Dead, Mr Mozart

by Bernard Bastable

  ‘Or with any mortal male?’ he breathed, and though he is stupid in the manner of all tenors, yet one could see his point. She seemed a creature of another existence.

  The coachman, now smiling as if drunk with the delights of his position, held open the door of the theatre and she floated through into the vestibule and looked around the motley collection assembled in the theatre at that time of day.

  ‘Where is Herr Popper?’ she asked in German – most heavenly of languages, most heavenly of voices! ‘I wish to speak to the schauspieldirektor.’

  The cloth-eared English gazed dumbly back, but I marched forward, overjoyed at the opportunity to speak – and to this creature! – in my own tongue.

  ‘Let me take you to him, Madam.’

  She turned and looked at me – a gaze instinct with feeling and intelligence.

  ‘And you are? – no, let me guess. You are the great Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart.’

  I bowed humbly. Well, fairly humbly. The creature made me feel like a mere mortal in the presence of a goddess, but her words elevated me a few inches towards her own realm.

  ‘I am honoured to make your acquaintance,’ she said, giving me her hand to kiss. ‘It was the prospect of singing your music under your direction that made me agree to Mr Popper’s proposal. I reverence your genius.’

  And she curtsied, tears in her eyes.

  All this, of course, was lost on the mere English around. I was mortified that they could not understand her homage and would not believe it if I reported it to them later. When I reported it to them later. For here was understanding, here was appreciation! I gave her my arm.

  ‘Mr Popper is I believe with Lord Hertford. Lord Hertford is a patron of our Coronation season. Normally I would not interrupt them. But for Mme – am I not right in thinking it is Mme Hubermann-Cortino I am addressing?’

  She nodded. ‘Your servant, sir.’

  ‘For Mme Hubermann-Cortino an exception must be made.’

  We walked down the dingy corridor, I feeling ashamed of the inadequacies of my theatre, and I knocked on the door.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ came the tetchy voice.‘I am not to be disturbed.’

  I opened the door and showed in the wonderful creature.

  ‘Mr Popper? Mme Hubermann-Cortino.’

  He started to his feet.

  ‘But I didn’t expect you – February at the earliest—’ the creature burbled, making his incompetence immediately manifest. It was left to Lord Hertford to rise to the occasion.

  ‘My dear Madam!’

  He rose, then knelt at her feet and kissed her hand. It was a brave gesture for an elderly man, done creakily but with gallantry.

  ‘Lord Hertford – Mme Hubermann-Cortino,’ I murmured.

  ‘Will you tell Lord Hertford,’ she said, turning to me with an enslaving smile, ‘that I am charmed and honoured to make his acquaintance. And of course Mr Popper too.’

  Already she had Mr Popper’s measure: she was treating him with contempt. Well, it saved time. Sopranos always treated impresarios with contempt before they had known them a week.

  Mr Popper had regained a modicum of aplomb, and ushered her to a seat facing his desk. He now tried to rephrase his first question with more tact.

  ‘My theatre is greatly honoured by your presence, my dear Madam. We had hardly dared hope for the pleasure and honour before the New Year at the earliest.’

  When I had translated this she gave a scornful, operatic gesture with her elegantly-gloved hand.

  ‘Vienna is insupportable! The opera houses riven with dissension and jealousy. Politics, politics everywhere, and nowhere music! The thought of another Vienna winter, with the dreadful wind and snow, was too terrible to contemplate!’

  So you have come to London, I thought. It hardly seemed the obvious choice. And there could be no work for her at the Queen’s before the next March.

  ‘And you are staying – where?’ asked Lord Hertford.

  ‘At the Fitzroy Hotel. My husband is at present seeking an apartment for us.’

  ‘Your husband?’ Lord Hertford could not forbear interrupting as I translated. She smiled regally.

  ‘Yes, indeed, my husband. A former guardsman under Blücher. He acts as my manager, you understand. He has a little English, and will be seeking engagements for me in the months before the opera season.’

  It occurred to me that the guardsman/manager had best take his wife with him when he went seeking engagements. But perhaps even that would be unnecessary. News of her would spread like wildfire, perhaps already had, hotel managers being what they were. A beautiful woman with a beautiful voice would always be in demand. The wonderful creature now added:

  ‘Not that we need engagements. We have money enough. My purpose in coming here was to sing the music of the great Mozart with the advice and help of the composer himself.’

  Suddenly I had two admirers, two disciples!Two beautiful women whose aim in life was to sing my music as it should be sung. When I translated this speech for Mr Popper he looked sceptical, as if he thought I was making it up.

  ‘Well, we must start discussing the roles that you will sing next year,’ he began. It was the wrong thing to say, from his point of view. The divine creature assumed it followed on from what she had just said.

  ‘The Countess,’ she immediately responded. ‘I yearn to sing the Countess in Figaro under the direction of the genius who wrote it.’

  Mr Popper, of course, immediately beat a hasty retreat.

  ‘Oh, Figaro, Figaro … I don’t see how. They did it at Covent Garden a couple of years ago.’

  ‘With some of my arias and duets, none of my ensembles, and a great many songs by Mr Bishop,’ I said acidly.

  ‘But there you are, you see,’ said Mr Popper with an ingratiating smile to Mme Hubermann-Cortino. ‘People will say they’ve seen it. Composers are over-sensitive.’

  ‘The man is a moron and a Philistine,’ said the lady. I refrained from translating her. She stood up. ‘I insist on singing the Countess in a production of Mr Mozart’s Figaro.’

  ‘Oh, ah … Well, er, if you insist … Perhaps if we did it with English dialogue …’

  I felt I had been given backbone.

  ‘Can you imagine this divine creature delivering English dialogue? It must be done with my recitatives in Italian.’

  ‘Er, wouldn’t that make it rather long?’

  ‘Not a second longer than necessary.’

  ‘Mr Popper, I think there is a way out of this,’ said Lord Hertford, standing and asserting every inch his noble height. ‘I shall pay for a new production of The Marriage of Figaro, with Mme Hubermann-Cortino as the Countess.’

  ‘That is generous of you, My Lord,’ said Mr Popper, ungracious as ever. ‘But who will pay for the empty seats?’

  But Mr Popper had forgotten who he was speaking to.

  ‘Do you really imagine that with so divine a Countess there will be any empty seats?’ asked Lord Hertford warmly. The implication that she would fill the theatre that my music would otherwise have emptied was not one I cared to look at closely. I have learnt to swallow insults and pocket the money.

  ‘Very well then,’ said Mr Popper, admitting defeat. ‘Figaro it shall be.’ He turned to Mme Hubermann-Cortino and spoke loudly, as if to one of the inmates of Bedlam.‘I shall mount Figaro especially for you.’

  His manner translated for him. Mme Hubermann-Cortino understood managers. She sailed to the door.

  ‘Very well, then. All is arranged. We shall meet again. I must return to my husband.’ She turned to Lord Hertford. ‘I am above all things grateful to you, My Lord, for your discrimination and great generosity. How can I ever repay you?’

  She smiled enchantingly, floated down the dirty, peeling corridor and out into the vestibule without waiting for an answer. The number of people standing around had been augmented by later arrivals who had tarried there for a glimpse of so divine a creature. It would have been gracious of Mr Popper, fussing al
ong in her wake, to introduce her to one or two of the people there. Needless to say he did not do so. At the door she turned.

  ‘Auf Wiedersehen, then …’ She ran her eyes over them, and her look alighted on Andrew Masters. She went over and graciously took his hand.‘You must be a singer.A tenor, perhaps?’ The puppy-fat and air of self-love must have told her that. ‘I hope I have the pleasure of singing with you.’ Not in one of my operas, she won’t! She returned to the door. ‘Goodbye then, until we all meet again!’

  And she sailed out, to be handed into the carriage by the besotted coachman. As the horses started up the Haymarket Lord Hertford and Mr Popper kept the coach in view as long as they could. Then Mr Popper turned and came over to me.

  ‘Mr Mozart, you still have friends and relations in Austria?’

  I was mystified.

  ‘I have my dear sister Nannerl in Salzburg, and of course many musical friends in all parts of the country.’

  He leaned forward, fixed me with his eye and hissed:

  ‘Find out why she has left Vienna!’

  6. La Finta Semplice

  The writing of letters is no burden for me. It has been one of the solaces of my life, cut off as I have been from my own family, my own people, my own country. For me even a request for financial assistance can be a work of art, a small piece of drama, an aria without music. However, before I wrote to Nannerl as the despised Popper bade me, I composed a letter which I took no pleasure in, it being part of the fulfilment of the contract I saw myself as having entered into with Lady Hertford. I had to report to her, yet to give her as little real information as was consonant with our unspoken agreement. (It was a little bit like my policy when repaying monetary loans.) I imagined her prominent features furrowed in equine puzzlement as she read.

  The outlines of a splendid Coronation opera season begin to be clear. Mme Hubermann-Cortino has arrived from Vienna, and no one doubts the inevitability of a splendid success for her: she is loveliness itself, and has a voice of unparalleled richness and force. She is accompanied by her husband, a former guardsman.

  (This last was in case she imagined Mme Hubermann-Cortino was likely to fall into the arms of my Lord Hertford, who, though elderly, is presumably still as susceptible as one of his cold disposition ever was.)

  I have no doubt that with two sopranos of quality the season will be an extraordinary one, worthy of the patronage of His Majesty, and of the nobility and gentry. My own contribution, Le Donne Giocose, is all but completed, and in my humble opinion it is …

  And so on, and so on. Self-praise is doubtless automatically suspect, but when it is the only sort available to one it is worth laying it on a bit.

  By chance I had no sooner dispatched the letter than I encountered Mme Hubermann-Cortino in the Haymarket with her husband. She smiled at me enchantingly and introduced us. He is very tall and broad, with fearsome moustaches, but somewhat bloodshot of eye. If I were contemplating adultery (which Heaven forfend) I would weigh up the largeness of the person against the bloodshotness of the eye. His German was oddly accented, and I realised he must be of Italian-German origin – or was the Cortino of the name his alone? Was he an Italian who had fought as a mercenary in Blücher’s army? Italians will fight for anyone, or pretend to. Their heels are at anybody’s service. Not that he looked a coward, I have to admit. He looked much more like a bully.

  ‘We now have a most convenient apartment in Bruton Street,’ said his divine wife. ‘You must come round of a morning to coach me in the role of the Countess.’

  ‘My wife has the greatest respect for you as a musician,’ said her bear of a husband, as if the gracious words had been taught him by rote. ‘You will always be most welcome.’

  I bowed. He bowed – with all the grace of an automaton. His enchanting wife smiled at us both.

  ‘Do please come, dear Mr Mozart,’ she said. ‘With the proviso that on no account do you bring Mr Popper.’

  ‘Mr Popper may have to be taught a lesson,’ said the guardsman. I hastened to give them my assurance.

  ‘There is no drawing-room to which I would take Mr Popper, Mme Hubermann-Cortino.’

  ‘Therese. Call me Therese.’

  Enchanting creature! Going on my way I puzzled over her accent. German, but not a German that I knew. Not surprising, perhaps, since I have been cut off from my own lands – from the honour, fame and rewards that would inevitably have been mine – by the wars against the Corsican tyrant. I had travelled all too little in the land of heroes and true poetry, and my visit to Vienna in 1817 was alas ill-timed: the Emperor, whose father I had met as a child, was too preoccupied with affairs of state to grant me more than a public audience, and the Church dignitaries seemed to suspect me as tainted by English Protestantism – seemed, indeed, almost to regard me as an Englishman! But one thing I was sure of: the accent with which Therese spoke our native language was not that of Vienna.

  That evening I wrote to Nannerl. My dear sister was wooed and won and carried back to her native land by an Austrian magistrate in 1784 to the great grief of our father and me (our mother was by then dead). Now a widow she lived – fortunate one – in beautiful Salzburg. After the usual report and jokes about the condition of my bowels I took up the matter of the divine Hubermann-Cortino. I did so, however, in as casual a manner as possible, not at all in the way of a spy requesting information. Some sort of inquisition into the details of the lady’s life and private affairs was doubtless what the despicable Popper would have preferred. But such a creature was not a suitable subject for minute enquiry. She was as much above investigation as she was beyond reproach.

  The success of our opera season is now assured, for Therese Hubermann-Cortino has arrived among us, and I cannot doubt a stupendous triumph for her. She says she has left Vienna sickened by the quarrels and intrigues at the Opera. Sad indeed to hear that such conditions prevail at the home of lyric art! But no doubt the quarrelling is on artistic matters, not personal and sordid financial ones, such as is always the case in this island of blockheads. Do you know the causes of the dissensions there? They must be sorry indeed to lose the services of so divine an artist as she is. Apart from her career in Vienna I know nothing of her. What other theatres has she sung in? Which princes have patronised her sublime art? Tell me what you know of her, that I may use it to spread her fame through polite London …

  Her fame, in fact, spread without any aid from me. Lord Hertford was her first patron: she sang at a grand party in Hertford House, closely watched, I have no doubt, by Lady Hertford. She was invited to Chatsworth to sing for the Duke of Devonshire and a party there, and after that her success was assured. When she returned to London all that was necessary for her louche husband (why do divine women have such a fallibly human taste in men?) was to catalogue a list of engagements, public and private. When, on her free mornings, we studied the role of the Countess, her husband would sometimes loom in the door, listen for a minute or two with no sign on his face that he appreciated the ethereal beauty of what he was hearing, and then remove himself, allowing me at least to breathe more freely. These sessions at least taught me that the praise of her beautiful voice, which I so boldly inserted into my letters without ever actually having heard it, was amply justified, and that allied to the voice was solid technique and sensitive musicianship.

  The news that Therese Hubermann-Cortino was to sing the Countess was received with admirable good humour by Betty Ackroyd.

  ‘I am too young for it,’ she said. ‘Maybe in five or ten years’ time I will be ready. Now the role of Susanna …’

  Such generosity of spirit is seldom to be met with in the theatre. Betty would in fact have made an admirable Countess, but Therese was by far the more experienced artist.And Betty was still sufficiently light of voice to sing an enchanting Susanna. I called on her one day when I was not engaged to coach Therese. It was early for me, as I had been up betimes penning various letters of a financial nature. Resisting the temptations of Soho (the books and
pamphlets on offer there from the peddlers are of a wretchedness and depravity beyond belief to one who respects, nay worships, Womankind), I threaded my way to her humble set of rooms, knowing that, it being a Wednesday, I would find her working with Bradley Hartshead. However as I quietly mounted the stairs it was not music I heard but speaking voices. I do not know what made me stop and listen – for I am not, believe me, one of nature’s eavesdroppers – but it was probably the accent in which the words were spoken. I was hearing the voice of Betty Ackroyd, but it was speaking in the tones of a cockney slut.

  ‘No m’Lord, I’m a good girl, I ’adn’t done nuffing wrong wiv me boyfriend in the garden. I ’adn’t done nuffing to be ashamed of at all.’

  Then came the voice of Bradley Hartshead.

  ‘Then why, my girl, were you skulking in the garden?’

  ‘Cook is very strict. If she’d known as ’ow I went out of the ’ouse at night I’d’ve got me marching orders.’

  ‘Will you tell me, then, what you claim to have heard as you were skulking in the garden?’

  ‘Well … it’s difficult, see, because I didn’t understand … didn’t understand what they was talking about.’

  ‘Ah! And how did you come to understand?’

  ‘Well, I told me boyfriend, and ’e …’ The voice suddenly changed, becoming that of Betty Ackroyd. ‘How did all this get out, Bradley? I mean, we ought to keep as close to the truth as possible. Did she tell her gardener boyfriend, and did he then sell the story to Frank?’

  Frank! She called Lord Hertford Frank!

  ‘I really don’t know. We’d better ask him, I suppose. As you say, we ought to stick as close as possible to the truth. You’re doing well so far, but you’re still speaking up a bit too clearly, and not hesitating enough. Anyone who knew her wouldn’t believe Jenny could do that.’

  ‘I know. It’s damned difficult being so inarticulate. But anyone who knew Jenny wouldn’t believe she could say anything – in that setting, before those listeners. Oh, well, let’s try again.’