The Black Opera (25 page)

Roberto Capiraso leaned over and tapped the paper. “We have no main soprano, and no female villainess.”

About to say something curt, Conrad realised, if only from the tension in the bearded man's shoulders, that he was not wilfully pointing out flaws.
Damn. I think he's trying to prove himself worthy.

“We may have to have one singer fill both gaps, as things are going. You understand, sir,” Conrad turned to the King, “Signore Gianpaolo has written to every reputable singer in Italy and the Northern Empire; but word has evidently got around that this production is marked out as dangerous.”

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily gave him a look remarkably like Tullio Rossi's, on similar occasions; it plainly meant
Tell me something I
don't
know…

“This
is
dangerous,” Roberto Capiraso said bluntly. “But—I recognise that name you have written there, Corrado. Is that wise?”

Damn, I was hoping he wouldn't have heard…

Equally bluntly, Conrad said, “We exhausted wisdom some time back. We're now working with desperate ideas and hoping they pay off. That name is there because it occurs to me that a singer whose career is on a knife-edge might be willing to sing for us.”

He glanced over at the King again.

“As far as possible, sir, I've been choosing those principals that I think will be willing to work as part of an ensemble. No singing over the other partner in a duet just because they can; that sort of thing. Singers who'll be willing to showcase another singer in
their
star turn, because they'll get their own bite at the cherry—I'm very deliberately writing it in that form. We can't be a company of a dozen
prima donnas
who sabotage each other all the time.”

Ferdinand demanded bluntly, “Who is it you wish to contact?”

Conrad interlinked his fingers.

“Estella Belucci. As I think Signore Roberto knows?—she's a soprano from the other Sicily, from Palermo. I heard her once; her voice can't be faulted. However, she has a reputation in the business for being quarrelsome in rehearsal and performance. She's been dismissed more than once.”

Ferdinand looked momentarily bemused. “And you want to offer this woman the place of
seconda donna?”

“She'd be excellent for the Aztec slave-girl Xochitl. I know Sandrine and JohnJack. They're perfectly capable of keeping a capricious singer in order. Signore Velluti is reputed temperamental himself; I don't think he's liable to
tolerate much dissent either.”

Roberto gave up standing in favour of drawing out a chair in the cramped space around the table, and sitting down next to Conrad. “Sire, I don't want to quote proverbs about beggars not being choosers, but this work needs a dramatic soprano.”

Conrad caught Roberto's expression out of the corner of his eye. He gave the Count a nod, cementing a growing sense of accord.

“Very well.” Ferdinand did not quite frown. “We have little enough time for rehearsal as it is. Bring the woman here, see if she can fill the role you have for her without disrupting the rest of the singers. I authorise you to tell Signori Velluti and Spinelli, and Madame Sandrine, as much of our excuse or pretext as you think necessary—erring on the extremely cautious side, even so. Wait before informing Donna Belucci of anything, until we know whether we, also, will have to dismiss her.”

“Yes, sir.”

Conrad searched out another set of notes, and three heads bent over the papers in the sharp sunlight.

The following day being Sunday, and nearly two weeks of their time having expired, Conrad had no idea if he would see the Count.

Roberto Capiraso, however, either did not care for his duty to attend Mass, or was neglecting it at this particular time. He arrived by eight in the morning in the secret museum, and sat experimenting with the upright piano (when he was not swearing at its tone) and the text Conrad had handed over—the castrato's entrance aria with accompanying male and female chorus.

The Count brought out a score apparently ripped from one of his one-act “private house” operas, and it soon repeated in variations through the grotesque museum.

Conrad found himself unconsciously tapping his finger to the first two lines of the stretta. “Actually—that's quite good…”

“Of course it is.”

Conrad was not wholly sure if that was a joke, or Il Superbo being Il Superbo again.

Count Roberto abandoned the piano in favour of reading Conrad's scribbles over his shoulder. “I see you're allowing Velluti his entrance…”

The latest stage direction read:
“Enter Fernando Cortez, mounted on white horse, garlanded with foreign blossoms, at the head of his victorious army; the Aztecs sing their thanks to him for defeating their traditional enemies, the Amazons
.”

Conrad shrugged. “It's easier than listen to how ill-treatment of castrati singers
is going to be the death of bel canto opera—
again
.”

Count Roberto laughed. “I truly believe Signore Velluti has no idea how conceited he is.”

Conrad wondered if it was actually possible for restraint to make one swallow one's tongue.

He skipped ahead to work on
“the Aztec Princess Tayanna enters for her solo aria of gratitude and growing love for Cortez
…”

Five hours, even with refreshments, exhausted his ability to shape verse for that day, after the previous week. He swept his papers together, mentally swore at the prohibition from taking them home, and locked the drawer in which he kept them.

“I'll walk with you, Signore Conrad.” The Conte di Argente put the lid of the piano down, and gave a smile made more open by weariness. Conrad waited while he locked the door, and made for that part of the palace maze with which he was more familiar.

Poor as he was at hearing a score when he read it, Conrad still had for plans for the Count's already-existent one-act works.

Which are, to be honest, better than what he's producing now
. If that's lack of confidence because of how important this opera is—or maybe Il Superbo not believing that he can write a false note—he'd better find his focus soon.

“We can lift at least the stretta from your
Christina regina della Svezia
for the end of Act One. Take it out wholesale,” Conrad said, as they walked down a high corridor made bright by fan-top windows. “Just score it for the voices we've got. It would be ideal.”

“If you think so…” The Count sounded uncharacteristically diffident.

Conrad almost missed a step as realisation hit him.

You imbecile, you've been telling him for a week that drawing-room operas are rubbish! Cazzo! Is it any wonder his confidence for this project is lacking?

If Conrad was quietly amused to find “Il Superbo” as capable of being nervous as the next man, it was not a joke he would risk
The Aztec Princess
for.

“That stretta,” Conrad confirmed. “And maybe the first bass aria and cabaletta. It's not Spinelli's voice, but if we get a second bass—a high bass, or ‘baritone' as they're starting to call them—and we could badly do with one, for the High Priest—it would work very well.”

Count Roberto glanced over as they walked, for one moment looking as if he suspected an ill-timed joke.

“I have no objection.”

He sounded fully as arrogant as ever, but Conrad was not annoyed by it this time.
He's being defensive, nothing more
.

Two weeks gone, four weeks to go, and I
may
just be learning to work with my composer…

Roberto Capiraso rubbed briefly at his eyes, and visibly shook off tiredness. “I'd wondered about the contralto's solo from
I cavalieri di Rodi
; it could be transposed to mezzo without much difficulty.”

“Won't need it—Sandrine really does have a remarkable
tessitura
.” Conrad smiled. “I like your
Knights of Rhodes
, I think we could use more of it for Act Three—when I get the book done that far.”

“When,” the Count echoed, deadpan.

“I
don't have the benefit of a spare manuscript at the bottom of a drawer somewhere…”

Exchanging a glance with him, Conrad met and acknowledged a look of very dry humour.

Guards passed them down the corridor to one of the royal apartments. Conrad heard the King's voice from one of the rooms ahead. Private meetings at different times of the day had become a rule for reporting their progress.

“Sir,” Roberto said as they entered a long chamber. Conrad smiled to himself and let the man make the most of his report.

The room swam as he looked away from the King, outlined against the sunlight of a tall multi-paned window. Conrad rubbed at his eyes.

Not until then did he notice that they were not alone.

The room was shaped as an L, and in the other angle of it, a couch stood before a hearth. A woman sat there, staring into the fire—
Waiting, out of the way of the men's business, of course
, Conrad thought cynically.

The light from another window, behind her, silhouetted her profile, making her features difficult to see. Her dark hair, coiled and braided at the back of her neck, was surrounded by a glowing sun-halo where curling wisps escaped from the pins. The mulberry purple-blue of her morning dress blended with the couch's upholstery, both disguising her presence, and throwing her pale skin into sharp relief.

Something in his silence must have caught her attention. Her chin came up.

Years ago, when the spine of Italy was a place for truly bad warfare, he had come back to camp from a foraging expedition and been ambushed fifty yards from safety. A man stood up so quickly that Conrad had no ability to react. He brought his hand around, holding a chunk of weathered granite, and hit Conrad in the side of the head.

In one extended, timeless second, Conrad had registered everything about the man, down to his dirty chewed nails. And everything about the fist-sized jagged stone. It was a nightmare of paralysis: his mind realised the situation quickly and
his body was trapped by slow reaction.

The feeling ended as the rock grazed his head, scraping off a great lump of his scalp.

This paralysis, now, did not seem to want to end.

“Dear God—”

Conrad's voice cut off without his volition.

No, not her, it
can't
be her—

His thoughts simply stopped. He took one blind step forward, staring far too closely for politeness at her oval face. He could have stood all day, looking at the pale, tall woman with lilac shadows around her eyes.

“Leonora. Oh dear God.
Nora
.”

S
he did not speak or move.

Suddenly cold, he thought,
It could be a mistake—people have likenesses, doubles—sisters—twins!

But no woman has ever had quite that endearing mouth of hers, upper lip thin and lower lip full, always looking as if she's hiding a smile.

He knows her face, that shows her thinness. He knows that if she were to stand, she would be too tall for a woman; her head always came up slightly above his chin. But put your hands on her slender shoulders and you will feel a surprising amount of strength there.

“Nora?” he questioned.

Her lips parted as if she would speak. This close, Conrad caught a glint of light. It reflected from a tiny, triangular chip, missing from the corner of one front tooth.

Oh Lord, Leonora!

In opera, everyone on-stage freezes at the moment of exposure and revelation.
Tal momento!
they exclaim, “this moment”;
O istante!
“what a terrible instant!” Conrad understood it, in his own moment: everything in his memory was present—all in one instant—to his inner eye. Walking around the quarters of Venice (neither of them being flush enough with cash to take one of the black boats) she stumbles on one of the ridiculously hump-backed bridges that crossed a canal. He catches at her wrist but her hand slides through his. Her shoulder hit
against the low bridge wall. She comes up holding her mouth. There is no blood. He's never sure if she struck the brickwork, or jarred her teeth together. But ever since, she carries the tiny disfigurement—and sets her shoulders and faces directly up at the galleries when she sings, mutely daring anyone to comment.
As if anyone could see it from more than six feet away—!

He came back from five years ago to the present. “Nora. It's me. Conrad!”

Just for a moment, he thought he saw the leap of shock in her eyes—

Fear, recognition, startled longing.

—and then an utter joy to see him again.

Missing for so long, so
long—

All of it vanished, inside the double thump of one heartbeat.

The feelings flashed in her gaze, like fish scales glittering as a Leviathan rolls over and vanishes into the depths. All gone, as she looked past him towards the other men in the room.