Mozart’s Blood (44 page)

The names of the first cast of
Don Giovanni
are the real ones. I've taken some liberties with the details of Teresa Saporiti's life, but some fascinating facts accrue to this first Donna Anna: She lived to be 106, and she made her debut at La Scala at a very young age. Historical sources disagree about her exact position in the Bondini company. It's true that the people of Limone sul Garda have a genetic disposition to very long lives. I can't prove that Teresa Saporiti was born there, but it is a useful coincidence.

Vincenzo dal Prato was indeed a
castrato
who created the rôle of Idamante in Mozart's
Idomeneo
. Mozart didn't care much for his work, but he had great success in Munich. The only extant recording of a
castrato
singing is that of Alessandro Moreschi. He was already old when the recording was made, but it gives us a hint of how a
musico
might have sounded.

Caruso did, of course, sing
Carmen
in San Francisco the night before the great earthquake. The Micaëla, however, was a soprano named Bessie Abbott, from the Metropolitan Opera Company; for a number of reasons, it suited the story better to employ the fictional singer Hélène Singher in that rôle. The great Olive Fremstad sang Carmen, to rave reviews, and she was probably not so unpleasant as she has been painted in these pages. I hope she will forgive me, as one mezzo-soprano to another, for using her as a source of conflict.

The details of Mozart's death have been mostly lost, but from a letter from Constanze Mozart's sister, Sophie Haibl, we know that no priest attended Mozart on his deathbed.

The history of intravenous injections stretches back to 1642, and they were used by Christopher Wren and the physicist Robert Boyle, prompted by new information about the circulation of the blood. In 1853, the French surgeon C. Pravaz invented a small syringe, the piston of which could be driven by a screw. It was calibrated to measure an exact dosage, and a sharp needle with a pointed trocar was used to pierce the vein.