The Doctor and the Diva (56 page)

One felt quick intelligence in Pietro Palladino’s glance, in the penetration of his eyes. The Lorellos and Erika and Christopher settled into chairs that the assistants pulled out for them. After ordering desserts and cups of bitter-tasting
Americanos
for them, the pair of lackeys withdrew.

While Pietro Palladino questioned Erika politely about her
prova,
Christopher bit into the creamy layers of a pastry. His nostrils flared in jest and he made big eyes at her from across the table, as though to say:
Can you believe that we are actually sitting here?

The agent invited them all to come to his apartment for light refreshments. He wanted Erika to sing for him.

“We leave for New York in ten days,” Signora Lorello reminded everyone. “We’d love to have everything settled before then. I loathe the anxiety of waiting.”

“
She
loathes the anxiety,” Christopher said later, laughing.

Pietro Palladino’s apartment consisted of the entire top floor of a palatial building not far from La Scala. The arched doorways and ceilings were so high that Erika felt she ought to be riding a carriage, not walking, through such rooms. The vast spaces made her feel dwarfed, inadequate.

Pietro Palladino led them to a smaller, more intimate sitting room that contained a grand piano. An assistant closed the glass balcony doors to shut out the noise of traffic from Milan’s streets.

A maid brought in platters of white grapes and Gorgonzola, green and potent, and a rectangle of mascarpone to spread across bread like butter. Erika ignored the food, but Signora Lorello took a full plate onto her lap and relaxed against an antique chair. Her husband sat in an antique chair, too, and he cupped his palms confidently over one knee.

Before the little audition began, Pietro Palladino poured tastes of a black grape juice he loved. Erika did not sip from her glass, because she did not want to discolor her teeth just before she sang.

When Christopher went to the piano to accompany her, he turned as pale as his shirt. Erika sent a twist of a smile in his direction, as if to say:
My poor boy, why be nervous now?

The pair of assistants in dark suits lounged against a peach-colored sofa, ready to render their judgments. The impresario’s wife grinned encouragingly at Erika. As the first aria began, Signora Lorello licked her lower lip, and her currant eyes shone.

No matter what the celebrated agent decided to do, the Lorellos intended to hire her, and the certainty of her position made Erika confident. She sang “Una voce poco fa,” followed by the “Seguidilla”—both nearly flawlessly. What agent could fail to be influenced by the Lorellos, who lifted their faces toward her as if transfixed?

(“A lovely-looking lady, don’t you think?” Erika had overheard Signora Lorello murmur to the agent as they were being ushered down a hallway to this sitting room.)

When the last vibrations of song dissolved into silence, Pietro Palladino and his assistants excused themselves and stepped outside into a hallway. After a moment, the famous man returned, smiling, and he bent to kiss her hand. “Yes, yes. Definitely yes,” he said. “We want to represent you. We must represent you.”

The following day in the Galleria, Erika signed a contract with Pietro Palladino. From adjacent tables, men with thinning hair watched and smiled, expecting to soon learn who she was. Long ago her vocal teacher, Maestro Valenti, had told her:
An impresario hires you to sing in a certain operatic production, but it is the agent who will protect you and shape your career. If an impresario does not treat a singer well, a brilliant agent will simply take you elsewhere.

“I have never dealt with the Lorellos before,” Pietro Palladino said, “but their enthusiasm, their willingness to champion you—this is a crucial thing.”

His underlings stood behind the fanning screen of a great palm while he spoke with her. “If we don’t like the offer that the Lorellos make,” Pietro Palladino said, “I have some ideas about where we might go for a better sum.” To what other cities might he lead her, Erika wondered—Brescia, Modena, Rome, perhaps? The unseen entrées this powerful agent might provide were beyond her knowing.

She sent a letter to her master teacher in Florence, telling him that she had signed an agreement with one of Milan’s most illustrious agents. Maestro Valenti wrote back, “Every student who has a
prova
dreams of this. Such a victory comes to few!”

The Lorellos had assured the agent that Erika’s audition before the other opera house managers and Puccini’s publishers would take place within a few days.

The delay was fortuitous because Erika knew she would need every hour between now and then to refresh her knowledge of
Madama Butterfly.
Her one qualm during all of this, which she had shared with no one except Christopher, was that she had always disliked Puccini’s modern music and preferred old-fashioned
bel canto
roles. But who could be choosy? She had been trained to sing different styles, and sing she would.

The Lorellos had booked a suite of rooms for Erika and her accompanist at a hotel where operatic performers frequently stayed. The dense walls made the rooms as sound-resistant as caves. Each suite had a piano with a vase of flowers.

“I can’t believe this is all really happening,” Christopher said. “I’ve known so many opera students, and I’ve never seen this happen to anyone.”

At twilight Christopher raised a foot and hoisted himself up onto the sill of a window so tall that he actually stood up in it. Framed against the evening coolness, he looked as if he might stretch out his hand and touch constellations that were just beginning to show. “You’re the chosen one among thousands! You’re the example that will give rise to people’s dreams.”

She had never seen him so jubilant. A breeze lifted his tie. He clutched either side of the window frame and rocked forward, ready to fly.

“A thousand lire per night—that’s what they’ll offer you!” he said, laughing.

“Be careful,” she said. “If you fall out, our good luck will end.”

“I loathe the music I am going to sing,” she told Christopher. “Surely they will hear that in my voice. I can hear it.” On the morning of her audition, Erika was convinced that it would be a fiasco.

“Where is the actress in you?” he argued. “Put yourself in a trance and fall in love with Puccini, at least for today.”

Just before her audition, the nearly deserted opera house smelled of cold, dead smoke. It was a huge theatre, though not as celebrated as the Teatro Lirico or La Scala. Two rows of men had come to hear her. In their demeanor Erika detected harshness, a consciousness of exactly how many seats had gone unsold at their most recent productions. She could not discern who among them represented Ricordi—Puccini’s music publishers—and which ones owned the opera house. Their faces had the blankness of morticians.

The opera house at Montepulciano had been of more modest dimensions. Here, huge, sprawling balconies rose like terraces toward the gilded ceiling. She sensed the weight of echoing, invisible places, corners where seats ranged that she could not even see. To expect her talent to fill this entire space, and stir every particle of air with vibrations of sound!

Impresario Lorello and his wife appeared nervous as well. Signora Lorello wore an ice-blue satin gown meant for evening and looked overdressed. She fidgeted and flashed her rings, her fingers like fat little sausages choked off at the knuckles by silver bands. The impresario stood with hands clasped behind him. Did he ever venture anywhere without his fussy, beribboned wife?

The Lorellos, Erika had come to realize, were the newcomers here, their uneasy smiles betraying their longing to please. Just two years ago, Lorello had managed an opera house in an Italian city so minor that Erika had never heard of it.

The hall was dark, the men in dark suits ready to listen.

Why could she not vocalize a few arias of her choice? Why not “
Una voce poco fa
” or “Habanera”? If they heard her do those, they would realize the diva she was capable of becoming.

But no. The Ricordi publishers were here to assess what she would do to their precious Puccini.

Of the ten people present, surely only she had the awful, coppery taste of anxiety in her mouth. She felt as if she had sucked on a filthy penny. Only she had to sing, of course. The others were merely expected to utter an opinion.

Christopher positioned himself at the piano. She had been wrong about one thing: she was not the only one suffering. On his stool he sat cane-straight, and his torso lengthened as it always did when he was on edge, his neck so thin that he looked hungry. He shot her a smile that twitched.

Out it came, then—Suzuki’s first phrases from
Madama Butterfly
. Erika’s true voice fled like a frightened cat through a hole in a fence; what was left, what they heard, she could hardly guess at. Erika dropped her eyelids for a second, wanting someone to wake her after she had gotten to the end of it. After this, more singing from other scenes—just as bad.

Before any objection could be interjected, she announced, “I am going to sing “Una voce poco fa,” and she launched into Rossini to save herself.

She walked out knowing that she had done badly, though Christopher assured her that the Puccini had been passable, and the Rossini ravishing.

Silence for three days thereafter. “How long can they expect us to sit around at this exorbitantly priced hotel, waiting for their verdict?” Christopher said. The Lorellos had recommended these accommodations, though no one had volunteered to shoulder the bill for them.

To distract themselves, they crossed the square in front of the Duomo, admiring the variously colored tiles in the pavement. They studied the cathedral’s marble belfries, gables, and pinnacles. They discovered a restaurant where espresso was priced nearly as modestly as water, where they whiled away the afternoon reading Milanese newspapers. Not once during those three days did they venture into the Galleria’s glass-roofed arcade, so as to avoid seeing anyone from the opera industry.