Lempriere's Dictionary (96 page)

The Rochelais could never have known, streaming through the drab streets of the dying city far away, long ago, almost forgotten, almost
consumed utterly that night for the memories which recorded their burning would prove selective and politic to the replacing order. Other lives would fill the charred space left by their betrayal, the shadows on the walls, other versions of what took place would betray them. Here’s one now….

Gluey yellow candles mark constellations in the dark domed roofspace of the Opera House, auspicious conjunctions, happy portents for Stalkart. There are gods above, huge ones, heavy ones which bear down on the groaning structure like tortoises. Tortoises! Yes, and the Opera House glows with life tonight for the lamps are lit and the wheezing orchestra tunes up in the Pit and every lobby, aisle, tier and stair is jammed with the cognoscenti. Lord Brudenell is here, and the Dukes of Cumberland and Queensberry, Mister Edgecumbe and Sir W. W. Wynne, Ladies Harrowby and Fawcett in purple crêpe embroidered with green and silver foil, and the Honourable Miss Petre in her Sleath’s Improver for Defective Shape. The Duke of Norfolk isn’t talking to the Marquis of Lansdowne after that bruising over the Declaratory Bill and Charles Fox, Lord Loughborough, Mister Grey and Miss Sheridan are generally acknowledged, but curtly for it is widely believed that between the opera and the howling of dogs they don’t much care one way or the other. From behind tiny glasses of crême de Canelle and Barbados citron water, Lady Frances Bruce and Lady Clunbrassil eye Mister Hanway whose wealth exceeds that of many provincial towns. Fresh from his triumph as Colonel Downright in
I’ll Tell You What!
, Mister Aiki consoles the widow of Morris Morris, merchant, dead that afternoon.

‘I don’t know
why
I came,’ she wails. ‘I feel
awful!
’

‘There, there,’ pats the solicitous Colonel Downright.

Stalkart hops up and down Fop’s Alley pressing flesh and greeting his patrons. He basks in the warmth of his convivium as delicious gossip and anticipation ripple through the eager assembly. What
is
the opera tonight? He won’t tell, no, not even when Miss Manners gives her most winsome smile, not even when Mister Edgecumbe takes him discreetly aside and certainly not when several of Captain James Hay’s obnoxious nephews surround him and become mildly abusive.

‘It’s a secret,’ he smiles, and ducks under an arm, only to be accosted by Count Trautmansdorf who keeps inviting people to have dinner with him at his residence in Brussels. He spies Bolger waving to him over the heads of Ladies Villiers and Digby.

‘Another one,’ confides Bolger, showing him the latest terse message from the Examiner’s Office. They’ve been arriving all day. Sir John’s neat handwriting stares up at him.
Expect Trouble
, it reads. ‘I’ve posted Tim in the foyer,’ says Bolger, and Stalkart nods agreement. Expect trouble. What
else is there to expect? Trouble has been the day’s keynote: trouble with Marineri’s scenery (which won’t go up), trouble with Signora Schinotti’s descant (which won’t go down), with Lupino’s soldier-costumes (which won’t come off), but most of all with Signor Marchesi, who won’t come on. A pâpier-maché seascape, Marmaduke shouting, needle and thread and a further payment to the temperamental tenor have respectively solved these minor crises. Now the seascape is mounted, Schinotti is tearful, the soldiers are sewn into their tunics and Marchesi will perform in the second, if not the first, of this evening’s productions. Yes, not one but two operas: a double bill. What though? Cramer turns to Stalkart and Stalkart nods. Cramer taps his violin and the music starts. Stalkart looks heavenwards, up into the twinkling dome where bright junctions of candlelight tell him a story of false sacrifice and fierce, destructive love. He thinks of Troy and Sparta and their fates. He thinks of wooden horses. Tuneless strings swell mournfully before him. Stalkart dreams the flight of tortoises.

As the opening andante cedes to some heavy octave passages and thence to a dismal quarrel in G minor between oboe and flute, Sir W. W. Wynne leans back in his seat and thinks of a night in Paris fourteen years before when the same music played about his ears and, as the first line of Du Roullet’s execrable libretto is uttered, he exhales in appreciation.

‘Ah,’ he murmurs, ‘Gluck. I remember it was Paris….’ Charles Fox tells him loudly to shut up.

Signor Morigi enters from the wings, ‘Pitiless Diana, in vain dost thou command this sacrifice …’ he warbles before a chorus of red-coated Greeks. They interrupt to disagree with him and are backed up by Signor Morelli in priestly garb who is holding a meat-cleaver. Morelli and Morigi duet awhile (strings
pianissimo
, oboe and bassoon swap a broad and noble air) then two women appear, mother and daughter. The daughter is worried about her upcoming marriage but is quickly reassured by her bridegroom (Signor Forlivesi, at once hefty and amorous) and all seems to be well. In the background, Signor Morelli can be seen swinging his meat-cleaver. Behind him the Greek soldiers growl hungrily.

‘It’s familiar somehow, I’m sure I know this opera …’ muses Lady Harrowby to Lady Fawcett.

‘Mmm,’ agrees the latter. Sir W. W. Wynne leans back from the row in front.

‘
Iphigenia at Aulis
,’ he tells them in a whisper. Ahhh.

Onstage, the chorus have entered and now congratulate Iphigenia on her choice of bridegroom. Achilles joins in and a short congratulatory ballet is applauded noisily from the upper galleries. As they approach the altar an attendant detains them and Iphigenia’s earlier misgivings are justified as she hears that her father is planning to sacrifice her there. The
culprit enters to booing and hisses from the pit whose denizens side with Achilles in the slanging match which follows. The Greek soldiers grow impatient and Achilles vows to kill them all. Iphigenia herself is resigned to her fate. The lovers must be parted. The will of the gods must be obeyed. The music grows in volume becoming more frenetic at this point, a detail not lost on the cognoscenti.

‘Cramer seems, how can I put it, rather
fast
,’ whispers the Duke of Cumberland. Lady Brudenell nods.

It’s true. Cramer’s head is tossing wildly as he drives the orchestra on. His hair has already escaped its restraining coating of bear’s grease and flies in manic gyres about his head. He sweats. They all sweat, even the triangle player, and the music rushes along
allegro, vivace, prestissimo!
His fingers are a blur and his bow jabs the air like a rapier. Iphigenia dances up the aisle towards her death. Achilles and his men sprint across the stage to kill the Greeks, battle is fast and furious with maddened contraltos loosing off volleys of triplets, and mezzo-sopranos replying with piercing high Cs clearly out of their controllable range. Calchas whirls his meat-cleaver on the altar and Iphigenia is squawking to the heavens when
WHUMP
! A massive shudder shakes the foundations of the Opera House sending a shock-wave through floor, stage, columns, walls, tiers, galleries and buttresses up to the roof itself where twenty-seven squat pink tortoises grin to one another and shiver under a swelling moon.

Everything stops. The cognoscenti grip the arm-rests of their chairs. The singers freeze in attitudes of arrested slaughter. Iphigenia’s neck is bent forward, waiting for the blow. Achilles is poised above a defenceless Greek. They are all statues suddenly, locked in their assigned postures as a moment before they were in combat. Iphigenia’s grief is quite pointless, absurd almost…. Grief at what? What can happen here? Nothing really. It doesn’t mean anything. The audience stares up, still as the players, waiting for something to happen as the subterranean report rolls around and out the auditorium.

Morelli rises. Lifting his meat-cleaver in answering salutation, he addresses singers and audience alike.

‘The Gods have spoken!’ he intones from the altar. ‘Iphigenia must be spared!’ His conviction sounds absolute. Cramer gives them a long middle C. It’s perfect.

‘Iphigenia! She must be spaa-aared!’ answer the Greeks. The rest of the strings join in this long monotone, then the woodwind, the brass and finally, with a fragile
ting!
from the triangle, a crescendo is reached and the audience rises to its feet, its applause filling the false dome above, tier after tier rising and clapping and already calling for an encore while the singers clap each other on the back.

‘Quite splendid, Marmaduke,’ the Duke of Norfolk calls as Stalkart sails past in triumph.

‘Absolute claptrap,’ mutters the Marquis of Lansdowne, a latterday La Harpe to his opponent’s Anonyme de Vaugirard. Lady Fanshawe keeps crossing and uncrossing her legs.

Stalkart has reached the stage. He stands before the assembled cast, applauding them, then turns to his adoring audience and appeals for silence.

‘Thank you, thank you all.’ He stops, chuckles to himself. ‘Many, many thanks… My friends!’ They applaud him. He gives them what they want. They are his friends. There is a tap on his shoulder, which he takes for a congratulatory pat and ignores, then another. He turns. It is Tim.

‘What?’ Stalkart demands.

‘Militia’s here, sir. Wants to check the basements.’

‘Basements?’ He can feel his audience slipping, their attention ebbing away. ‘Very well, very well…. Round the back, Tim. And keep them quiet, you hear?’ Tim nods and walks dutifully back towards the foyer. ‘My friends,’ Stalkart starts again, ‘this secret gala of ours has a while to run yet, and I would ask you to keep your seats. In a matter of minutes you will hear one of, no,
the
finest tenor in all Europe. Yet to sing a note in these shores, still he is on the lips of all the city. You know to whom I refer. Late of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples and Munich’s Theater am Gartnerplatz, I give you tonight the most perfect artist of the
sostenuto
it has ever been my pleasure to hear tell of….’

In his dressing-room somewhere in the bowels of the Opera House, Marchesi hears the tumult above and begins to sweat. All his excuses are spent, his procrastinations ended. He twists his hands and stares into the pier-glass mounted on the far wall. A tall thin man, heavily rouged and powdered, stares back. Beneath the mask he is whey-faced. Soon, he knows, he will begin to shiver and his breath will quicken. The muscles in his stomach will knot and he will feel slightly nauseous. When his dresser, who has been dismissed - no-one, no-one can see him like this - knocks on the door he will jump. He always does. He jumped in Naples, and Munich, Vienna, and before that Rome. It is getting worse. He can hardly control it. London will be no different, the bland rows of faces stretching back into the darkness all staring and bearing down on him. He will be alone. The music a tightening noose about his throat as it leads him to his cue.

His mouth will open and this sound, this strange beautiful sound will float around the theatre, an unearthly tone simply there and suddenly all about him. But from where? Where does it come from? Long ago, he was given a gift, but it was a mistake, a rare heavenly oversight. Now it must be returned. And then, one day, his mouth will open, the first notes will swell
in his throat and he will hear a screeching wailing noise, a croak, a halting rasp. The heavy hand will knock at his door and a hooded figure will make the demand he cannot deny. He waits in dread, almost urging on the moment, come soon, come soon …
Tap, tap, tap…
.

‘Yes! For God’s sake, yes!’ Marchesi shouts. He hears heavy footsteps turn and walk away.

In the auditorium above, Marmaduke signals to Cramer in the pit and walks stage left into the wings. The first calm bars of the overture waft soothingly around the audience.

‘Of course,’ murmurs Sir W. W. Wynne to himself. ‘Quite splendid.’ He listens raptly as the music becomes wilder. Iphigenia reappears and delivers her opening aria against a storm-swept backdrop. She is in Taurica now, priestess to Diana, her saviour from Calchas’s knife on Aulis. Behind her, a chorus of red-suited warriors are filing onto the stage. Sir W. W. Wynne frowns. Stalkart watches approvingly from the wings and Bolger stands beside him, beaming.

‘Well Marmaduke, you were right after all. There’s not an empty seat in the house.’ Stalkart smiles.

‘The best is yet to come,’ he says, as Marchesi appears in the wings opposite. Already visible to a small section of the audience, the applause spreads clockwise around the auditorium as the unsighted cognoscenti guess its reason. Onstage, the chorus are still filing in from the right. There seem rather more of them than Stalkart can remember hiring. Again, the tap on his shoulder. Again, it’s Tim.

‘Bit of a problem Mister Stalkart …’

‘Mmm?’ Thoas is calling for sacrifices, and being told that two candidates have already been caught. The stage is almost full.

‘It’s outside, sir. Trying to get in they is. Rather a lot of ‘em….’

‘Not without invitations,’ commands Stalkart sternly. ‘Under no condition.’ He can see Marchesi drawing deep breaths, readying himself for his entrance. ‘Is that all?’

‘Well, no sir. It’s the Militia too, Mister Stalkart.’ Marmaduke looks around the faces crowded together on the stage. He frowns, lost in a different thought for a moment. He recalls himself.

‘What about them?’

‘They’ve disappeared.’ Stalkart looks at the chorus which is now bulging out almost to the front of the stage. None of them look very familiar. Marchesi is walking on and most of the audience is on its feet, cheering so loudly he misses his cue. Cramer steers the players back and comes at it again. Again Marchesi misses it. A couple of the chorus fall into the orchestra-pit. The audience grows silent, waiting. Cramer is nodding to the tenor, then, into the silence of the auditorium, Marchesi begins to
sing; a heavenly beautiful sound, delicate silvery notes stream out of his golden throat and the audience sits in hushed wonder….

BANG!
A crude thud crashes through the glissando.
BANG!
Marchesi seems to stutter.
BANG! the
audience turn in their seats. What on earth is it?
BANG!
Marchesi seems to be clutching his throat. Why?
BANG! BANG! BANG! CRASH!
By now the sound is quite unmistakeable. A door is being broken down, and succeeding this cacophany comes many a rude shout and curse as the mob enters from the back and floods in and up the stairs wielding staves, torches, slogans and crude banausic sensibilities. Stalkart watches in horror as the aisles fill with tousled ruffians who swagger up and down; they seem to be searching for something. The music grinds to a halt and, onstage, the chorus huddles together nervously. There’s someone in their midst who doesn’t quite fit, who got swept up in their earlier retreat down Leadenhall Street, wandering about there in her distraction, collared and dragged west by order, some half-baked thought about hostages because their captain just knew things would go bad tonight. They’ve forgotten her but Juliette is still there, not waiting or even thinking very much, just there.