Ariana

by Edward Stewart

  Thirty seconds later Adolf Erdlich knocked at dressing room nine. Camilla Seaton, about to make her debut in the triple role of Olympia, Giulietta, and Antonia, answered the door in a costume of rustling mauve taffeta. Her face glowed.

  Adolf Erdlich told Miss Seaton she would not be going on. His words fell like stones into the sudden silence. He laid his hand on Miss Seaton’s trembling shoulder. In his Viennese version of Oxbridge English, he dredged up his usual speech for these not very unusual occasions.

  “Come, my dear. It’s not the end. You’ll have other chances.”

  The members of the orchestra had finished tuning their instruments and were fidgeting silently when at the back of the pit a door flew open. In strode Boyd Kinsolving. As he passed the violas the follow spot picked him out and escorted him up to the stand. He faced the audience, bowed his head with enough of a snap to send a floating wave through his handsomely graying hair.

  He turned to the music stand, raised his baton, held an audience of four thousand and an orchestra of seventy-two captive in an instant of absolute soundlessness. His wrist flicked out the downbeat.

  He conducted the Prologue almost absentmindedly, beating time with his left hand, turning pages with his right.

  The brief opening scene took place in a beer cellar in Nuremberg. Lindorf, sung by the same baritone who would play the hero’s nemesis in each of the following acts, intercepted a note from the opera singer Stella to the poet Hoffmann, inviting him to meet her after her performance and enclosing a key to her dressing room.

  Lindorf resolved to make use of both the key and the invitation.

  Hoffmann entered with his friend Nicklausse. A group of students asked Hoffmann to regale them with his amorous adventures. Though at first reluctant, he began to drink and finally agreed to tell the stories of his three great, tragic loves.

  The first act, which followed immediately, was Hoffmann’s first tale. The curtain rose on the fantastic candlelit laboratory of opera’s one and only mad scientist, the doll-maker Spalanzani. It was one of the Met’s most spectacular sets, and the audience applauded enthusiastically.

  Though he had seen her only once through a window, Hoffmann was entranced with Spalanzani’s daughter, Olympia. Spalanzani promised that, thanks to science, Hoffmann would meet the girl. As guests began arriving for Olympia’s coming-out party, Nicklausse warned Hoffmann not to fall in love too fast.

  The understudy playing Olympia entered. Boyd threw a glance toward her. At least wardrobe had made the costume fit.

  For the next half-scene Olympia had to cling to her father’s arm amid approving whispers.

  She clung to his arm. So far, so good. Hoffmann declared his love for her. She had to sing two words: Oui and Oui.

  She sang “Oui” and “Oui.”

  To Boyd’s surprise, the audience laughed both times. He glanced again toward the stage, a little baffled by the quality of attention that the audience seemed to be focusing on her.

  Not hostility, not boredom, but expectancy.

  Spalanzani lumbered offstage and returned carrying a magnificently improbable harp. Silence rushed into the house like a tide. Spalanzani sat at the harp and mimed arpeggios.

  In the pit the flute and the harp began the introduction of the Doll Song, one of the most demanding arias in the coloratura repertory. Boyd braced himself for a train of tiny mishaps. God only knew, the aria was mined with vocal traps.

  The understudy didn’t fall into one of them.

  There was a comic moment when her voice faltered and a servant touched her. A whirring spring was heard and she began singing again.

  With no sign of effort whatsoever, she executed the leaps and trills and runs, employed every form of vocal attack from sustained legato to fleet pinprick staccato, dipped to low E-flat at the bottom of the staff, rose to an unbelievably brilliant high E-flat.

  Boyd realized she could not possibly be the girl he had auditioned two weeks ago. The musical discrepancies were too great. This was no nervous understudy’s first run-through before a paying audience. This was a seasoned performance, every breath, every note, every attack calculated and sure.

  She finished the first refrain on a glittering high A-flat. He could feel the audience wanting to break into the music, to applaud right then. He sensed something passing from her to them, some signal of the eyes, of the posture, of the voice itself. It was as though she had stepped to the footlights and said, Not yet. You’ll have your chance in a moment. For now, let me have mine.

  But she hadn’t moved.

  She had simply stood there, faced her audience, attacked her note clean and cut it clean. And now, in the eight measures of harp and flute, she moved. She took two sideways steps, swung out a hand and, turning as though to pirouette, collided with the harp.

  The harp did not go over, she did not go over, but for one breath-stopping instant it seemed as though everything might go over.

  Boyd Kinsolving had seen that bit of business only once before in his life, when Ariana Kavalaris had last sung the role, in this very house. The baton fell from his hand. It clacked against the edge of the music stand and clattered to the floor of the pit.

  She saw. She slid him a glance. Her eyes gleamed. Not with malice, not with triumph. With humor.

  Vanessa Billings, he realized, and his heart skipped a beat. But how?

  Offenbach’s delicate waltz continued with no help from Boyd. The first cellist handed him back his baton. He rejoined the music.

  It was traditional for singers to interpolate high notes on the second refrain, but she was singing higher than any interpolations he had ever heard. Higher than Ponselle. Higher than Lily Pons, who had been perhaps the greatest coloratura of the mid-twentieth century. E-flats, E-naturals, F’s. Higher than anyone…except Kavalaris.

  A stunning high E-flat brought the audience shrieking to its feet.

  Olympia completed her song, danced exquisitely, and withdrew.

  A violent argument now broke out between Spalanzani and his coworker, Coppelius. A moment later there was a noise of shattering machinery. Coppelius entered carrying Olympia—a broken doll. As the curtain fell, Hoffmann realized he had been deceived by an automaton.

  The next act took place in the courtesan Giulietta’s palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice. This time Billings played Giulietta, the beautiful pawn of the evil Dappertutto, who used her to capture men’s souls. She had already stolen the shadow of her lover Schlemil and was now setting a trap for Hoffmann.

  Again, Nicklausse warned his friend, and again Hoffmann was too blindly in love to listen. Giulietta urged him to come to her room: Schlemil had the key and Hoffmann had only to duel him for it. Hoffmann challenged Schlemil, killed him, and took the key. He ran to Giulietta’s balcony just in time to see her floating away in her gondola, laughingly embracing another man.

  This time when Boyd’s eyes met Vanessa Billings’s, he smiled back at her like an old friend.

  Camilla Seaton, the understudy for the understudy, stayed in her dressing room, changing her costume for each act. There was always the chance they might need her.

  As the last act began she moved through the long silent stretches of the backstage corridors, feeling hollow and alone. Among all the singers and stagehands bustling through the wings, she was the one person with nothing to do. She stood by the electrician’s booth. She listened to her rival.

  The scene on stage was the home of Crespel the lute-maker, in Munich. This time Hoffmann was smitten with Crespel’s lovely but fragile daughter, Antonia. She was sitting at the harpsichord singing a plaintive song about a turtledove. Camilla had expected the voice to go through her like a knife. Instead, it was as though the sun had peeped over a dark horizon.

  Crespel reminded Antonia that the exertion of singing had killed her famous mother and could spell her doom as well. She promised not to sing.

  Hoffmann entered. Antonia embraced him passionately. They joined voices in their favorite love song, but—sud
denly weak—she clasped her hand to her heart.

  She’s better than I am. Inwardly, Camilla Seaton sighed. She’s much, much better. And she couldn’t be that much older. Maybe ten years. I wonder if I’ll ever be that good?

  Hearing her father returning, Antonia fled to her room. Hoffmann hid and eavesdropped on a conversation between Crespel and Dr. Miracle, the mysterious quack whose treatment had resulted in the death of Antonia’s mother. Cynically, Miracle inquired after the girl’s health. Crespel drove him from the house.

  But when Antonia was alone, Miracle suddenly appeared and urged her to sing. She appealed to her dead mother for help. Miracle brought to life the portrait of Antonia’s mother on the wall: the portrait encouraged her to sing. Miracle seized a violin and accompanied. The portrait, the diabolical doctor, and the doomed Antonia now joined in a heartrending trio.

  Camilla tried to analyze Vanessa Billings’s voice.

  It was lofty enough and vast enough to fill a cathedral. There was flow, there was clarity, there was rhythmic exactness and absolute precision of detail.

  But there was something else, something disturbing and beautiful. The voice seemed to articulate an unheard melody—the true melody—that lay behind the sounding notes.

  Exhausted, Antonia fell to the floor. Hoffmann rushed to take her into his arms. He called for a doctor. Miracle appeared once more and triumphantly pronounced the girl dead.

  The brief epilogue took place in the tavern. Hoffmann’s tales were ended. His friends had gone, leaving him in an alcoholic stupor. The Muse of Poetry appeared and urged him to belong to her alone, for she alone loved him. The door opened and Stella, Hoffmann’s last love, entered with Lindorf. Lindorf pointed sardonically to the poet—passed out drunk—and led Stella away.

  The curtain dropped like swift nightfall. Boyd laid down his baton.

  The audience, like a single being, held its breath. There was a moment of absolute silence, when the music seemed to hang in the air, and then a great steady roar of applause and bravos and stamping.

  The curtains parted.

  The soloists stepped single-file through the gap to take their bows. There was applause for the supporting singers—the mezzo, the baritones, the second tenor.

  Vanessa took her bow.

  Bravas ripped loose. Programs were flung to the stage. Torn paper fluttered down from the front balconies spinning like butterflies in the air currents.

  She faced the house, curtsied deeply and perfectly. Her face glowed with an incredible serenity, like a figure in a Renaissance painting.

  Boyd mopped his face with an already soaked handkerchief. He had expected disaster, and instead…this. Home free, he thought.

  They called Vanessa Billings back eight times. The tenor, Lucco Patemio, tagged along for eight bows too.

  Boyd caught his breath, allowed himself a moment to believe that this was real, this screaming stamping hysteria of approval was actually happening. He loved the sound. He loved the moment. He wanted his share.

  He strode from the podium, past the string players politely tapping their bows against their instruments. As he hurried through the doorway and up the steps to the stage he could hear the ongoing screams, the bravos, the change in resonance as the audience moved down to the front orchestra and stood shouting.

  Billings and Patemio were waiting for him. He gave them each one of his hands, and they marched forward through the gap in the curtain that took all of a stagehand’s weight to hold open.

  “Brava, my darling, absolute brava.” Boyd kissed his new star on the cheek. He remembered to give Patemio’s hand a quick squeeze. “You too, Lucco.”

  Patemio, now well over sixty years old, had had an astonishingly long career for an opera singer—some four decades. His voice had lost its beauty but little of its power. He wore an obvious toupee, but it was no worse than the wigs he wore onstage. He was a jealous beast, worse than a household pet, and he had to be coddled; but he knew the repertory, and to the tone-deaf among the public he had become an institution—Mr. Opera.

  “You were absolutely brilliant,” Boyd assured him.

  They moved smiling into the pool of spotlight. Boyd could feel the damp skin of Vanessa’s palm, her pulse hammering against his hand. “You’re a miracle!” he shouted in her ear.

  For one moment her eyes met his and it seemed to him something like recognition flashed between them: We have been here before, you and I. We have shared this moment, this applause…

  And then she fell against him.

  “Vanessa, are you all right? Lucco, help me. She’s fainted.”

  But she hadn’t fainted; she had just lost her balance. They got her offstage. She was able to stand, her bosom rising and falling like the wing of a fluttering bird.

  The house was still applauding, still screaming.

  “Both of you, take another bow.” Boyd gave his tenor and soprano a push. “Lucco, hold her up. Just a short bow now. It’s almost midnight and we don’t want to go into overtime.”

  A Niagara of thumping and screaming tore loose. The sound was almost terrifying, as though Bolsheviks were ripping a palace apart.

  It was almost two minutes of bravos and shrieks before Lucco helped Vanessa back behind the curtain.

  A figure stood beside Boyd. He recognized the little understudy, as tiny and lost and trembling as a snowflake in an avalanche.

  “She’s magnificent,” the girl said quietly.

  Boyd put a fatherly arm around the girl’s shoulder. He felt a twinge of sympathy. Tonight might have been her night. “You’re right, sweet-ums,” he agreed. “Magnificent and then some.”

  The girl looked at Vanessa shyly and Boyd caught the glance.

  “Vanessa, this is Camilla Seaton, Clara’s understudy.”

  “How do you do.” Vanessa smiled weakly. “You would have sung if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “I wouldn’t have sung nearly as well as you.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  “I’m not kind, Miss Billings, just telling the truth. I’ve studied Hoffmann for two years, but I’ve never really heard it till tonight. Could I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Would you coach me?”

  Silence pooled, thick and sudden.

  “I know you’re very busy, but I could be available whenever you have a moment. I’m a hard worker and a fast learner.”

  Boyd had seen manipulation before, but this child brimming with hope and gall took his breath away. He stepped between the two women. “Perhaps this could be discussed another time. Vanessa has had an exhausting two days.”

  Vanessa pulled free of his arm. “I’m all right now.” She took the girl’s hand. “That’s the kindest compliment you could give me.”

  She was staring into the girl’s eyes. There was a silence, but it was a silence between the two women, no one else. Boyd sensed something pass through the air.

  “May I phone you?” Vanessa said. “We’ll talk about it.”

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Boyd said afterward, walking Vanessa to her dressing room. “You don’t owe her a thing.”

  She looked at him strangely. “How do you know what I owe?” Boyd shook his head. “A word of advice from a seasoned opera survivor. Sentiment belongs on the stage. Not off.”

  37

  FOR THREE MONTHS CLARA Rodrigo watched the Billings girl mount the climbing wave of fame. Vanessa Billings possesses an unearthly versatility, the New York Times cooed. Her voice can as effortlessly encompass the dark tones of a Tosca as it can the silvery filigree of a Norma. Not since Kavalaris has this listener heard such an astonishing instrument, and Kavalaris, we would do well to remember, excelled in this regard even the magnificent Maria Callas. The magazines, always more sensational, openly predicted a golden future: the next Kavalaris.

  As chance would have it, the evening came when Clara and the Billings girl appeared in the same opera at different houses: Clara at the Met in a new gala product
ion, Billings at the City Opera just across Lincoln Plaza in a scaled-down revival. The opera was Turandot, and as Clara was hurrying across the plaza two hours before curtain, a small, dark, bearded man approached her. His jacket was rumpled and stained and he had the aura of a ratty sorcerer.

  “Hey, lady.” The voice was secretive. “Got a ticket for Billings? I’ll give you four Rodrigos for a Billings.”

  Fury took her breath. She gave him a look of pure hatred, yanked her mink tight around her, strode past him.

  “Five Rodrigos! Hey lady! Five Rodrigos and cash!”

  Billings’s reviews the next day were better than hers. She was troubled and she decided to go to a fortune teller who had been recommended to her, a woman said to have occult powers who worked near B. Altman’s department store on Thirty-fourth Street.

  The sun was going down as Clara climbed the stairs over the Chinese restaurant. She moved aside a beaded curtain and groped her way into the dimness. A transistor radio was blaring salsa and it was very hot inside the room.

  At first she could barely make out the huge dark woman wrapped in lace. A surprisingly deep voice commanded, “Siéntese.” Sit.

  The woman turned down the radio. Clara could begin to see her: the eyes were milky, practically without irises, and half the teeth were missing from the upper jaw. Behind her was a shelf of carnival dolls: bears and rabbits and babies with blond hair.

  The two women spoke in Spanish: not the Castilian of Clara’s conservatory days, but the harsh Santurce dialect of her childhood.

  “Who sent you?”

  Clara named the Haitian woman who cleaned her apartment.

  There was a moment’s silence. “¿Por qué has venido, hijita?”—“Why have you come, little daughter?”

  Clara talked for twenty minutes, telling everything.

  The old woman instructed her what to do.

  Two days later Clara climbed the stairs again. She gave the woman a live chicken tied in a ribbon that she had worn in La Fille du Régiment.

  “Come back in one week at the same hour,” the woman said.