The Black Opera (59 page)

“I beg
your
pardon?” Roberto sat up. “Fernando Cortez wouldn't!”

Conrad lowered his voice, so that Velluti would not break off his argument with Bonfigli. “But Giambattista would! Anywhere he can slip it into a performance. I know he can't act, but he can sing
‘O mi perdono, Re Carlo!'
so that the Pit will weep.”

The Conte di Argente fumbled among books and scores and came up with a pencil to scrawl across his copy. He added something under his breath about
vulgar mobs
that Conrad chose to ignore.

“So, here is where we shorten Act Three.” Conrad reached over and turned two pages of the Count's score. “We can lose Thalestris telling Hippolyta that she must choose between duty to her nation and her love for a man. Lose Cortez agonising over whether he can marry Tayanna. There's yet another love-and-duty verse not much further on… Here! It was High Priest Mazatl, but we killed him off, so it's just General Chimalli warning Princess Tayanna that Cortez
is worming his way into her confidence so the Europeans can take over the kingdom. She must marry a strong man of the tribe immediately; Chimalli tells Tayanna he loves her; she sings that she must choose between love and duty.”

Roberto's dark brows lifted. “So?”

“So—” Conrad thumbed over another page. “—Look, you have everybody on stage here. I have a suggestion. Take
all
the love-versus-duty out of everywhere else in the last half of the Act, and put it
here
. Make the end a sextet.”

“Che momento!”
Roberto leaned over the pages, his expression keen as a hound's. “General Chimalli, Queen Thalestris, and
il Re
Charles on the side of duty—bass, contralto, and tenor. Princess Tayanna, Cortez, and Hippolyta singing all for love—mezzo, castrato, and soprano.
Yes…”

Conrad leaned his chair momentarily forward on its front legs to read what Roberto scribbled on the libretto. The oil lamp cast sufficient light to make that possible, although it only accented the darkness of the tapering ceiling of the mine. He pushed away momentary claustrophobia in favour of watching the Conte di Argente rapidly adapt the melodies he had written.

Paolo-Isaura snatched the pages away almost as soon as they were altered, ink smearing her thumb, and was soon one of a circle of heads at the piano bent over the new version. Voices tried a proposed line or two, with insufficient power to strain any vocal cords.

“I never realised
that
was in there.” Conrad listened to a fragment of melody, compulsive now that it was not drowned by counterpoint. “I'm going to be hearing it all day… night…”

He pulled out his watch, which was uninformative.

“…Whichever it is now. I'd give money to see what
Il Giornale del Regno delle Due Sicilie
would write in a review of
L'Altezza
!”

Roberto Capiraso, who had his head tilted while he listened to the piano, shot a glance that chilled Conrad. “It occurs to me, sometimes… That we do all this for something that will, at best, have
one
performance.”

That silenced Conrad for a moment.

“One
significant
performance,” he countered. “If we succeed, more of them later on.”

Il Superbo's gloom turned sardonic. “Very well. Shall we hear some of this significant sextet?”

Conrad stood and clapped his hands for attention.

“All right, let's try it, shall we? Sextet end of Act Three, on the one hand, in support of love, Fernando Cortez—” It was always wise to mention the
primo uomo
first. “—And Princess Tayanna, and Hippolyta. And on the side of stern duty, Brigida, Amazon Queen; JohnJack, and Lorenzo. Lorenzo, you're the King
of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, could you remember that,
please?”

The tenor responded to Conrad's exasperation with a grin. “Act One, High Priest Mazatl's acolyte—and corpse—Act Two, Captain Diego—and corpse!… Acts Three and Four,
il Re Carlo
, who might even survive! Why would I have any problem remembering that?”

Conrad sorted out copies for the
recitateurs
and passed those over.

The unsubdued racket that followed sent him retiring to his stone chamber for wine and olives, no matter what time of the day or night it might be.

He slept an hour, and chatted with Tullio, and came out into the mine refreshed.

The new sextet, in its variously good and bad attempts, had temporarily ceased to echo through underground Naples. Conrad found no one present but one of Mantenucci's guards, deep in conversation with Luigi Esposito, and Roberto Conte di Argente picking out notes on the piano.

Luigi had the look that meant he was engaged in business; Conrad therefore didn't disturb him.

“I have a death aria for General Chimalli—or Fernando Cortez.” Broad bricklayers' fingers moved over the keys, and Roberto hummed a solo piece.

Conrad meandered across to the forte-piano. He thought for a moment that the composer was humming brokenly in places for lack of verses to set. Then—the orchestral accompaniment filled in by his mind—he could hear how Cortez would sing as he died, the music filling in the gaps his broken lines, until at last he would fall silent forever, halfway through a phrase, and only the violin and flute would finish the achingly-sad wordless aria…

Silence followed. It took effort for Conrad to shake himself free of the music's power.

“Cortez is not going to die.” He met Roberto's shadowed eyes. “He's the Feathered Serpent, Quetzalcoatl; the Aztecs think he's a
god!”

Luigi Esposito spoke up, from the other side of the piano; evidently having concluded his business with the guard. “Corradino, you of all people ought to know how irrelevant that is!”

Conrad couldn't help a spurt of amusement. He nonetheless glared at Luigi, where the police captain rested his elbow on the forte-piano, reading the pages of the score that were spread out on top of it.

“Whether it's relevant or not, I want this opera to have the happy conclusion. The
lieto fine
.”

“How?”
Roberto Capiraso's interruption sounded waspish. He scrubbed his
fingers through his hair in a way that he wouldn't have, in the days before he was permanently short of sleep. His dark hair flopped back over his forehead, the lamp casting shadows to make his expression unreadable. He gave the police chief no attention at all.

Luigi, turning over the pages of the score, matching lines to music, glanced up.
“This
doesn't work.”

“Luigi…” Conrad began a warning.

“‘Finale, Act Four,'” Luigi read, tilting the paper towards the lamp. “‘Princess Tayanna gives her decision in her rondo finale'… Here: ‘Tayanna calls on Quetzalcoatl and sacrifices all love except that of her country, swearing to live as a Virgin of the Sun, thus placating the angry volcano.'”

Luigi cupped his chin in his hand, where he leaned his elbow on the piano.

“That's… No.
Really
, Corrado!
No
. That's bathos. That isn't going to work. It'd be
better
if they all died!”

Conrad waited for the wrath of il Superbo to descend on Luigi Esposito.

“No,” the Count acceded. “It isn't good.”

“Cazzo!
It's what we agreed!” Conrad protested. “The volcano that's been bubbling in the background—if Angelotti's done it right—is appeased by the Principessa sacrificing both her love of Cortez and of Chimalli. Instead of lava, the volcano erupts with tropical flowers.”

The silence that greeted
that
was not one Conrad wanted to hear.

Conrad snapped his ink-smeared copy of the libretto shut, hearing it echo through the Roman mine. “We can be reasonably sure that the black opera will end in tragedy. It's the easiest way to generate high emotion.
We
can't guarantee to do tragedy better, particularly when we don't know what they're doing. We
can
try for reconciliation, peace, and sacrifice; repentance,
joy
—all emotions which carry a charge, and which I don't think the black opera will bother with.”

Luigi shrugged one shoulder. “I just give a warning. This'll leave people cold.”

“I wrote the verses! Signore Capiraso set them! We both agreed this, in the synopsis,
weeks
ago!”

The piano seat scraped back over bare boards. Conrad glanced around to find Roberto Capiraso standing, closing the lid over the keys.

“The police hireling is correct.”

Conrad would have taken a moment to enjoy Luigi's expression of outrage, if he hadn't been contending with one of his own. “Roberto!”

“It looked simple and right in the synopsis. Things change in the writing.” Roberto swept papers off the top of the piano, into his leather folder. The taut line of his shoulders slumped. “The counter-opera will work only if it gives the truth of human passions. Otherwise the black opera will erase what we do. Corrado…
You can't cheat to attain the
lieto fine
. Cortez
has
to lose either the woman he loves,
or
the mother of his son. Hippolyta
must
choose her son or her people. Tayanna loses Cortez or she loses her country to the invaders. The potential for a happy ending for all isn't present in what we've set up here!”

The Count shook his head.

“We would need to rewrite from the beginning…”

Half a week. Four days, and a little more, and
L'Altezza azteca, ossia il serpente pennuto
is on stage
.

Roberto Capiraso slapped the pages of his score closed, the sound echoing through the cathedral-spaces of the mine.

Conrad groaned under his breath, and gave in. “Very well: it
doesn't
work. I admit it. And the final scene is vital—but it
is
just one scene. Eight minutes! We can revise one scene. We have time. We'll
make
time.”

Luigi Esposito abandoned his lazy pose, drawing himself up as if he were prepared to assist in any way possible. “Paolo can take over your rehearsals, Corrado. While Tullio's ill, I'll detail off a couple of my men, to make sure you get fed. We can make this right.”

Roberto Capiraso rubbed at insomnia-marked eyes. “Conrad—I'm at your disposal for discussions on the music.”

His frank look made Conrad all but blush.

Member of the
società onorata
or not, you've been honest with me, and I…allowed Nora to do what she wanted
.

“We can find the truth of this,” Conrad managed to say steadily.

The Conte di Argente gave a formal bow. “I must hope, must
believe
, that we can. Because I fear that, if the last scene fails to catch the audience's emotions, all the rest of the counter-opera will go for nothing.”

C
onrad battered his mind against the problem of the finale until the backs of his eyeballs hurt.

Emerging for food, he discovered it to be Saturday morning.

“It's been four
days
since they clobbered me.” Tullio didn't look up from packing. His bruises were green, yellow, purple; and he had ignored Sandrine's offer of stage make-up. “I'll be fine.”

“You will.” Conrad realised he spoke more as though it were an order. “This is Saturday; I'll expect you back by Monday at the latest.”

“Can't guarantee his Emperorship won't mess about and keep us from getting back here until the day itself…”

Conrad reached over and took his second best coat from the big man, brushing off the shoulder-capes. “If it weren't for other factors, I'd stop you going.”

The
Oh would you?
was written as plain as print on Tullio Rossi's battered face.

As Conrad suspected, curiosity overcame bloody-mindedness.

“What ‘factors'?”

“I'll be happier if you're out of Naples, and… if you choose not to return here with the Emperor, then understand that I won't blame you for that.”