

  “We do it,” he murmured, “because we haven’t found anything we like better.”

  She seemed to have lost the use of her right ear. Her vision was blurring at the peripheries. But it was too late. The overture had begun. She and Benucci went to their places in the darkness behind the curtain, he to measure out the space for their marriage bed, and she to admire her pretty cap. Then the curtain was drawn and warm light poured on her and she saw from the corner of her eye the shifting audience and the heads of the players and Mozart in the center, at his piano, as tranquil and focused as he had been in rehearsals, and she loved him, and could be frightened no more, for it was of utmost importance that Figaro be drawn from his work to admire the little cap she had made for their wedding day.

  Running through the evening she had the sensation of balancing a ball on her nose like a bear at a circus. When it stayed balanced, even with all her dips and dodges, it seemed a miracle. Every now and then she would have the sensation of watching herself. But if she observed too long, everything would threaten to come crashing down and she’d have to scramble. She was ever having to loosen her awareness—and become, in that way, more aware—in order to steady her brain, which wanted to comment upon her actions rather than sinking into them as deeply and resolutely as it must. This evening she failed, she feared, more than she succeeded. The audience was restless and vocal. A knot of rowdies in the balcony—hired, no doubt, by Mozart’s detractors—had set themselves to booing, and this distressed and distracted her. Da Ponte had done the best he could in adapting the libretto from the French play, but the plot could not be jarred, or it lost its sense; yet jarring, it seemed, was all they did. The singers missed their cues and confused the audience. When Anna played her guitar to accompany Cherubino’s second aria—a song within the opera, which Cherubino had written for the countess—it seemed the first time in the evening that the restlessness stilled. The impartial members of the audience gave many bravos but it seemed not enough. The finale at the end of the second act nearly fell apart. Everyone came off stage in a black humor. They had not rehearsed enough. Mozart had overestimated their abilities.

  “Cheer up, my ducks!” shouted Dorotea Bussani, breathless from jumping out the window to escape the wrath of Count Almaviva. She mopped her brow and blew out her lips and stretched her mouth like a lion. She enjoyed strutting around in her tall boots and snugly fitting trousers. She had told Anna the garments made her want to gallop on a horse. Her husband sliced an apple for her. “The worst is over now. Nobody remembers the middle of things. They can read the libretto during the interval. Only two acts to go, my chickens! The easiest acts yet!”

  “The orchestra is out of time and out of tune,” said her husband.

  “Well, I thought our duet went splendidly,” said Dorotea to Anna. The duet between Susanna and Cherubino, with the two young servants singing over each other in panicked whispers, was a comic masterpiece, over in the blink of an eye.

  “Yes,” Anna said absently. She had hoped Mozart would come backstage during the interval, but there was no sign of him. Somehow it seemed that if the opera failed tonight it would be her fault.

  “Mandini’s aria will set us right,” said Benucci, clapping the other basso on the head. “Nobody does it better. Elegance, farce, it’s all there.”

  “Ah,” said Mandini. He adjusted his wig. “We’ll see.” But he added, “I’m rather fond of the third act.”

  Luisa Laschi, who played the countess, gave Anna a hug. She was a sweet girl about Anna’s height and they had become friends. In the third act they sang a duet in which the countess dictated a letter, while Susanna repeated the lines back to her. Although the text was ironical, Anna and Luisa’s voices mixed and slipped across each other like silk in a breeze. It was one of the most exquisite moments in the opera and showed, Benucci had remarked, Wolfgang Mozart’s profound and uncanny understanding of womenfolk. Mozart had laughed and said it was because he had a sister.

  “You sounded beautiful,” Anna said to Luisa. “I listened to your aria.”

  Luisa shook her head. “I was sure I’d run out of air.” She gave Anna a kind look. “I’m sorry I doubted the opera, Anna. You were right. It is a marvel. But I’m afraid we’re not showing it to its best.”

  “We will,” said Anna.

  “Of course,” said Luisa. She bowed her head and moved away, murmuring her lines. She’d had some memory slips in the first half.

  “How are you holding up?” asked Michael. He was in his judge’s costume. He took Anna’s arm.

  She leaned on him with theatrical weakness. “I’m so tired,” she exclaimed. “I’ve sung enough for one evening, thank you. I think I’d better go home.”

  “You can do it,” Michael said. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “How like a judge you are,” she said, admiring his costume. Then Benucci swung her away from Michael and lifted her into the air, and she let herself become excited again, because the opera was still wonderful, and for all her fears there was still nowhere she would rather be, just as it had been when she was thirteen, than inside an opera house.

  The third act was the best they’d ever done it. When it was over and time to commence the last, although she had already sung more than she was used to, she somehow felt she had new energy, as if nearing the end of a long fast.

  The fourth act was the act of mistaken identities, of lovers’ assignations in summer evenings. The stage was in semidarkness. The little girl playing Barbarina went out alone to look for the lost pin and sang a melody as melancholy as anyone had ever heard. The child reminded Anna of herself, when she had been young. Then came Maria Mandini’s aria, then Benucci’s, and finally it was time for �
��Deh, vieni,” Susanna’s last aria, the one in F.

  She went out, disguised as the countess, more alone than she had been all evening. Figaro hid behind a tree. Anna lifted her veil, to breathe the sweet evening air, and saw Mozart in the orchestra, dressed in white and gold with a gold insignia at his breast. And she understood then that she had not failed. She saw it in his face. He did not care if it was imperfect.

  She flitted about the stage for the recitative and then settled, kneeling, on an imagined bed of moss, among fragrant nighttime flowers, for the aria.

  She could never sing it without blushing.

  Here, this evening, for the first time in nearly four hours of stage play, she paused in her disguise to reveal her heart. The aria was gentle and lulling, delicately exposed, achingly sensual. The range was as narrow as any popular song. More low notes than high. A serenade. Yet amateur young ladies after dinner could not have sung it as Anna did now. As with much of Mozart’s music, its greatest difficulty lay in its seeming ease. An amateur would not have had the breath for it, would have wobbled and staggered, run sharp or flat. To make it sound as it must—simple, guileless, a breath of desire—Anna had to draw on all her reserves, that the line not fail, the silver ball not waver in its balance. And this time she did not falter.

  Now came the ending, the part that transcended nature, the part where she begged her beloved to come to her, to this dark copse of trees, where the flowers were all smiling—to come, come, “Vieni, vieni,” that she might crown his brow with roses. Mozart watched her from the piano, remembering their sacrilege. She sang it to him.

  The Dearest Friend

  They gave three more performances of Figaro in May, and as the listeners and singers became familiar with the work, its worth began to show. The little duet between Susanna and Cherubino was encored countless times. The emperor ordered a special performance of Figaro that summer, at his pleasure palace in Laxenburg, and Mozart was confident there would be many more performances come autumn. The press, after some initial hesitation, had declared his opera a masterpiece.

  And all through the summer Anna and Mozart were lovers. As nearly as they could be. Once his opera opened, and then after it had closed, they had little excuse to be alone, with her so busy at the Burgtheater and Mozart putting on concerts and composing everything he could. He was always tired. He felt guilty and was afraid his wife suspected. He felt he could not give Anna everything she needed. He talked of moving to the outskirts of the city, where the rents were cheaper. If he moved there, Anna would see him even less.

  The only times she ever felt at peace now were at his concerts. Then she could sit quietly, watching him, and sate her heart. In his music was where he lived and revived, and where she’d first loved him. And she knew, always, always when she was there, that he played for her. That he had always been playing for her. He had told her so. But she would have known it, even if he had not told her.

  The touch of his hands was like nothing she had ever felt from a man. It was wholly gentle. His fingers did not demand. They did not coarsen or insist. She could have devoted her life to the memory of a single caress. When she saw him play, she wanted to laugh, for he touched her in the same way that he touched the keys.

  It was as though the world was a dream and they the only real ones in it. Sometimes she would meet his eyes across the room, and only they would know, and no one else, and it would seem unutterably awful that she could not go to him, and tell everyone her love, her joy that was like an open wound. For it could not last. Even this, this watching and being watched by him, in crowded rooms, while the nonsense of dream-world conversation rang about them—this stealing of kisses and caresses whenever they safely might, which was hardly ever, which was almost never—could not last. She feared it would wreak him. He was always getting sick and never had enough money. He borrowed from others but refused to accept anything from Anna, no matter how she begged him. His face was tired. Sometimes when he looked at her, behind the cheer, behind the jokes and teasing, there was distress in his eyes. And what right did she have to do this to him, to take him from his work? What was the good, if they could never be alone? What, must they wait for the next opera? Must they scheme and suffer that long? He already had a wife. They had been happy, he and his wife—they might be happy still. Anna was nothing but a lonely girl whose baby had died, whose husband had beaten her. She had no right. She tried to express this to him, and at first he brushed it away. He said he loved her and that was that. He said he would be happy just to see her, kiss her cheek, hear her sing.

  He would not leave his wife. Nor could Anna ask him to. At times she found herself almost wishing for some harm to come to Constanze, and this frightened her more than anything. This secrecy, this fear, this selfish need, were what she had become.

  One could not live forever in a dream. Dreams never reached their promised end.

  They performed The Marriage of Figaro at Schönbrunn Palace near the end of August. The singers stayed a week there, in resplendent luxury. Mozart came to conduct the last two nights, and the evening before the performance he and Anna arranged to meet on the grounds. They had not been alone in nearly two weeks.

  There was a gazebo at the edge of a long lawn. She was late. As she hurried across the lawn she saw his slight figure leaning against one of the posts, regarding her. The day had been hot but it had rained briefly tonight, and the air smelled wet and green and there was a soothing breeze. It was after midnight. A few of the emperor’s guests still gathered outside the palace, drinking and dancing in the open air—this was why Anna was late—but they would not come as far as the gazebo.

  “There you are,” he said, and she fell into his arms with a sigh. She always forgot how dear he was. But as soon as she remembered she became so afraid of losing him that it seemed better to forget.

  They rested awhile, hidden in the dark, facing the wood. The tops of the trees swayed and rustled in the gentle breeze.

  “Anna,” he said. He grasped her hand. She tried to think of something else, of the trees and the sky. The trees were alive but unthinking, they knew nothing and everything. The stars were clear. But she knew by the way he said her name what would come next. Francesco Benucci had sounded just the same, the day he’d said he didn’t love her.

  Mozart told her that his wife was going to have another child in the autumn. The deception and anxiety were killing him. He was not himself. He could not work and could hardly sleep. He was afraid that if they went on like this, everything would fall apart, and he would hate Anna. It could not go on, not in Vienna, not now.

  His voice was high and strained. He clasped and reclasped her hand. She wiped her tears on her sleeve. Then she said, “I know, I know, Wolfgang,” and he turned and held her and they stayed like that for a long time while the noise of the party filtered to them from a distance and the tops of the trees swayed like great sails.

  When they drew apart she said quietly, “Stephen wants us to go back to London when my contract is up next spring. He thinks his operas would do well and I could sing at the King’s Theatre or Drury Lane.” She took a deep breath. “He says once we’re there, we could get you a commission. It’s almost a sure thing.”

  “Next spring,” he said. He looked at the woods.

  “Maybe it would be best. You wouldn’t—I wouldn’t trouble you so, if I were away.”

  “But for how long?” he asked, like a child.

  She smiled, tearily. “Oh! A year. Just a year. Then we’ll come back. Or you’ll come to London. And we’ll have gotten used to being apart by then. We’ll have forgotten each other. You’ll have your pretty babies. We’ll just be friends, the best of friends, in London.”

  He embraced her again without answering. She pressed her face into his shoulder, trying to hold and remember every part of him. He had not answered yes, but neither had he asked her to stay.

  A Rare Thing

  Late in October Anna held a party for her twenty-first birthday. She rented
a hall and there was dinner and dancing. Benucci and Bussani put Anna on their shoulders and marched her around the room while she shrieked and nearly collided with a chandelier. The guests were made to wear paper hats. A cherubic child was led around on a miniature pony distributing party favors to the guests.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” asked the Countess Thun as she bent down—steadying her paper hat—to accept a charm bracelet the child offered her.

  “I’m Cupid,” the little girl recited in a high voice. “I come from heaven to pierce your heart and then you fall in love.”

  “Oh?” said the countess. “Then I should be frightened of you. But you are too pretty. Will you kiss my cheek?”

  The child nodded and raised her face to oblige, and with a rustle of silks the good lady momentarily enveloped her. When she rose, her face sparkled with the gold powder with which the child had been dusted. The pony jingled its bells and the procession moved to the next guests.

  Mozart was there without his wife, who was nearing her confinement. Anna had brought in a billiards table, at great expense, for him to enjoy, and he did so with relish, beating Mandini out of several florins. But he and Anna had hardly spoken to each other all evening.

  She made her way to the table to stand beside him. He missed the shot and Mandini took his turn.

  “I hear you’re leaving soon,” he said.

  “I thought you knew.” She shook her head and played nervously with a rose that Michael had tucked into her bodice.

  He nodded. His expression was neutral. “When? If there’s any chance of reviving Figaro I must be sure I have a Susanna.”

  “After Lent, when my contract is up. The end of February.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  It was his turn to play. Fidgeting with the flower, Anna smiled at her well-wishers. Mozart was steadier now, regained his concentration, and won the match. Mandini declined to play another.