The Black Opera

by Mary Gentle

  Before anyone could ask Conrad what he was grinning at, he had pushed his way through the crowds and back into the theatre’s private areas.

  Tremors now ran irregularly through the building. The nerves of the principal singers appeared to respond in a similar manner. Principals, chorus, and those musicians chosen for the on-stage banda flowed through the narrow corridors and tiny staircases, past Conrad. In and out of dressing-rooms, with curses, trips, and panic kept down to a sacrilegious murmur.

  “Corrado!” Sandrine squeaked. “Hear that romanza? I have seven minutes before my entrance; I need you to hear the variations on my first aria!”

  “You’ll be fine, but of course.” Conrad stepped into one of the ancient rehearsal rooms with the mezzo.

  He discovered his attention was not on Sandrine (true-voiced; holding back two-thirds of her intensity for the performance) but on the Prince’s Men.

  Where are they? What are they doing? Do we have anything else to fear, over and above the black opera?

  I’m waiting for the Prince’s Men to make a significant attack on the San Carlo theatre.

  A mechanical clock and a percussion cap would make a bomb.

  Although as likely to blow them up as us—

  Conrad tore his mind away from speculatory conversations in the cavalry mess, years ago. Sandrine—and then Estella, and then Lorenzo—needed his assistance, and he functioned as an amateur recitateur, hearing lines; and adjusted any part of the new verses that turned out to be unsingable.

  JohnJack mastered the new stage business of breaking free from his guards—rather than being led off to prison—and springing between the Princess and King Charles of Spain. He still dropped his sword every time he drew it.

  “Merda!”

  Sandrine practised as the costumiers gave up and sewed her into her green and gold serpent-embroidered robe, since the buttons couldn’t be set right in the time.

  Brigida and Lorenzo fell out spectacularly and there was no opportunity to set it to music.

  Like a sudden wave, an unexpected silence swept through the dark, crowded, cramped backstage areas.

  Conrad’s mouth went dry. He heard, in the distance, front of house, Paolo bringing the Sinfonia’s first bars soaring up.

  Dio! How could I miss it!

  Soprano and mezzo chorus voices joined the intensity of the music. With a jolt, Conrad realised Velluti was gone from the rehearsal rooms—must already be at the back of the stage, mounting the placid white mare that would give him his coup de théâtre entrance.

  Despite the muffling distance—stage flats, half-open doors, corridors stacked with ancient boxes there since Nero’s time; the stifling warm bodies of the all-male chorus, tenor and baritone, massed to go on as Hernand Cortez’s army—the audience’s roar was clearly audible all through backstage.

  “Cazzo!” Estella Belucci broke her costume’s sword belt as she yanked it up a notch, proved that one can scream sotto voce, and strode off to prepare for her own entrance—in six minutes and thirty seconds—with her blade carried in her left hand.

  “They’ll just find her more convincing as an Amazon slave,” Lorenzo Bonfigli remarked as he shrugged the apprentice priest Mazatl’s robes on over Captain Diego’s mail shirt, ready for the quick change between Acts One and Two. “Conrad, are you all right?”

  Conrad put his hand on the wooden partition beside him, to keep himself aware of where he was.

  The walls swam in his vision.

  He staggered forward between stored stage flats, heading for the nearest door to the outside.

  Lorenzo, following, called, “Conrad?”

  “Minchia!” One of Angelotti’s crew swore them away from the ropes and creaking wood waiting in the deep backstage.

  The cluttered storage areas seemed to go on infinitely. Conrad pushed on a heavy door, blind with pain and hope, and felt the warm air of the outside world flood over him.

  One hand on the trunk of the umbrella pine growing in the yard supported him. He bent over and vomited up an interminable string of bile.

  “Conrad?” Lorenzo looked garish out in the afternoon sun. The macquillage that would make him seem both South American and sinister on-stage was reduced to blotches of soot and rouge.

  Conrad wiped at his forehead.

  It was warm, damp, and, to his fingertips, oddly squashy.

  That illusion gave him the answer. He blinked. Sliding diamonds of light still blocked much of his side vision. The warmth of growing pain crept up his neck and over the muscles of his skull, and began to pull inexorably tight.

  Hemicrania.

  Conrad put his hand down and touched dirt.

  He was sitting on the dusty ground.

  The sun filtered down through the pine and focused pain in the corner of his eye socket.

  He had only the dimmest muscle memory of backing up against the outside wall of the San Carlo, and sliding down the peeling plaster facade to the earth.

  Speaking made him wince. “You needn’t stay away from rehearsal—”

  “Curtain’s up so I’m done with rehearsing!” Lorenzo declared. “Besides, I’ve got no new material until the finale ultimo. I’m on as Mazatl in ten minutes; until then—can I help? You look half dead, man!”

  Conrad wiped his hands down his trousers, leaving dust on them as well as his tail-coat, and slid his fingers behind his neck-cloth, loosening it.

  “There’s nothing anyone can do.” He clenched his fist. Of all times, why now—!

  Likely because it is now. This is the test. If the Aztec Princess plays out uninterrupted, if it works in disrupting whatever the Prince’s Men are trying to do, then this is when we win.

  Six weeks of effort and we win… if we win. No wonder I’m feeling the tension too.

  If the fresh wind, with the city scents on it, was some relief, the light in the sky was anything but analgesic.

  “At least come in and listen. It’ll take your mind off it.” Lorenzo Bonfigli didn’t say take your mind off your hang-over, but his suspicion was easily read on his face. He still offered Conrad a hand.

  Conrad closed his eyes briefly, feeling he wanted neither interruption nor pity.

  “You go in. Tell them I’m recovering from some form of self-indulgence. I’ll be in shortly.”

  Lorenzo’s expression showed relief, when Conrad looked up at him. At hearing what he thinks is the truth.

  “Oh, lord knows we’ve all done that!” Lorenzo looked both kind and forgiving. The tenor cocked his head, listening, and nodded to himself. “I have to go; I’m on. I’ll send one of the lads out if you’re not back in by the end of the aria. You’re all right here?”

  “Yes.” Conrad forced a smile, though he dared not nod. “You—scene six, the chest high C, remember—?”

  Lorenzo beamed at the encouragement. “For the tenor, the note of the future!”

  The felt-lined heavy door closed behind Bonfigli.

  Conrad was aware of all the men and women he couldn’t see, through that door, moving at a dangerous half-run in the dimness. He would have given much to be in the cool, with the draughts blowing through the backstage storage areas. His body feared the pain of collision more than the afternoon sun.

  More than the intrusive sounds from beyond the yard wall: the sound of the sea, human voices, horse-drawn coaches—even with straw put down in the street outside, to muffle the noise of the wheels during performance.

  Conrad put one hand up to soothe the left side of his face. The ball of his eye flickered behind his fingers, the eyelid feeling hot and dry.

  I can ignore this; work through it! I need to see L’Altezza azteca play on stage—through to the finale ultimo…

  Frustration vied in him with nausea. He leaned over behind the pine and vomited, twice more.

  The first—the only—significant performance of The Aztec Princess and I’m out here!

  Self-contempt washed through him, and frustration and shame. His body must have tensed.
/>   All emotion and thought vanished. Pain jerked exponentially higher, as if all the joints and ligaments of his spine were washed in fire. Heat forked and infiltrated along the top vertebrae of his spine: the Anvil, and then the Atlas—

  To be able to name the site of pain is no help, when one only wants it to stop.

  He was aware that faces appeared periodically; members of the backstage crew who had evidently been asked to check on him. There is nothing to do with pain like this but endure it. He cupped his hands over his eyes and watched the shadow of the umbrella pine move across the dust.

  He had been through hemicrania with the pain untreated before, and was not surprised that he missed the first easing of the sensation. He was surprised—as much as he could muster surprise—when the pain did not drain away as it usually did, but only dropped to a mid-level.

  The Aztec Princess, for which I have worked like a man besotted for six weeks—

  —Is a faint crescendo of voices and orchestra. The only loud noise Conrad heard in the San Carlo’s deserted back yard was a periodic roar from the audience.

  Is it possible—we’re succeeding?

  JohnJack shot out through the stage doors, all false dark beard and flashing bronze armour. “You’re missing it!”

  A second man followed him out, also bearded, but genuine; slightly more self-restrained. Roberto Capiraso, Conte di Argente, composer of L’Altezza azteca ou il serpente pennuto. He frowned. “I can hardly believe that you, of all people, could be late for—Oh.”

  “Oh.” Conrad managed a sardonic echo, if in a somewhat creaky voice.

  He forced away self-pity and contempt. You’re hardly the only one involved in this opera, Scalese.

  He gazed up the at two men. “How are we doing?”

  JohnJack dropped to sit beside him in the warm dust, hands linked over his knees, his position neither Aztec nor soldierly. “You should see it!”

  Roberto, still on his feet, blinked in what he evidently found to be startlingly bright sunlight. He put his head back in the cool air, inhaling. “We have a success!”

  Conrad frowned. And winced at the pain from that. “It’s too early to tell.”

  “No! It’s not.” JohnJack waved a hand at Roberto for confirmation. “I heard them!”

  Roberto Capiraso nodded, slowly. “Two encores for Sandrine’s trio with Velluti and GianGiacomo, here. All three of them made it gripping.”

  Spinelli inclined his head in appreciation of Roberto’s compliment. “And Brigida and Stella! The Pit stood up and cheered, ‘Onore e gloria!’”

  Roberto Capiraso’s sombre features altered into a schoolboy grin. “And they were singing along to the Amazon duet!”

  JohnJack was all but shaking hands with himself. “Dio! I thought they were going to storm the palace when Belucci started singing for her liberty! I saw journalists, Corrado. We might yet see a review in Il Giornale del Regno delle Due Sicilie. For the singers—the composer—the librettist—!”

  All these factors are essential, Conrad thought dreamily. But would be nothing without the great beast that is the audience’s attention—charmed, enchanted, aroused, and made desolate and ecstatic, in turn.

  I need to be in there—to be part of it.

  He put his hand against the wall for support, got to his feet, and straightened up.

  Nausea overtook him immediately with the blackening and swimming of his vision. His abdominal muscles cramped up, sore with the effort of vomiting. Pain swamped all else.

  When he could think again, JohnJack and Roberto were one each side of him, supporting him under the arms.

  “Last time I saw him like this, he was in bed for three days,” JohnJack said absently. “I wish I knew where Rossi was—he can usually make him comfortable.”

  Conrad heard his own voice scratchy and faint. “I’m not ill!”

  Identical voiceless looks met him from JohnJack and Roberto.

  “Right,” Spinelli said, after a pause. “My dressing room is just about big enough to lay down in. There’s bound to be a doctor here; I’ll find one as soon as the interval comes.”

  Their efforts to help him brought sickening pain. Conrad managed, at last, to walk unsupported, allowing himself to be guided inside and towards the dressing-rooms. Because it would have required argument—painful argument, on his side—to prevent it.

  “Fuck!” JohnJack exclaimed as they came into a better-lit area of the theatre’s backstage. “I’m going to miss my cue if I don’t go now—”

  “Go! Go!” The Conte di Argente released Conrad’s arm. He took hold of the tall bass’s shoulders, turned him towards the wings, and gave him a push.

  Conrad leaned one shoulder against the wall. It gave him little relief, but it allowed him to look as if it did.

  Roberto smiled crookedly. “Can none of you remember I’m a traitor?”

  That’s right. Conrad was confused, but only for a moment. Roberto’s technically still under arrest.

  When the composer’s introduced at the royal box, in the interval, all the social highest and greatest will be flattering a criminal and a traitor without knowing it.

  Here, in the opera house, while L’Altezza is taking them towards victory, it’s almost impossible to remember that.

  “The singers don’t care,” Conrad got out through a jaw held stiff by hemicrania. “Six weeks ago, they’d have lynched you for any hint you were associated with the Prince’s Men. Now you’re their composer. They trust the music—they trust you.”

  “Trust!” Roberto gave a steadying grasp to Conrad’s elbow.

  “It’ll be different once the opera’s over.” Conrad hadn’t realised he intended to speak that aloud. He caught Roberto’s gaze.

  “I know.”

  Everything was plain in those two words. Conrad couldn’t vocalise it, with pain blotting out his capacity to think, but he heard the man’s willingness to be held accountable.

  Roberto shook his head, as if he pushed the matter aside. “Spinelli’s right, you need to lay down. I think, however, that you need to see your work more.”

  “Yes.” Pain made it difficult to manage more than the essential words. “Thank you.”

  Il Conte led the way, walking slowly enough that Conrad could keep up. He halted them between two of the stage flats, just out of sight of the audience.

  Several of the stagehands were gathered there, watching. A good sign, Conrad thought.

  “You don’t know which side I’m on,” Roberto Capiraso muttered, in a voice that didn’t carry beyond the two of them. “Whether I want L’Altezza to work, or Il Reconquista. I don’t know which side I’m on—”

  “Hers.” Conrad pushed past the fiery discomfort to murmur. “Nora. If she turned nun tomorrow, you’d be applying to be one of the Holy Father’s Cardinals the day after.”

  Roberto’s lips twisted. He seemed not to know if he were amused or outraged.

  A score of armour-clad men swept off stage, Velluti at their head; passing Conrad and the composer as if they hadn’t seen them—which, in the dark between the flats, they very well might not. Fifteen feet away from the audience’s sight-line, they began to struggle into the leopard-kilts and obsidian spears of the Princess Tayanna’s guard.

  Applause for their previous singing swept up over Conrad like a wave up shingle. He had to close his eyes and put his hands over his ears. Pain whited out the world.

  Breathing raggedly, he uncovered his ears.

  Beside him, Roberto Capiraso looked utterly bleak.

  “Scalese—I don’t know what could happen if Nora succeeds in ‘raising the Prince of the World,’ ‘changing the mind of God,’ whatever she meant by that. I can’t help thinking she’ll be a lot safer if she doesn’t.”

  Roberto’s eyes glinted in reflected light.

  “I find myself hoping that the King will capture her. That would be kinder than the Prince’s Men, if they decide that she’s failed them.”

  I’d like to reassure you, Conrad fo
und himself feeling, to his own surprise. His thoughts were as slow as mud. To say: “a company of expert riflemen are on the Burning Fields, along with Commendatore Mantenucci and the police; they’ll have her safe as a prisoner—”

  But then I’d have to tell you what Luigi said. That no message has come back from them, yet.

  “I hope Ferdinand’s men do have her.” It was all Conrad could manage, through pain and confusion.

  Movement snagged his eye.

  From this angle in the wings he could just see Isaura, beyond the tin cones shading the candles on the music stands. Paolo-Isaura shook back her short, shaggy hair; white cravat and dark blue coat setting off her pale face perfectly. He made out the profiles of violinists and oboists, all turned towards her; the stage’s candle-light reflected in the percussionist’s cymbals, and glimmering on the coils of French horns. Each man—and they were all men—looked to Paolo for guidance.

  If they knew she was Isaura—

  How dare any man think less of my sister because she’s not my brother?

  She raised her baton.

  The light made water gather and run down Conrad’s face. He clapped a hand over his sensitised eyes. The orchestra stuck up a melody of winding complexities for the woodwind—the first bars of which they had messed up for weeks now—and performed it flawlessly.

  Every ligament and tendon stiff with pain, body held perfectly still against the agony of movement, Conrad still found his mind prompting him with the exact score. We’re coming up on the other extended trio: JohnJack, Lorenzo, and Estella.

  Very carefully, he took his hands from his face. He saw, through wet eyelashes, the converging brilliant figures of the conspiring apprentice priest and seduced Lord General, and the eavesdropping Amazon slave-girl. Only a dozen yards away on stage, where dust lifted up from between the boards at every step—and, at the same time, half a world and five hundred years distant.

  A sound too loud to be heard splintered the air.