The Black Opera (23 page)

“Born in the other Sicily,” Conrad answered, “but bred up mostly in the German states. My father was native to the Duchy of Bavaria.”

“Very well, Corrado. I am Roberto.”

He's genuinely intending to be friendly.

He just can't
help
sounding like he has a broom up his arse.

But Ferdinand's chosen him, and I have to have a better reason than that not to work with him.

“Roberto…” Conrad opened the various desk drawers, looking for paper. “The Argente family is Italian?”

“Now.” The Count took a sheaf of paper marked with staves out of his inner coat pocket, and moved cautiously towards the upright piano. “But Spanish in origin. We moved here recently, some three hundred years ago, when there was war with the Arabs and Hebrews in Granada, and the Counts of Argente wished to live at peace… You and I appear to take in considerable amounts of Europe between us—one hopes, it will spark fresh talent.”

The Wars in Granada were a melange of bright armour and heraldry in Conrad's mind. “A shame I didn't know about your family history before. It sounds an interesting setting for a libretto.”

Roberto struck middle C, listened, and unexpectedly smiled. “A good sound considering this is an upright piano… I'd thought perhaps something more exotic than wars against the Moors and Jews?”

“Exotic.” Conrad found himself also smiling, at first with relief, and then with enthusiasm. He put down the book of engravings that he still carried with him. “I think we can contrive something exotic. Look at these plates and tell me if your music thinks them worthy.”

“I refuse to write anything purely for uncivilised flutes, drums, and cymbals!”

“I don't recall Signore Rossini sounding particularly Turkish when he put his Italian girl in Algiers—and Signore Donizetti, when he set
Il paria
in India, didn't—”

Conrad caught the glint in Roberto Capiraso's eye and realised,
I've bitten the bait again
.

He diverted himself smoothly: “But of course, if you think it's too difficult a setting for an opera…”

Il Superbo smirked. “I'm sure I'll manage.”

Conrad suppressed the urge to throw something at the man, or burst out laughing, or both. “On reflection, I doubt the censor will let us put a queen on stage at all, so I had thought we might call it
The Aztec Princess
.”

The Count paged slowly through the engravings.

Conrad put out his own papers. “I've noted down our basic triangle of lovers for the main plot. Our hero, Fernando Cortez, the only European explorer in South America that anyone's ever heard of—Who they usefully appear to think may have been a god, whose title was ‘the Plumed Serpent.'”

Conrad shifted the wooden chairs so that he could sit at the table, in the narrow gap between that and the locked cupboards of antiquities. After a moment, the Conte di Argente joined him.

“Our heroine, the Aztec Princess herself, is ‘Tanis.'” Conrad went on, flicking through his notes. “Of course, she's the betrothed of the Aztec's chief General. Every opportunity for martial music… Do you want to stage an actual battle between the Europeans and the Aztecs, by the way? I know the Aztecs are supposed to have been terrified by the appearance of fighting men on horse-back, like centaurs… Velluti might get his up-stage entrance on a white horse, but I don't think Angelotti and the stage-crew can adequately manage enough horses for a convincing battle…”

“There might be certain practical problems,” Roberto agreed dryly.

The Count reached out for the stack of notes detailing ideas for the plot, with such authority that Conrad didn't stop him taking them.

“Very well.
L'Altezza azteca, ossia La principessa di sangue
—‘The Aztec Princess,
Or, the Princess of Blood.' Our Princess—‘Tanis'?” He raised dark eyebrows.

“‘The serpent lady,'” Conrad translated.

“…Princess Snake-lady—you have too many princesses in your title, by the way—loves the Spanish explorer Fernando Cortez, but she is betrothed to Lord-General Chimalli, Commander of the Jaguar Warriors. And I suppose his name also translates?” Roberto sounded amused.

“To ‘shield,'” Conrad said absently, busy setting out his inkwell and pen. “A Jesuit writer made a list of Aztec words; I think they cry out to be used as names.”

Il Superbo gave him the look of an educated man. “‘Tanis' would be Greek, surely? A form of the Carthaginian Goddess ‘Tanith.'”

Conrad shrugged, declining to be baited. “I like the meaning. Her name in the Nahuatl language was originally ‘Tecuichpochtzin'—”

Even with practise at reading it, he stumbled hopelessly.

“—Which means ‘Lord's daughter,' and we're not using it! If it helps,” Conrad intercepted the Count's visible frustration, “she was baptised ‘Doña Isabel' after she converted! But ‘Isabella' hardly sounds exotic.”

Roberto Capiraso rubbed his hand across his face, with an odd little sigh. “No; hardly!”

I should show willingness to compromise, I suppose
, Conrad thought. “I did consider calling her ‘Tayanna' or ‘Zayanna'; that's a name in Nahuatl, meaning ‘sunrise.'”

He was surprised to see the other man try the names silently on his tongue, in the way that singers did.

“Three syllables, ends in a vowel—easier to scan, surely?” Roberto Capiraso cocked a dark eyebrow. “I prefer Tayanna. The other version sounds too…”

“Soft?” Conrad agreed, before he realised. After a moment's silent contemplation, he drew a thin line with his pen and added “Princess Tayanna” to the list of characters. “We can still have a costume of feathers and snake-patterns for her.”

“Mm.” The Count turned back to the papers. “So Chimalli loves his betrothed, Tayanna.—I suggest our Aztec princess was betrothed by her late father to this Jaguar General, she won't look so flighty then when she prefers Signore Cortez.”

Conrad nodded. He took back his first page and—after tapping the steel pen nib thoughtfully for a moment—scribbled industriously. “Better title?”

The drawing-room composer received the title sheet back and studied it.

“Il serpente pennuto ossia La Principessa di Sangue…
‘The Feathered Serpent, or, The Princess of Blood.' Not there yet, but improving.” Roberto Capiraso thumbed through the synopsis. “So we have a triangle between Princess Tayanna, her Jaguar General, and Signore Cortez…”

“…And naturally both of them can't have her.” Conrad tapped his pen again.
A blot fell on his clean page. “No one in the audience will spare more than a passing sympathy for the villain, so we have to work on
that
aspect. Difficult when the hero and heroine obviously belong together.”

Roberto picked the pen out of Conrad's hand to make a note of his own, and passed it back. “Even though the Jaguar Knight General is legally betrothed to her?”

“This is opera.” Conrad smiled, very innocently. “I've often thought that the country of origin might be Catholic, but opera itself is wholly Protestant…”

Roberto Capiraso leaned back in the uncomfortable wooden chair, face almost masking his amusement. “And why would that be, Signore Heretic? There have been many operas on Catholic heroines.”

“The subject of operas might be Catholic—Signore Donizetti's English queens and rebels—or it might not be. Example, the Romans of Spontini, Mercadante, Pacini. But the
format
of opera is Protestant.” Conrad idly drew spider-legs from his inkblot. “Everything is about the individual, not the family or the congregation. The individual's emotional development—their ‘spiritual' health, if you like. Love, hate, loyalty, guilt, bliss… all of it has the highest priority. In the case of our love-triangle—love is the law, and the Law counts for nothing.”

Roberto Capiraso mouthed,
“Protestant!”
under his breath, went to get his own pen, and continued making marginal notes on Conrad's papers.

“It gives us a first scene,” Roberto added. “Chimalli waiting in the palace—they must have palaces!—for his betrothed. His Jaguar Knights with him: bass and high-bass chorus. He confesses his love for the Princess, looks forward to their marriage. A message arrives: she isn't coming, she's giving an audience to the stranger, Cortez—this isn't the first time this has happened. Our Lord-General bursts into a cabaletta of vengeance. Delays the entrance of heroine and hero, which is always good.”

Conrad seized his pen and began to scribble the synopsis down.

All right, maybe there's one drawing room composer with a grasp of the necessities of opera.

There was little enough of the plot filled in otherwise, so he was not surprised when Roberto didn't comment again until he reached the end.

“So, the finale, Cortez and Princess Tayanna…”

The Count read on without further comment, while Conrad added a beetle to his blot-collection, and gazed out of the window at the sea. Something about the brilliant play of light put him in the frame of mind to form coherent ideas.

The Conte di Argente turned over the last page, sat for a moment staring at the secret museum, and finally said, “I understand that the end of this opera is particularly important. Do you think that what you have here is adequate?”

The word made Conrad flush hot. “No. It's a place-holder. Given how difficult it is to see what an adequate
lieto fine
might be, I've sketched in a tragic ending. Now that the censors allow it, such endings are very popular, and the deathscene of two lovers sacrificed on the step-pyramid—”

“—Is very like the two lovers going to
Madame la Guillotine
together at the end of
Il Terrore
,” Roberto Capiraso pointed out.

“Are you saying I'm not original!”

Il Superbo threw his head back in laughter, short beard jutting.

“Oh, I don't accuse any opera libretto in a thousand of being original!” He caught his breath. “It's not what's wanted by the audience. They like their shocks to come slowly, two or three times in a decade… I merely meant, the end of this opera relies on audience reaction, and it may be a little soon to give them something that was a
success de scandale
a few weeks ago.”

That was almost tactful
, Conrad thought. “Then we don't sacrifice the main characters.”

He reached for the engravings of step-pyramids again.

“Maybe a tragedy could be our sub-plot? Look, here we have sacrifices of blood with a thousand warriors slain to dark gods—So we don't want a
thousand
warriors. Far too brutal. One will do. Or three, if we need two tasteful deaths, maybe one by poison…”

“Not warriors, either,” Roberto put in, his expression keen. “Who wants to see males in jeopardy? Sacrificial maiden—no, too obvious.”

Conrad idly sketched with his dip-pen on the back of his notes, playing with designs for step-pyramids as stage-flats. “I'd thought there ought to be a slave-girl, maybe as our soprano role? Hopelessly in love with Cortez, because he loves the Princess—”

Capiraso prodded the table with a blunt finger.
“Now
loves the Princess. Before that, he loved the slave, promised her marriage, but now…”

“Aria of the abandoned lover,” Conrad noted down. “I wonder if we could get away with her having been married to him? That would give us a very good situation: he's torn between the woman he loves and the wife he doesn't.”

“That means no marriage between Tayanna and Cortez until the slave-girl is dead.” The Count continued tapping his finger on the polished wood of the table. His hand was squarish in shape, not at all the epitome of the aristocrat.

Conrad roused himself from speculations why the hands of a bricklayer might be in the Argente family tree, to hear Roberto Capiraso add:

“Is our heroine villainous? Might she poison her rival?”

“Then she won't deserve her happy ending.”

“Che cazzo!
Very well, suppose no marriage, but she's now drifting away from
Cortez in favour of one of his young captains—didn't you say there was a tenor role there? Leave a loophole for a happy ending with the right people pairing up. Not that most finale pairs would last six months in the real world…”

“Cynic!”

The Count made a production out of ignoring that remark. He finally tapped on the engraving, rather than the table. “We need this high priest, too. But he can't just stand there like a bump on a log until he makes the sacrifices at the end.”

“Perhaps Cortez has a priest with him. A Jesuit, like the one who recorded the word lists. He and the High Priest of the Sun could have a duet of two basses, tearing strips off each other.”

“And trying to convert each other, no doubt? Conrad, do you
want
the censor banning us? Despite what pressure King Ferdinand can bring to bear?”

“Somewhere out there is a Church censor with a sense of humour,” Conrad murmured, sitting back in his chair and giving Roberto a grin. “One day I'll find him.”