Mozart's Last Aria (15 page)

Chapter 25

L
enerl dressed my hair by the window overlooking the empty Flour Market. The cobbles were shiny and damp around the statue of Providence. Blinking with each tug of the brush, I watched for the lanterns of the baron’s coach.

As I waited, I thought of love. Not of husbands and of duties.

Only of love.

In Salzburg when I was in my twenties, I had fallen for D’Ippold, an army captain who headed a school for boys of noble birth. He didn’t satisfy my father’s ambition to marry me into the aristocracy. His suit was rejected. I obliged my father many years later by pledging myself to Berchtold, who had one foot on the lowest rung of the nobility. Perhaps Papa thought that, in his search for a husband of high birth, he was merely matching me with a man appropriate to my aspirations. After all, I had always refused to pull my hair back in a cap and instead wore it up like a woman of rank. With all my years of prodigy behind me I finally had the comfortable home and children that my unexceptional friends had long enjoyed.

A coach clattered past the Capuchin Church and halted outside the inn. The baron’s face appeared in the window. I saw why love had preoccupied me. I trembled with guilt.

“The emperor will attend tonight’s performance,” Swieten said, as I settled onto the bench opposite him in the carriage.

I thought of the haughty, slow walk of the man I had seen trailed by his courtiers across the park at the palace that afternoon. “I recall him as a child, when I played for his mother, the empress, at Schönbrunn.”

Swieten murmured something I couldn’t hear. I sensed a heaviness in him.

“Will I think him much changed?”

“Leopold? Out of all recognition. It’s hard to imagine the emperor was ever a child.”

At the Freihaus, carriages crowded the road. Baron van Swieten tipped his hat to the ladies and gentlemen as we crossed the courtyard to the theater.

I bounced on my toes with anticipation. Except for one trip to Munich, I had only ever seen Wolfgang’s operas performed in Salzburg—in halls with which I was familiar to the point of extreme weariness.

The marble entrance of the theater was as dazzling as the costumes of the wealthy Viennese in the lobby. I heard Wolfgang’s name on every pair of painted lips.

Swieten gestured across the lamplit foyer toward the stairs. “I must attend upon the emperor’s arrival, madame,” he said. “You’ll find my box in the first tier. I shan’t be detained long, I hope.”

He maneuvered through the lobby. The crowd jostled for a good position from which to coax a nod of acknowledgment from the emperor. I mounted the stairs.

When Wolfgang and I played at the palace, the future emperor had made no great impression. Leopold hadn’t been first in line to the throne. One would’ve assumed him well made for some provincial dukedom. By contrast, his sister Maria Antonia had run about the royal chambers with us, giggling. Now she lived under arrest in Paris with her husband, the French king. Perhaps a lively convivial nature clashed with the demands of the world. It had certainly been the case with Wolfgang.

At the head of the stairs, the usher directed me toward Swieten’s seats. I came into a long gallery. Lichnowsky paced the empty corridor. He glared at the baron’s box, as though he might conjure someone from its emptiness by the force of his impatience.

I called to him. The expression he turned upon me was that of a man preparing for a duel, sharp and alert. With an effort he softened his face.

“Are you looking for Baron van Swieten, my prince?” I said.

“Where is he?” His voice was low and strangled.

“He attends the emperor in the foyer.”

He put a finger to the corner of his eye. The gesture was like a dark blot on a page of fine penmanship, so evidently was it a sign of the disturbance beneath his placid expression.

“Haven’t you seen this opera yet, my prince?” I asked. “You, a great patron of my brother?”

“I was at the premiere, madame.” A noise from along the corridor. His eyes snapped toward it. “I find it a most excellent work, of course.”

“I’m told Wolfgang considered it his finest.”

“I don’t believe it surpasses his
Don Giovanni
.”

“Why’s that?”

“In
The Magic Flute
, you’ll see that the hero and heroine discover the essence of life in some kind of holy union. Don Giovanni realizes that one can learn the truth about the world only when forced to take a journey to Hell.”

“Perhaps Wolfgang learned that Hell isn’t one’s destiny,” I said. “It can be escaped, by prayer and goodness.”

He shook his head and seemed about to contradict me, but he heard the orchestra tuning up. He bowed and went down the stairs, shoving past the couples coming up from their obsequies to the emperor in the lobby.

I entered Swieten’s box and glanced over the balcony toward the stalls. The musicians in the orchestra laughed and joked with the easy confidence of men who knew they had a hit.

“You?”

I turned to the voice. Hiding behind the open door, Gieseke waited.

“Are you unharmed, sir? Thank heavens, I see that you are,” I said.

He was in costume for the night’s performance, a long white robe. His face was painted into a stern glare with thick stripes of black grease.

“Where’s Swieten?” he said.

A round of applause started and the orchestra stood. The violinists tapped their bows against their music stands. The emperor proceeded down the aisle to his seat, followed by a retinue in clothing so fine the fabric shone like suits of armor. Leopold moved with a deliberate grace. His puffy, grim face was frozen and aloof.

“Of course, Swieten’s down
there
.” Gieseke remained in the darkness at the rear of the box. “Sucking up to the emperor with the rest of them.”

“Watch your tongue,” I said. “The baron is worthy of respect.”

The actor held himself poised by the open door, an eye on the corridor.

I stepped toward him.

“Leave me alone.” His voice grated through his throat as though it had been burned. “I didn’t know you’d be here. It’s dangerous to be close to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“After you ran away, I was nearly stabbed to death.” Under the theatrical makeup, there were traces of purple bruises. He lifted his hand. The palm was bound around with a grubby cloth. “I had to grab the knife by the blade to pull it away from that thug.”

“You think those men wanted to hurt
me
, not you?”

“I’ll keep quiet about Wolfgang’s poisoning.
You
won’t. Of course they wanted you.”

“But they let me get away. Maybe they wanted you, after all.”

His eyes disappeared into the thick greasepaint. He nodded, slow and appalled. He saw that I was right. What did he know that made him dangerous enough to kill?

“You saw it done,” I said.

“Done? What?”

“The poison. You saw it administered, didn’t you? When?”

He bit at the bandage where it crossed the back of his hand. “At the Masonic hall. After they performed the cantata I wrote with Wolfgang.”

“Who did it? Who poisoned my brother?”

“I’ll only tell a man with whom I share other secrets.”

The bond of brothers. “A Mason?”

“That’s right.”

“Why not a woman?”

He grabbed my shoulders. “What did you say?”

I struggled free, stumbling against the rococo woodwork of the balcony. The emperor had taken his seat. The conductor came to his podium to loud acclaim. Until then I hadn’t noticed how large the theater was. The burst of applause from five tiers of boxes was jolting.

Gieseke stepped through the door and rushed away.

A heavy chord from the trombones started the overture, as the door shut behind him. I flinched at the sudden volume.

A second and third chord. In E-flat major. The same key as the music I had overheard at the Masonic lodge. Wolfgang never used key signatures randomly. They always signaled a mood or some other information to the listener. With these first three bars of the overture, I already knew that this was a Masonic opera, just as Gieseke and Schikaneder had told me.

As the fugue developed, I peered through the lamplight across the theater. Count Pergen sat in the front row a few seats from the emperor, his legs crossed and his buckled shoe dipping in time to the rhythm of the overture.

In the box opposite me, Prince Lichnowsky sat beside a pretty, dark-haired woman. She leaned forward to the edge of the balcony and danced her fingers in the air as though she played the melody on a piano.

Swieten hurried to the chair next to me, resting both his hands on the knob of his stick as he had done when he listened to me play at the Academy of Science. He turned to me with a smile for the music. He must have noticed the disturbance on my face, because he reached out for my hand.

On the stage, the action commenced. Tamino fled a giant serpent. “Help me,” he cried.

Swieten swiveled toward the exclamation and withdrew his hand.

Before Tamino’s first aria was over I was lost in the beauty of my brother’s creation. Schikaneder had said the opera was intended to promote Masonic values, but to me it was full of Wolfgang’s pure playfulness.

So entranced was I that when two men entered our box, I hardly noticed. At first Swieten, too, paid them no attention. They lingered in the doorway, irresolute and confused. With a sigh of irritation, the baron stared them down.

The men were ill-dressed and rough. They avoided the baron’s glare, but didn’t retreat.

He took a step toward them, pulling back his broad shoulders and lifting the heavy, jeweled end of his stick like a cudgel. The men touched the brims of their hats and left.

Swieten paced the box for several minutes before he returned to his seat.

Onstage, the Queen of the Night appeared on a throne gilded with stars. She sang of her lost child. Tears of pity came to my eyes. The diva was Constanze’s sister, the voluble Josefa whom I had met at the Academy of Science. Her aria moved into G minor, which Wolfgang so often used to convey grief, as she recounted her daughter’s kidnapping and beseeched Tamino to rescue the girl.

There was soon a respite from such tragic emotion with the low comedy of Schikaneder as the Bird Man, and the delightful Three Boys, young sopranos who swung over the action in a magical flying barge.

Gieseke strode across the stage with the rest of the priests. He had a minor role, but he spoke his lines well. His voice, which had seemed to rip through his throat when he stood before me in the box, was smooth and resonant.

In the finale to act one, he lurked among the ranks of the priests at the edge of the stage. My eyes happened to be upon him when the frightened Bird Man asked the kidnapped princess what he might say to explain himself to the approaching High Priest. “The truth, the truth!” she called. “Even if it be a crime.” Gieseke spun and took two steps toward her. His movement on the crowded stage went unnoticed by the audience. But the girl who sang the role of the princess flinched, as though she had seen some threat in the advancing actor’s eyes.

The intermission began. Wolfgang’s music played on in my head. I experienced a rapture so powerful that I wanted to skip onto the stage and dance.

When Swieten stood to make his way to the royal party I grasped his hand and squeezed it in joy. He responded with a similar pressure from his fingers. The beads woven into his jacket glimmered like stars.

He descended to greet the nobles who hovered about the emperor. The orchestra was tuning up for the second act when he returned.

Constanze’s sister pulled off the high coloratura of her final aria with such accomplishment that it sounded more like a wind instrument than a human voice. Schikaneder played his magic bells to summon his beloved and sang a playful duet with her. I smiled through tears of delight.

Swieten brought a handkerchief from his sleeve. I held it close to my face longer than was necessary to dry my eyes. I breathed in the scent of his jasmine cologne on the lace.

Chapter 26

T
he princess had been refused entry to the priesthood at first, insulted as a weak, gossiping woman. By the end of the opera, her determination and rectitude won over the priests, who allowed her to enter their order. As the curtain came down, I spoke to Swieten above the applause. “All the most profound utterances were made by the princess.”

He sucked his upper lip. “Quite so.”

The prince and princess slipped through the curtain and accepted the ovation with Schikaneder and his bird-woman bride.

The door of our box opened. Stadler entered. His eyes signaled urgency, but he paused when he noticed me.

Swieten shifted in his seat to face the clarinetist. “Stadler,
guten Abend
.”

Stadler ran his hand over his close-cropped hair and bowed to me. He hesitated in the doorway.

“It was a wonderful performance, Stadler,” Swieten said. “Was it not?”

Another silence, before Stadler stammered: “Truly, most astonishing.”

“It acts powerfully on the emotions,” I said.

“What does?” Stadler’s reply was quick this time.

“Wolfgang’s opera.” I inclined my head, curious at his agitation.

Constanze’s sister joined the other four singers on the stage and brought the audience to its feet. She flounced down into a deep curtsy, her head almost bowed to the stage and her hand on her breast, as though she had been consumed and exhausted by her performance.

Stadler sat on the edge of a gilt chair behind Swieten. He rubbed his palms on his breeches.

In the first row of the theater, Emperor Leopold clapped delicately, but, it seemed to me, without enthusiasm.

“Can it be that the opera doesn’t meet with the emperor’s approval?” I asked.

Stadler craned over the baron’s shoulder. His cheek twitched as he registered the reserve in the emperor’s applause.

Swieten took Stadler’s wrist between both his hands. “Dear Stadler, something is amiss?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s clear you came to see me with urgent news. Don’t let Madame de Mozart’s presence put you off. I can assure you, she’s privy to everything I know.”

“About what?”

“Come on.” Swieten leaned close. “Wolfgang. His death.”

On the stage, the singers started the encores. Schikaneder led them with a bumptious reprise of his introductory aria, “The Birdcatcher am I.”

With the ovation suspended for the singing, Stadler lowered his voice. “Gieseke has information.”

Swieten raised his chin, as though the scent of unseen food had wafted by him.

“He knows who poisoned Wolfgang,” Stadler said. “But he’s scared. He’ll reveal the name of the killer only to you. He wants your protection.”

The baron shook his head. “God help him.”

He went to the door. “I’ll go and look for this poor fellow,” he said to Stadler. “Stay with Madame de Mozart.”

Stadler protested, but the baron gave a look of warning. “Don’t leave her until I return,” he said.

As the door shut, Stadler slumped into his chair.

Applause for Schikaneder. Then the princess took center stage for her encore. While the orchestra introduced her aria, I recalled a line of hers from act two. “A woman who does not fear night and death is worthy and will be initiated,” I whispered.

Stadler stared at me with his jaw quivering. I had an idea now of the missing paragraphs from the page Wolfgang had written, which lay in the pocket of my skirt.

“The Grotto, Herr Stadler,” I said. “Wolfgang shared the secret of that new Masonic lodge with you, did he not?”

“He—he did.” Stadler spoke as though with his final breath.

“He left the essay unfinished in which he described his plans for the Grotto. But this opera completes the scheme as clearly as if he were to have written it out himself in plain prose.”

On the stage, the princess took her bow.

“Wolfgang intended to allow women to join his lodge,” I said. “Look how this princess is tested and given membership of the priesthood. That’s what Wolfgang wanted to do—to accord the same rights to women as to men. No doubt he saw it as the natural development of his ideas of equality, his belief in the new Enlightenment. Correct, Herr Stadler?”

He gave the slightest of nods, as the Queen of the Night opened her aria. Vengeance, she sang again, boiled in her heart.

“But his ideas were dangerous?” I said.

Stadler grabbed at his face and doubled over, rocking on his seat. “We take fearful oaths when we join the Brotherhood. There’re dreadful punishments for those who break the rules.”

“I heard the oath.”

“So you did, when you—”

“Wolfgang tried to break the rule that excludes women from the Masons. He’s dead. But who else is at risk, Herr Stadler?” I said. “Who else was involved in the new lodge? You? Gieseke?”

He groaned his acknowledgment. “Lichnowsky, too. He backed Wolfgang in founding the new lodge.”

I wondered why Lichnowsky had ventured into so hazardous a project. I looked across the theater to the prince’s seats. The woman with the piano-playing fingers leaned her head against the edge of the box, enraptured. Lichnowsky’s face was as empty of emotion as hers was awash with it.

The encores of the primary singers were at an end. The heavy scarlet curtains drew back. The entire cast appeared on- stage among the classical columns of the set for a curtain call. I couldn’t see Gieseke among the white-robed priests.

The door of the box opened. The baron entered.

“Gieseke?” I asked.

“Not a sign of him,” he said. “Perhaps he’ll come to me if I wait here.”

Gieseke had only to have spoken a single word to me, the guilty name. But he had fled. It was as if the identity of the killer had been written out in water, plain before my eyes and yet elusive. I rose to my feet in confusion.

From backstage came a loud crack, like a heavy rope severed.

The barge from which the Three Boys had sung their advice to the Bird Man swung out under the proscenium. As it rocked back and forth, a gasp spread through the audience. A man dangled headfirst from the boat, high above the stage.

Something spattered down from the barge onto Schikaneder. He wiped it from the shoulders of his feathery costume.

As the barge swung back, its motion dislodged the hanging man. He plunged to the stage. Schikaneder pulled the screaming Queen of the Night out of the way.

The body lay twisted on the boards, blood spreading over its white robes. Schikaneder lifted the prostrate man’s head.

“My God,” he cried, in the penetrating baritone that we had applauded moments before. “It’s Gieseke. He’s dead.”

In his box across the theater, Lichnowsky came to his feet. The pretty young woman spun in horror and pressed her face to his midriff. He looked toward Swieten’s seats. The baron stared at the stage, his hands closed into fists. Lichnowsky went quickly from his box, and the sobbing woman hurried after him.