The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  “I did have an idea, in fact, Corradino. Our missing contralto, Donna Lorenzani—”

  “—Who’s ship is due in from Cape Town any day now; yes, yes—” Conrad sighed. “Believe me, I do know!”

  Leonora’s smile was wide and warm.

  “I think we can do better than a tiny role as a Priestess, Corrado. Suppose we give our captured Amazon slave-girl Hippolyta a mother!”

  Conrad gazed at her features in the lamp’s white glow. “Cazzo! A mother?”

  “Call her—‘Thalestris.’” Nora beamed. “Good Classical name. Thalestris… Queen of the Amazons! She can be searching for her lost daughter. What do you think? The audience can see her first disguised as a traveller in the Aztec lands—we can put that aria in anywhere that the other singers need a break—”

  Conrad drained his glass and seized scrap paper. His dip-pen splattered ink across the wood of the table top, but he ignored it, too busy writing to clean up.

  “Thalestris…” He tried the name on his tongue. “A warrior-mother… Who, when she finds her daughter, will make Hippolyta choose between love and her duty to the Amazon nation! Ideal!… ‘Brigida Lorenzani, contralto, as Thalestris, disguised Queen of the Amazons,’” Conrad read aloud as he wrote. He contemplated his own spiky handwriting of the cast list.

  Nora pushed her glass forward as the returned Tullio came over to re-fill all of them. “Queen Thalestris… which makes Hippolyta an Amazon warrior Princess! Aren’t you tempted to call this opera Le Due Principesse?”

  Conrad held his thumb and forefinger a quarter-inch apart. “Thalestris is a small part! Sandrine’s already feeling besieged by Amazons. If I get too involved with Hippolyta’s family, we’re going to lose track of our main love triangles.”

  Paolo-Isaura waved from the corridor, not willing to interrupt their train of thought. She would be taking over the orchestral rehearsal. And that means il Conte will be at leisure soon.

  Leonora sat back in the chair, interrupting his thoughts. She held up her hand in acquiescence. “Even so, one more thing. Hippolyta’s child should be a boy.”

  Conrad frowned. “It makes a difference?”

  “I do read in my husband’s library,” Nora said mildly. “Traditionally, the Amazons only raised their daughters. If they had sons, they left them behind with whoever fathered them. Imagine how that would make Hippolyta’s choice between love of Cortez and love of country even harder… I don’t think Estella will complain if she’s given that to sing!”

  Conrad shook his head, amused. “You have a streak of cruelty I never suspected.”

  Leonora reached to turn the lamp down, since the wick grew sooty and the flame high. Her eyes had a gleam from more than the light. “Now you think you’re flattering me. Either that, or your memory of Venezia is very poor.”

  “I do remember you were able to be cruel to fictional characters.”

  Conrad could only look at her fondly. Her frank friendship seemed somehow more of a barrier between them than her absence, he realised.

  He tore himself away from contemplating her features, and paged through his notes. “This means revising the Act Four opening yet again.”

  Nora pushed back her chair and stood, preparing to leave. Her smile was mocking, but not cruel. “Of course it does. This is opera. It always does.”

  In the mine-shafts and caverns, it was easy to lose track of the hours passing above, and whether they were dark or daylight. Conrad lifted work-blurred vision from the paper. He found his pocket watch very little help in remembering whether the hands indicated twelve midday or twelve midnight.

  He suspected the latter.

  “There should be a trio for the ‘white voices’ in Act Three.” Roberto Capiraso yawned. And looked astonished that he had done anything so gauche in company.

  Conrad managed not to laugh at him. “Velluti, Sandrine, and Estella? Castrato, mezzo, and soprano… Yes.”

  “I wondered about three cavatinas. However, I like the idea of changing between all the possible duets in turn, and then the trio, so that all the scenes run on from each other, like Signore Rossini’s gran terzetto…” Roberto yawned again.

  “Take one of the spare beds and sleep.” Conrad pushed his chair back and stood. “I’m not sure which day it is—Thursday?—but you’ve been awake for a day and a night. I have to write lines for your new Act Four romanza. Paolo can take care of the rehearsals.”

  It was possible to gauge how tired the Count was by the fact that he didn’t object, only muttering something as Tullio Rossi led him to one of the other stone cubicles.

  Conrad seated himself back at his table, to play with the rhyming scheme. His next sensation was of pain in his shoulder and elbow, and Tullio’s voice in his ear—encouraging him to wake, he realised, as the man guided him to sit upright.

  Muscles spiked and jolted with pain. His eyes opened. Ink had starred the page where he fell asleep on it. A glance at his watch told him eight or nine hours had passed.

  “Is it morning?” He winced as he stretched his arms.

  “Think so.” Tullio visibly worked it out. “Thursday. I think. Maybe Wednesday. Friday? Sorry to wake you. We have trouble in the hall.”

  Conrad shook the stiffness out of his bones, and followed the big man along the duck-boards towards the central large mine.

  There was certainly nothing wrong with the acoustics of the underground mine used as the main rehearsal hall. Both Sandrine Furino and Estella Belucci were busy proving that as Conrad walked down the long passage towards them. Unfortunately, neither of them were singing.

  “—Liar!”

  “Abomination!”

  “Whore!”

  “Thief!”

  Conrad, attention on the two women facing off against each other on Angelotti’s makeshift stage, shot Tullio a brief querying look.

  Tullio murmured, “Started when Donna Estella insisted her part isn’t a comprimario role, and Sandrine disagreed…”

  “Oh dear.”

  On-stage, the two of them matched poses as if it had been scripted. The small, fair-haired Estella Belucci and the tall Sandrine Furino nonetheless glared eyeball to eyeball—fists clenched, yelling just not quite hard enough to strain their voices.

  “And how did you get out of the chorus, hm?” Sandrine hissed. “On your knees with your mouth full of cock?”

  “Better than seeing all of Italy on my back, like you do!”

  “At least they come to hear me sing, not look at my tits!”

  “Nobody can see your tits, you dried up old witch!”

  “Why isn’t Paolo putting a stop to this?” Conrad muttered.

  Tullio jerked his chin. Looking in the desired direction, Conrad saw his sister leaning dopily up against Luigi Esposito’s chest, a hand-print plain red on her face. From the diminutive size of the print, it was Estella’s.

  As he turned back, Conrad caught Tullio scowling.

  “Far too friendly with the Captain,” Tullio muttered.

  Oh really? Conrad prevented himself from saying, with a sudden onset of common sense.

  “I don’t think we need our mezzo and our soprano to rip each other’s faces to pieces. You take Sandrine, I’ll take the Sicilian.”

  “Good luck with that!” Tullio Rossi shifted off the wall and shouldered his way through the entertained crowd of chorus singers and stagehands.

  Conrad, following behind, startled almost out of his boots at a high-pitched squeal of anger. It had all Estella Belucci’s voice-trained projection:

  “Bitch!”

  Her insult bounced back from the bottle-neck roof of the mine, and echoed down the passages.

  Sandrine’s reply had less power, but far more penetrating intensity:

  “Common prostitute.”

  “Fish-wife!”

  “Slut! Future mother of bastards!”

  Estella’s mouth opened, shut, and Conrad saw the hitch in her throat where she bit back tears.

  She snarled, “Man
!”

  The audience was instantly divided into two, from where Conrad stood; those who winced, and those who looked bewildered.

  Sandrine Furino drew herself up. “Congratulations—of the two of us, you are the true cunt.”

  Sandrine’s high heels echoed on the wooden boards as she walked off stage.

  She stopped just as she came level with Conrad.

  “I won’t quit.” A harsh note of arrogance sounded in her voice, for the first time. “You need me too much. But you hear me, Corrado. I won’t sing in any scene in which that whore is on stage!”

  Less than a fortnight to go, Conrad’s mental ticking clock reminded him.

  “Sandrine—”

  The tall slight-built woman strode out of the rehearsal chamber without any attempt at an answer.

  “Che cazzo!” Conrad moaned under his breath.

  “Don’t worry, padrone.” Tullio gave an assessing glance.

  His elbow nudged Conrad, dispelling the first blind panic.

  “I’ll talk to Donna Sandrine. You fix the other one.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Conrad turned, saw Paolo still indisposed, and beckoned to Estella Belucci as if decisiveness could solve his problems.

  Why isn’t il Superbo here? Nora? Why do I have to attempt to patch up singers’ quarrels?

  The woman turned white and red, and lifted her chin belligerently as she came to him. Conrad gripped her shoulder, steering her away for a private warning. Finding somewhere confidential was a difficulty, in the stone maze.

  He settled for a long straight corridor, that housed one of the ossuaries, where he would at least see anyone coming before they got to him.

  “Sir…” Estella Belucci shivered as she gazed around, her breathing erratic.

  Neatly-stacked thigh and arm bones were piled on one side of the corridor, brown skulls stacked on top, from the deaths of some ancient plague. Niches in the walls held saint’s pictures, and candles, and small statues with their features rubbed bare from fingers touching the sacred.

  Conrad, still disorientated from being wakened, looked down into her face. This close, he could see her eyes were sea-coloured, flecked with gold.

  “I understand the instinct. You push for more time on stage, more time in front of the audience, more emphasis on your role. It’s natural. But you can’t sabotage other singers here.”

  The defiant set of Estella Belucci’s mouth spoke Why not? without her needing to frame the words.

  “In the first place, Sandrine has done nothing to you; you shouldn’t repay her like that. Even if you’re ready to trample every other singer underfoot, friend or not—”

  “I don’t have any friends here!” Estella coloured a hot pink. “And if I did, they have their career and I have mine; he’d do just the same if things were the other way around.”

  “Your career doesn’t matter; this opera does!”

  Estella Belucci snorted, more like a street girl than a gentlewoman. “You’re just like any other management—”

  “Estella!” Conrad put his hand up in a gesture for silence.

  She unmistakably flinched.

  He lowered his hand, pricklingly aware of how her eyes followed each physical action he made. There are women who have cause to be scared of anger in men. The blonde seconda donna backed up in a slow but inexorable push, until her back was against the catacomb wall.

  Conrad sighed, and rubbed at the socket of his right eye, where hemicrania incubated.

  “You have one chance. There are powerful men who wish this opera to succeed. They’ll reward you. There are powerful men who wish this opera to fail. If you appear to be a liability—I’ll give you over to them myself. Do you understand?”

  The shifting lamp light showed her face alive with fright and concentration. “This company is my last chance. Nowhere else will have me. I have to be seen as a success in this!”

  “No, you have to succeed in this.”

  “Because you have powerful patrons; yes; you said.”

  “Because you succeed or fail as the company does!” Conrad reined in his morning-irritated temper, but the catacomb echoed. “I swear, the Conte di Argente will compose to your strengths. I’ll write you the best verse I can. But, understand this—you fail or succeed as this whole opera fails or succeeds. Am I clear?”

  Estella thickly managed something that might have been, “Yes.”

  “Stop bullying her.”

  Conrad startled from head to foot. Sandrine’s voice. The concealing echoes battered him. The tall mezzo strode forward, as proud as if she had never walked out, and put her arms around Estella’s shoulders.

  The soprano collapsed into her embrace, shaking with tears and apologies.

  “You were bullying her, weren’t you?” Sandrine demanded coldly.

  Torn between her unnoticed approach, and the injustice of being accused, Conrad could find a hundred responses, but not a single one—and so found himself stammering into silence.

  “We all know each other from before, except Estella.” Sandrine patted the soprano gently on the back. “—Except Velluti, but Signore Prouder-Than-Il-Superbo doesn’t need anybody’s company except his own. It’s difficult to be the newcomer in something like this. Go away now.”

  Conrad searched desperately for something to say that wasn’t What! and—having failed—backed off down the passage and away.

  He went for breakfast—utilitarian, since the cooks of Alvarez’s Rifles were used to serving the army—and took his notebook to the mine-chamber reserved for eating, to sketch out the emotional progression of the fourth and final act.

  Something isn’t right with it.

  Eleven days now, if Tullio’s right and it’s Friday…

  Towards midday, Tullio took his elbow while Conrad was walking down the underground passages towards his study, and Conrad found himself wordlessly steered towards a smaller rehearsal chamber.

  “Costume fitting rehearsal,” the big man murmured, under the sound of Paolo playing something that Conrad didn’t recognise on the piano. “And il Superbo wants your help with an addition to the libretto.”

  Conrad absently nodded, taken with the first view of Sandrine Furino and Estella Belucci under the lamplight. Sandrine was queenly in la Principessa’s green and gold robe, ornamented with dyed ostrich feathers and embroidered serpents, being pinned up even as she moved by two harried seamstresses. Estella’s amazon breastplate, over her short leather Roman centurion’s skirt, shone brilliantly.

  “Armour looks very convincing,” Conrad observed.

  “And so it should,” Tullio muttered. “It’s a mediaeval one from Egg Castle. His-Imperial-Majesty-our-Composer had me polishing the damn thing all morning!”

  “Let me guess, you’d given him Sergeant Tullio’s speech on how there’s nothing will move rust off a gorget like a little elbow grease?”

  “…Might have.”

  “Self-inflicted injury, then.” Conrad shut himself up as the piano stopped doodling about with an introduction and launched into a spirited cabaletta that he didn’t recognise.

  Someone’s going to have to write an aria to go in front of that—oh well, I did promise Estella.

  Sandrine waved her seamstresses away.

  Estella experimentally put her fists on her hips. She grinned, evidently finding this supported some of the breastplate’s weight. She tossed her hair back—and was the very picture of the captive Amazon Hippolyta.

  “Va, Superba!” she sang at the Aztec Empress.

  Conrad, remembering an earlier remark of Sandrine’s, mentally translated his second language into his first as “Bugger off, you Arrogant Bitch!”

  Sandrine, regal and equally amused, came in with her own, “Va, Superba!” and the two of them began to prowl around each other, exchanging musical insults.

  “And people say he doesn’t have a sense of humour…” Tullio murmured.

  “Only Il Superbo would set a cat-fight to music!” Conrad muttered. �
��Damn, where is he? Words are my business. And he’s missing an opportunity for some really clever insults!”

  The singers and crew, adapted to rehearsals at all hours of the day and night, showed little interest in breaking off to go to Sunday Mass—although a few faces were missing. Conrad decided he could achieve a moment of tact, and didn’t raise the subject with them afterwards.

  JohnJack Spinelli and Estella still in her armour cornered Conrad after a costume rehearsal, when it must have been Sunday afternoon up in the real world.

  “Some brat shied half a brick at Sandrine’s carriage, after church,” Spinelli said flatly. “It nearly hit her. Granted she gets that anyway, but…”

  Estella’s agate-green eyes caught the lamp light as she interrupted. “It’s fine down here! We have riflemen enough to keep the chorus women happy! But above ground, in the streets, in our lodgings? We’re starting to have accidents—”

  “—Except they’re not accidents, of course,” JohnJack capped her. “We’ve been talking. Are we going to have to move down and live in here until the performance?”

  “It would only be for, what, nine days?” Conrad’s mind yammered at him in panic, Nine days! but he managed to ignore it. “I think you’re right. I’ll get Paolo to spread the word.”

  His sister-turned-brother was not particularly happy at being stuck with that job. Conrad left her to it, to go prowling through the occupied tunnels and mines under Naples. The company had settled in remarkably quickly, adjusting themselves to lantern-lit dimness all the hours of the day and night, not to mention the constant company of the dead. It couldn’t be easy.

  It may be easier than being afraid of the Honourable Men and the Local Racketeers.

  And very soon—I’ll have to tell them it’s worse than that.

  The oil-lamps cast a softening light over the old brown bones; over skulls, and the rounded ends of femurs. It was easy to imagine the ghosts of ancient monks down here. Or Dominicans. Or more mortal intruders, sent by the Prince’s Men to do more than cause minor accidents.

  Stacks of bones lined the long corridors. Interspersed among them were tiny chapels or icons, some with withered flowers still drying around them. Conrad knelt and picked up a camellia, scarlet petals brown-edged.