6 - Whispers of Vivaldi (2 page)

Torani and I came to a halt in a quiet enclave behind
Il Gobbo
, the statue of the crouching, naked hunchback who presided over the marketplace. The director was still frowning. Frustration welled up within me. Why wouldn’t Torani give me an answer?

“What is worrying you, Maestro?”

“Balbi—our good Giuseppe.” Torani spoke tentatively, almost sorrowfully. “He’s already drilling the singers for
Prometheus
. And such attention to detail. Just yesterday he was poring over sketches for the set design and making suggestions.”

Torani was speaking of Giuseppe Balbi, the composer whose opera was scheduled to open the fall season. Balbi also happened to be the San Marco’s lead violinist—he’d been with the theater even longer than I had. Yes, Balbi was a good man. A talented accompanist. Kind and patient with the orchestra musicians under his supervision. Loyal to the theater.

Unfortunately, as a composer, Balbi was a hack ruled by outmoded convention. If Torani had forgotten, I needed to remind him.

“Maestro, the San Marco isn’t declining because of our fine singers or the excellent direction you’ve provided. The fault is in the librettos and music the singers are given.
Prometheus
is a prime example—again a mythological hero. And also again, Act One ends with his bravura aria—vehement exit stage right. Act Two begins with a pastorale, another old chestnut. I can already hear the audience yawning—”

Torani interrupted with a slice of his hand. “I can’t argue with that. It’s just…”

“It’s just what, Maestro?”

The tight lines on the director’s face seem to signify some mental turbulence beyond the theater’s money woes, an underlying despair that had more to do with the inner man than with his very public position. Torani glanced around the campo.…toward the church portico where the money changers were doing a brisk business. Farther up, at the soaring tower with its ornate clock divided into the twenty-four slices of the day. And still farther up, at a sky of pure, undiluted blue.

Gradually, his expression softened, rather like a wallflower opening to the sun. He rubbed the back of his neck and asked, “You realize that
The False Duke
would be a gamble?”

“I do, but it seems like good odds. You know how much Venetians love novelty. Isn’t that why you asked me to come up with something new? Aren’t you itching to take a risk?”

A quizzical smile pulled his mouth to one side. “I thought you hated gaming, Tito.”

Well I should, given that my father had sacrificed our family honor and so much more at the Ridotto’s faro tables. But the future of the Teatro San Marco was at stake. Fortune demanded a bold move, and Venice deserved it.

“Maestro, I have faith in Rocatti’s opera. Let’s go to the theater, review the score. We can discuss the casting I have in mind—”

But Torani was no longer listening. His gaze sizzled on a sedan chair entering the campo from the direction of the fish market. Two bearers rigged out with shoulder straps hauled the gilded, top-heavy box between the stalls. As it passed, a merchant selling bright green melons employed his produce to sketch a comically lewd pose. The thin crowd reluctantly made way.

“Who is it, Maestro?”

A snort. “Don’t you recognize the chair, Tito?”

I shook my head. Many wealthy men and women moved about the city by sedan chair, both for show and for cleanliness.

“Observe the livery on its bearers, boy. And commit their colors to memory. It’s a wise man who knows his enemy.”

I gave an irritated sigh—there was that “boy” again. But I stretched tall to see over the folded headdress of a peasant woman bearing a yoke with jugs of milk packed in straw at each end. Dodging as she swung around, I caught sight of a man in a heavy-bottomed wig behind the glass windows of the chair.

Ah! Lorenzo Caprioli. Even at a mere glimpse, his fat, greasy face was unmistakable.

Caprioli saw us, too. He tapped on the glass and pointed. The chair changed course.

Torani whipped his head right, then left, seeking an escape route. His gondola waited among the produce boats back at the bridge, but the old man moved so slowly, we’d never make it out of the campo and back to the riva before Caprioli’s powerful bearers overtook us.

There was no way around it. Maestro Torani would be forced to come face to face with his hated rival, the manager of the Teatro Grimani, the opera house that had stolen most of our lost subscribers.

Chapter Two

The burly bearers—outfitted, I noted, in French blue with yellow trim—set the chair down with the gentlest of bumps. The man in front removed his shoulder straps and turned to open the door. At the same time, the man between the rear poles moved to raise the domed roof. Together they assisted their master in extricating his bulk from the narrow compass of the chair. He approached in mincing steps, as if his shoes or his breeches, or both, were uncomfortably tight.

“Signor Caprioli.” Torani spoke first. The title of Maestro was not required. Caprioli possessed no musical skills whatsoever. He was merely an impresario, a showman who’d made his start producing ribald masquerades for naval officers. Nevertheless, this pompous charlatan now ran one of Venice’s respected theaters.

Torani removed his tricorne and gave his rival the low bow that politeness required.

I followed suit.

“Maestro, so pleased to chance upon you…and Tito, of course.” Caprioli stopped his bow a good six inches above Torani’s and favored me with a shallow nod. Duels have been fought over less—among certain classes. Thank Heaven the artists of the opera left the privilege of demanding honor with cocked pistols at twenty paces to our betters.

As Caprioli turned and directed his bearers to take their ease, Torani leaned close and whispered behind his hand, “Not a word about your
False Duke
, Tito, not one word.”

I bristled. Did Torani think I was a fool? Caprioli had a reputation for stealing ideas as liberally as subscribers. And performers. The Grimani’s best singers had been poached from our company, either wheedled away with promises of salaries fit for a king or compelled by subtler means. It was rumored that Caprioli had a knack for uncovering information—ruinous secrets that people would sacrifice much to protect.

The man made enemies, of course, but protected himself by hiring ex-soldiers of the roughest sort to serve as stage hands and personal servants. Unfortunately, the wars among our northern neighbors produced a steady stream of Austrians and Germans whose farms and towns had been destroyed. With no place to call home, they ended up in Venice in the same fashion that random trash collects in the backwash of a canal.

Caprioli’s chairmen were obviously two of his battle-hardened veterans. The front man had a bayonet scar that ran from ear to chin, the other a broken nose sprawled diagonally across his sweat-streaked face.

Now Lorenzo Caprioli offered Torani an unctuous smile that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the quack-doctor selling nostrums across the square. “How I wish you could have been a fly on the ceiling at the San Grimani yesterday,” he said. “You would have enjoyed quite a treat. Emiliano rose half a note above his best pitch. Not once but five times. My heart melted at the heavenly sound.”

I clenched my teeth. Emiliano was the brightest of the San Marco’s fugitive stars, one of my longtime rivals, and an expert at the spontaneous musical ornamentation that current taste demanded. I couldn’t stand the arrogant peacock, but Emiliano in the lead role had always sold tickets, so Torani had suffered his demands and rued his desertion to the Grimani.

As Caprioli continued to brag about the popular castrato, I thought Torani might erupt right there in the middle of the crowded, sun-drenched campo. He tilted his head back, exhaled audibly, and pressed his lips into a bloodless line. At the theater, such a pose usually preceded a tirade, be it over a poorly tuned violin or a rebellious prima donna. But to my astonishment, the maestro succeeded in bridling his irritation.

Torani lowered his chin, and his tone held only the barest hint of malice when he asked, “So your company is in rehearsal, Signor Caprioli?”

“Isn’t yours?” The impresario’s eyes widened in their loose folds.

“My singers are meeting in rehearsal rooms—learning their tunes, sinking into their characters.”

“I should hope so. The season is less than six weeks away.”

Caprioli was fencing with Torani. With some specific goal in mind, I thought. What was he after?

Torani continued, tapping the tip of his stick into
Il Gobbo
’s worn plinth. “We’re in a hired hall because the machinists have commandeered the San Marco’s stage. They’re planning to outdo themselves with a spectacular finale.”

I knew all about the marvelous effect that would free the fire-stealing Prometheus from his prison rock in a blast of flame and smoke, but I still considered
The False Duke
to have more appeal. What was a moment of scenic trumpery compared to four acts of honest drama spiked with laughter and accompanied by beautiful music?

“Hmm.” Caprioli brushed the curls of his brown wig away from his lace cravat. A nauseating whiff of hair pomade met my nostrils. “I’ve been keeping my ears open. The chin-wags in the coffee houses say you’re offering home-grown goods this season. Something your fiddler whipped up.”

“Hardly whipped up. Signor Balbi is a perfectionist. He’s been working on the score for well over a year.”

“He’s done
Prometheus
, hasn’t he?” A smug smile stretched Caprioli’s jowly cheeks into a carnival mask. Knowledge was power, in music as much as in war or trade, and the impresario was reveling in his.

“I hear things, too,” Torani shot back. “Your company is presenting
Venus and Adonis
.”

“I don’t deny it. No one can resist a story of young lovers—it’s bound to trump your dreary
Prometheus
. How disappointing for you—with the Senate circling your wounded receipt box like a flock of carrion vultures.” He sniffed loudly.

And so it went on, a duel of words and wit. Torani extolled the San Marco’s singers and scene painters, all the artists right down to our costumer newly imported from Paris. Caprioli parried by proclaiming how the Teatro Grimani topped our theater in every respect. As the two men’s voices grew more vehement, beads of sweat rolled down Caprioli’s jowls and Torani’s face grew pale and taut.

Several passersby stopped to watch. Others clustered close behind them, sensing the prospect of violence, afraid they might miss a fight.

Scarface and his partner had been flirting with a kitchen maid, tweaking the ends of the white kerchief she’d crossed low over her bosom. Now the chair bearers snapped to attention. Their hammy fists clenched and unclenched.

Time to end this
. I leapt into the verbal fray.

“Signor Caprioli, you must admit that the Teatro San Marco has one thing you do not—a
primo uomo
who embodies the noble hero. Our Majorano has a profile fashioned for the footlights and shoulders that send women into swoons. On the other hand, your Emiliano is showing his age—and the ravages of an unfettered appetite. I happen to know he keeps his potbelly off his knees by means of a corset.” I produced a delicate snort. “Emiliano as Adonis? The very ideal of a handsome youth? Your audience will be choking with laughter.”

Because it was all so true, it was precisely the worst thing to say. Caprioli’s chin jutted forward. I fancied I could see smoke pouring from his ears. Congratulating myself, I moved to flank Torani and lay a calming hand on his back. I could feel the old man’s heart thumping through the thin cloth of his jacket.

“No one asked your opinion, Amato,” Caprioli sputtered. “You two think you’re riding high in the water. You enjoy the Senate’s backing and the Doge’s official patronage, but enough votes in the Senatorial chamber can change that. I ask you, who are the men who deliberate at that table?” He answered his own question with a triumphant cackle, “The very patricians who are deserting your opera house for mine. The Grimani will soon be leading the fleet of Venice’s theaters, and you’ll be foundering in our wake.”

The triumphant satisfaction in the impresario’s eyes lasted only a moment. He realized he’d gone too far—given away his hand. Caprioli was mounting a campaign to wrest governmental sponsorship away from the Teatro San Marco!

Torani gaped, goggle-eyed. I didn’t like the fire I saw in those eyes. I didn’t like the fire that had burst into flame in my own belly.

Perhaps Caprioli also recalled Rinaldo Torani’s famous temper. The maestro was manhandling his stick. Its silver head glinted as he passed it from hand to hand.

Caprioli stepped back and signaled his waiting chairmen with two fingers in the air, lace cuff aflutter.

Scarface sprang to open the chair’s front panel while his flat-nosed partner raised the domed roof.

The impresario muttered, “You must excuse me, Signori. An important matter—I have an appointment with a man who trains birds.” He turned on the heel of an elegant shoe, then threw a last remark over his shoulder: “Our
Venus and Adonis
will have a flock of live songbirds released in the pastoral scene that opens Act Two. Top that, if you can.”

As Caprioli’s chair receded into the noisy ebullience of the market, I studied Torani’s smoldering expression. The manager of the Teatro Grimani had just declared war, and the biggest cannon in his arsenal appeared to be an opera of precisely the type I was urging my mentor to rebel against.

Torani and I were of the same mind—as so often in our years of collaboration—only he phrased it this way: “That scabby, scheming, puffed-up toad has fired a shot across our bow.”

“What do you mean to do?”

Torani left me in the dark for a few tantalizing minutes. Hurrying away from the campo, he revealed his strategy in small increments, rather like water dripping from a leaky bucket. First he located his gondola.

“Row us to the Teatro San Marco,” he ordered his boatman, Peppino, who uncurled lazily from his perch on the quay’s steps. “By the most meandering route you can devise,” Torani added, as I steadied him into the swaying boat.

Peppino touched the side of his nose to signify understanding, pushed away from the quay with a booted foot, and leaned into his oar. The high, iron-tipped prow cut through the thinning mist under the Rialto Bridge, and we emerged into the clear sunlight of mid-morning. Around us, the canal stretched out in a jade-green road cobbled with tiny whitecaps right up to the base of the marble palaces that lined Venice’s most important waterway. We were moving away from the heart of the city where the theater was situated, toward the outlying Cannaregio, the quiet domestic neighborhood where I lived with my family.

Torani’s sharp gaze warned me to keep my mouth shut, so I leaned back and closed my eyes. Behind me, Peppino’s oar groaned rhythmically as it strained in the rowlock. The breeze cooled my discord-warmed cheeks as my thoughts ranged to other matters.

Two years ago, a violent accident had reduced my highly trained throat to a dry husk. Overnight my crystal clear soprano had deepened to a gravelly alto—despite doctoring from eminent physicians as far away as Bologna, despite taking the waters at several German spas, despite swallowing pitcherfuls of Liya’s herbal concoctions.

Despite all, my celebrated stage voice was irretrievably lost.

It had taken several agonizing months for me to admit that I’d never sing for an audience again, then several more to consider Maestro Torani’s urgings that I turn my talents and experience to assisting him at the Teatro San Marco. Instead of shining at center stage, I learned to dwell in the backstage shadows, overseeing rehearsals and drilling the singers I had once joined in creating beautiful music. Thank the Blessed Virgin for the director’s patience. While I was still in my doldrums, I had been a moody, distracted ghost of my former self and couldn’t have been much help. Eventually, with the support of Liya and Gussie, and Benito, too, I found my way out of that dark forest of despair.

Since then, I’d been considering my future in a more serious fashion than ever before. Against my will, when I was still an innocent boy, a surgeon’s knife had forced my life onto one path. Now I needed to forge another. Mounting the opera I had chosen to save our theater would be the first step on a path of my own choosing—if Maestro Torani had enough faith to let me see it through.

My eyes flew open at the sound of Torani’s voice, and I edged forward on the leather cushion. The maestro was finally ready to talk. Excited and impatient, he threw out a string of questions that barely gave me a chance to formulate a reply. Would the highly partisan Venetians swallow an opera by an unknown composer? Would the gondoliers, our staunchest supporters in the cheap seats, think we’d gone mad? Working himself into a lather, Torani whipped off his tricorne, then his wig. When he was truly agitated, the wig always came off.

I came to full attention, shocked. An ugly gash streaked through the wispy curls that ringed his bald pate. A scab knitted the edges together; the skin around it was red and puckered.

“Maestro, you’re injured. What happened?”

Torani attempted a weak smile. “Nothing much. I was standing in the wrong place when a roof tile happened to come loose.”

“Happened to? Where? When?”

“Day before yesterday.” He huffed a sigh. “I was minding my own business—just leaving Peretti’s, in fact.” He’d named a coffee house near the theater, a favorite place for musicians to gather and exchange news. “I heard something—probably a cat leaping at a bird—and I looked up just as the damnable tile slid off the eave. It’s really nothing.”

“Hardly nothing,” I snapped. “It must have bled like a pump faucet.”

He shook his head. “My old wig took most of the blow.”

“But, Maestro—”

He made an impatient gesture. His tone was insistent. “Leave it, Tito. A cat on a roof—that’s all.”

I found myself turning back toward the Rialto with an uneasy glance. Hadn’t Torani just been engaged in a heated argument with a man he’d called his enemy?

But the director’s focus had returned to the opera. Torani continued, “Which role would Majorano take in
The False Duke
—just for discussion’s sake, mind you—the duke or the huntsman?”

I replied after a moment of hesitation. “The duke, of course. He has more arias.”

Our boat rocked in the wake of a passing charcoal barge as Torani angled forward and tapped my knee. “Too bad you can’t sing the duke, Tito. Sounds like a role tailored expressly for your talents.” He must not have noticed my involuntary grimace or my surly silence, because he went right on tossing concerns into the shimmering air.