by John Gardner
Helpenmann looked at Dresden. “It’s a hurricane. A tornado.” He gave a nervous little laugh. “La Tempesta,” he said. He did not know that he had just given her a baptismal name for, in the time that followed, she was to become known all over the world as La Tempesta.
Then Passau shouted back. He was angry now. The great Louis Passau was not used to this kind of behavior, even from temperamental artists. It happened from time to time, but he could always give as much as he took—and more.
“Traccia!” he yelled: a command, as a drill sergeant will call a squad to attention. “Constanza Traccia! Come back and sit down. If you can sing, and if you do know the repertoire as you claim, then you will sing leading roles. This is my life, here. You can be part of it. So come and sit down. Now!”
It was obvious that she was unaccustomed to people talking back to her. She tossed her head, and her long hair rose and fell, like some exotic headdress, a dark halo. Quietly she closed the door in Dresden’s and Helpenmann’s faces. The anger was gone as she meekly resumed her seat, only traces of violence remained in the air, invisible between them.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Miss Traccia.” Passau, in a few seconds, had made up his mind. “I didn’t know you until an hour ago. I knew of you only because I was told you were a brilliant student. How am I to know that you are completely familiar with the repertoire? I am not a mind reader, nor a soothsayer. Can we work together?”
She nodded, head still cocked high and arrogant.
“Might I presume to hear your competence for myself?”
“Whatever you wish, Maestro.”
He gave her a big nod. A nod and a smile, then he slowly walked to the piano. “Come. Come and we will go over a couple of things.”
On Captiva Island, Herbie saw the tears start in the old man’s eyes again, the terrible emotion begin to crack the dam of his features.
“This was incredible, Herb,” he said, his voice shot through with what could only be described as awe. “Look, I thought it would be a disaster. I had a very great talent with me, but thought she would still need much work. I imagined it was impossible for her to know what she claimed.” A small, rusty laugh. “Because I was some kind of prodigy, I didn’t expect another prodigy. Yet that’s what I got.”
Big Herbie nodded him on.
“I started on her, easy. Gave her Butterfly. ‘Un bel dì vendremo,’ like I had already heard that morning. Faultless. Extraordinary. But I thought, well, yes, of course. Yes, she would know that. I went through everything, each time getting harder and harder: Tosca, Bohème, Amelia in Un Ballo in Maschera, the really difficult—the gallows scene. God, I had known well-established sopranos who were utterly unconvincing: the great recitative and the aria. That scene calls for, demands, huge scale. Amelia is hysterical towards the end, leading to that top C. Incredibly hard. Yet, Herb, there was no strain at all. Sure, she wasn’t competing with an orchestra and a full audience, but she was totally believable, absolutely convincing. And the voice. Jesus Christ, she just seemed to get better. Gave you the feeling she didn’t even have to try. It was always like that with her.”
“And that clinched it?”
“No. I gave her more. Oh, yes, my eyes, and my ears, were opened. I just wanted to hear more. I even recall exactly what we did: Senta, from Holländer.” He meant The Flying Dutchman. Wagner. “And also Donna Elvira from Don Giovanni; then the music lesson from Barbiere di Siviglia; others—I remember Manon Lescaut, Traviata. More. No, I forget. In the next few years she was to sing practically everything, anyway. The impact, though—yes, I know I gave her Aida—the impact of that day. Sometimes I dream of it, or I should say sometimes I have nightmares.”
“I know. I have dreams that seem peaceful, yet they are also nightmares, Maestro.”
Passau grunted. “I doubt you’ve had a nightmare like mine.” It was almost the old Louis. Anything you can do, I can do better.
In the short silence that followed, Herbie said, “So the rest is history, eh?”
“More or less. The start of the wild period of my life.”
“Lou, it hadn’t been exactly quiet up till then.”
He nodded. “Sure, but I’m talking really wild.”
“She sang in Kerry Arlow’s Aida, three weeks later, right?”
“Yes. Three weeks, almost to the day.”
“I saw it when you came to London. Was it fifty-two, or fifty-three? Never heard an Aida like it …” Passau continued as though he had not even heard Kruger. “We had contracted a very great soprano. It caused a certain amount of havoc, but you got used to that when you were around Stanza.” He was off, in the distance again. His mind had gone a-roving. “It’s what I always called her. Stanza. Most other people had joke names for her—I mean other singers and directors. She thought it funny that she was called La Tempesta. But you know, Herb, the greatest thing about her was the joy she gave. In those days a lot of the great sopranos took themselves very seriously—and rightly so—but they believed in their position. Stars. Opera stars. Stanza was somehow different.”
“How different?”
“She gave joy and she loved the joy. The joy of music, the fun of music, the emotion of music. When she stood on a stage she really gave herself—all of herself—to the audience. To every single person there. And in rehearsal, or when we recorded, she had the ability to joke when things went wrong: when she wasn’t up to it, or when she made terrible errors. She would be very funny about herself.”
“Even when she caused havoc?”
A small puff of laughter, “Umph! Yes, even then. Okay, yes she was La Tempesta. God, she could be a storm, but not always in the temperamental way. Sometimes it was almost delicate; and she worked. Shit, how she worked. Sometimes it was as though a devil drove her, as if she would run out of time.” He went quiet, and Herbie, out of some misplaced respect, let him stay silent with his dreams and memories.
“It was incredible,” he said, eventually. “Overnight, with the Aida, she became the most famous opera star in the world. Within less than twenty-four hours we had offers for her from all over—and I mean everywhere. La Scala wanted her, Covent Garden wanted her. Everywhere, for operas and also for concerts. She said no. She came to my office and said, “Maestro, I want to stay here, with the company. I want to work with you.”
“And she did.” Herbie looking Passau straight in the eyes. “She worked with you, and only you. Right?”
“Turned my life inside out, yes. Within one year everything had changed.”
“The Passau Orchestra of America, Opera at the Center, your wife. All altered out of recognition.”
“Sure. I even thought I believed in God for a time there. She turned me around: Constanza Traccia.”
For that first year, for all of 1949, Constanza Traccia was at the vortex of a storm she alone created by her talent and her dedication. She appeared in no less than five operas: Aida, Turandot, Lucia di Lammermoor, Ņedda in Pagliacci with Gigli in the title role.
Lastly, that season, there was a stunningly visual Barbiere di Siviglia, in which the sets gave such a depth of perspective, and looked so real, that audiences imagined they were looking at a strange new three-dimensional photography. Every production was sold out for its entire run.
In the meantime, Traccia also worked with Passau. In concerts, she sang in the Verdi and Brahms Requiems; in Passau’s first public performance of the Mahler Second Symphony, and in a whole series of informal Sunday night appearances, works by Schubert, Schumann and the like. Louis Passau was her accompanist. One Sunday they had the whole orchestra in. She performed Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder—Songs on the Deaths of Children. Gloomy, yet wonderful, uplifting, soaring towards hope. Pucky had found her recording of it. The CD was lying in the grip near the little CD player.
“She had another extraordinary talent, Herb. She was able to transcend language. You know how people are sometimes put off by opera, or choral works, even song recitals, because they don’t understa
nd the language?”
“Sure, many people …”
“With Constanza it was not like that. She seemed to be able to translate through her voice. Make people understand the song by the way she sang it. This was truly a remarkable gift.”
It was as though with the advent of La Tempesta the whole of Passau’s venture with the Center suddenly assumed even greater proportions. The New York critics, never anxious to praise, seemed to throw away their acid. Neither the orchestra nor the opera company could do wrong in their eyes, and the public followed them. It was a heady success, and Passau, the conscientious director and tireless worker, appeared to now play as hard as he worked.
As his reputation grew, so did his predilection for danger. He could be seen driving fast cars; he learned to fly and bought his own aircraft, a small four-seat Cessna. He spent nights on the town, in clubs and restaurants. Always, Constanza Traccia was at his side. They were greeted by name everywhere. People were known to have been moved from their tables because the Maestro and La Tempesta arrived unexpectedly.
In July 1949, Veronica Passau sued for divorce, citing La Tempesta. The case went uncontested, but the press sought out the couple and they were constant headline news.
“You never married her, Lou,” Herbie said now, in the present. “I always thought that was odd. I mean you were famous for women, yet you never married her.”
Passau gave a smile and a small shrug of the shoulders. “Perhaps that’s why I never did it. Perhaps she didn’t want to take the risk, Herb. Honestly, I forget now. Sudden memory loss. I swear it. Can’t remember.”
“I say, we will have no more marriages.” Herbie gave his daft grin, and added, “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” He pronounced it “Dane-Mark” just to be difficult.
Passau did not rise to that bait. “End of the summer that year,” he said, “we found Corfu. In those days the islands around Greece were still fairly primitive. The annual trek to the sun by the package holiday firms had not yet started. Corfu was beautiful.”
They had spent a month sailing off the Greek coast: courtesy of one of the Passau Center’s wealthy patrons—between rehearsals and concerts. “We used to close down completely for all of August, so then it was feasible. Nobody knew where we were, because it was easier to give the press the slip at that time. They didn’t even know we were on the yacht. I’ll never forget it. One evening, just as the sun began to drop towards the horizon, we were on deck, approaching the island from the east. Corfu looked incredible. The light was so amazing, bright with golds and reds. There was rock, sand and lush greenery. I said something about it being like a romantic Victorian painting. You know, dust on the leaves, hanging in the air, crags rising from the sea. It could have been Prospero’s island. You ever been to Corfu, Herb?”
Kruger shook his head, then quoted—
“The music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury, and my passion,
With its sweet air.”
“What, Herb?”
“You said it could’ve been Prospero’s island. Shakespeare, Lou. The Tempest. La Tempesta.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. We went ashore the next day. Nobody knew who we were. It was wonderful; they just treated us like ordinary people. You know, the British gave Corfu two things: ginger beer and cricket. That’s true, Herb. To this day. Ginger beer and cricket. God gave it a wonderful beauty. Mostly gone now. They built ugly beehive hotels, and gave all the visitors motor scooters. Terrible now.
“I bought the little villa a couple of days later. Bought it in the name of Martin Spinebrucker. We got local people to do the place up, and we’d go back there whenever we had a free week—which was not often—but it was worth the long journey and the jet-lag even for just five days. We had a very complicated routine to throw off the press when we went to Corfu. Worked every time, and nobody knew I even owned the villa. Nobody, Herb. Nobody but me and Stanza. Our hiding place … until …” He let it drift away.
“The villa was perched high up on a rocky cliff. Five rooms, nothing lavish. It became our trysting place. The next year we had steps cut in the rockface so we could walk down to the beach and bathe. It was truly idyllic. On the Paleokastritsa side of the island. Pity you’ve never been there, Herb. It was truly incredible to be there with Stanza.” He stopped, though his mind had run on ahead of him, or backwards, depending on where he decided to be at that moment, and who he decided to be: the man who loved Constanza Traccia before the horror, or the man he became afterwards.
He saw the agile Constanza Traccia, long legs pumping, breasts hardly moving as she ran towards him along the golden sand, and he called to her, “Stanza! Stanza!” Never in all his lusts and desires had he loved a woman like her. Never had he loved.
Quietly, Herbie rose, going softly out to the kitchen to get lunch, leaving the old Maestro to his memories, so strong and redolent of pure happiness that Herbie could almost smell them in the silence.
A few minutes later, he heard Passau moving, digging into the CDs. Constanza Traccia’s clean and clear, pure voice filled the apartment. Mahler. Kindertotenlieder. It was like a sad and beautiful chime, tolling for all who died before their time—
“Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgehen,
Now the sun will rise as brightly as if no misfortune had befallen in the night. This misfortune happened to me alone, the sun shines for everyone.”
Herbie stood still and thought his heart would break at the beauty and the unknown crucifixion he thought Passau must be undergoing.
(15)
BIG HERBIE MADE HIS famous omelettes aux fines herbes in the kitchen, while Constanza Traccia, with the Passau Symphony Orchestra of America, sang the winding, soaring, melancholy Songs on the Deaths of Children. The Maestro had been right. You did not have to understand German to know the emotion, horror and turmoil of which she sang. Her artistry, combined with Mahler’s settings, told vividly of loss, heartache and grief which borders on madness. The instrument which was her voice etched in the tears and the agony of minds unable to accept the frightful loss of a small, deeply loved soul.
For some reason, for he was no expert on things Biblical, Herbie thought of the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah—
“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” What was Lou Passau’s sorrow? Why had he been afflicted by this woman with her huge and wondrous talent?
In the main room, Louis Passau leaned back, his eyes closed, listening to the voice of his adored one. The only woman who had, for a brief period, made such a difference to his life. With dreadful clarity he summoned the ghosts of times long gone, so that their pictures haunted his mind, just as they so often frequented his dreams.
The pictures were powerful, flashing bright and all too real in his head: Stanza, at this very recording: he could even recall what she wore: very casual, a white silk shirt, black skirt, flared and swinging as her body swayed to the notes.
Singing in the relative privacy of a studio, she would move in a way never seen by audiences when she was onstage. Reaching effortlessly for a high note she would raise an arm, almost languidly, above her head, or at other times motion with her palm, as though flattening a sound, pushing it down so that it seemed to disappear into the air, a long diminution, leaving a shiver in its wake.
He saw her laughing across a dinner table, always full of mischief, her face endlessly mobile, a quick wit. He heard her speak now, the tremble of a smile in her tone, and the bubble as she added some telling line to a countless store of tales: never malicious, always amusing, overflowing with mirth.
Though he tried to expunge the scenes from his mind, Louis Passau also saw her naked, brimming with energy as they lay together on the huge bed in the Corfu villa: her long limbs stretching, arching her whole body to his. Skin as smooth as the silk she so often wore at these times. No blemish. They became one as he had never experienced it before. They reached the ultimate for lovers, that sec
ret still-turning world that was theirs alone. Nobody could intrude and they were all relationships to each other. It seemed to surpass time and space, as though they had lived and loved time and again from the beginning to the end. Alpha and Omega.
“Play me again,” she would whisper. “Oh, Lou, play me again. I love you.”
He heard his own voice respond, and the shadow of their constant love-making fell across his heart, wrenching at some deep horror. Nights in strange hotels, sleepless and joyful. Mornings, dawn, waking and looking out of windows at views neither of them would ever forget: a sailboat far out across water, a seemingly endless forest somewhere on the Swiss border, the trees peeking up through a light mist, and the physical burn and ache, a constant reminder of the pleasure of the night. The music of the night. The memories were not self-indulgence. They were as real as the room in which he now sat. They were perfect in every detail.
“Oh, God,” he wept. “Oh, God Almighty, save me.”
She came back to him, onstage, in scene after scene, as immensely pleasing to the audience as she was to him when they were alone. She was so young, alive, loving, even when she became temper-tossed—La Tempesta—or when she became defensive because she knew what she was doing to an aria, or if a scene was wrong, even off by an infinitesimal amount. There only had to be one small thing not quite right and she would rage like a volcano, just as in their love for one another she was everything: fire and ice, wind, rain, turbulence and the softness of spring. She would weep at the first sign of snowdrops, just as he still wept when he saw those tiny flowers, for the memory was almost unbearable.
He saw them together, like an out-of-body experience: wrapped around each other as they walked in fair and fine weather—Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, Salzberg, Vienna, Venice. He stopped for a second, remembering her face one evening as she looked out across the Grand Canal, tears starting to her eyes because the view was so incredible; then the scene shifted to sunset at Key West, eyes reflecting the blood of the sinking sun as the great shaft of crimson flashed across the sea.