The Black Opera (17 page)

“You cannot tell me anything at all about the libretto? Or what my role will be?”

Conrad managed not to look like a man who knows only two certain words of his libretto—
“Act One.”

“I realise that you're used to being the
primo uomo
in any company, signore. There's no question but that you'll be First Man and have the hero's role. However, at the moment this is only a preliminary agreement. When we hammer out contract details, we can of course take note of any special requirements you may have…”

A surprisingly amiable discussion settled the draft agreement. Conrad thought himself lucky to get away without
“entrance, up-stage, riding a white horse and wearing a plumed helmet.”
or
“disembarks from on-stage warship while a grateful crowd cheer the victor wearing laurels”
enshrined in the castrato's contract, but decided against mentioning this. Rumour said Velluti had little sense of humour about such things.

That settled, he sent the castrato on for a social audience with his Majesty King Ferdinand, without letting Velluti know that that was the second and more important audition.

Conrad found himself dreaming of Castiello-Salvati's death, in the grey hours.
He put it out of his mind after the second time, with the finality he had practised during the war.

Ferdinand Bourbon-Sicily, in his character as an impresario, drafted more letters to be sent out to Milan, Venice, Pesara, Rome—letters that showed him to have paid surprisingly close attention to the mechanical details of producing an opera during his patronage of the Teatro San Carlo. Conrad forged a signature that matched the handwriting and posted them on.

By the third day he found himself reduced to vulgar southern profanity.

Minchia! but the contracts are a bitch to write! Half the singers he wants are attached to other opera houses. But I suppose he is a King…

Conrad lost four days of the first week before he knew it. Normally, the usual chaos of an opera in progress would begin to be reported back—he was familiar enough with that from Barjaba's bitching, before the man fled. Once the impresario summoned, contraltos and basses set out by carriage from towns the length and breadth of all Italy, complaining to a man (and woman) about bumpy interminable mountainous journeys and bedbugs in inns. Sopranos would travel with their mothers in tow—and nothing is quite so terrifying as the mother of a
secondo donna
who thinks she ought to be the mother of a
prima donna
—and musicians from town bands and church parades would make a foot-sore way to Naples (the carriages being mostly beyond their means) to compete with the locals.

This time there was an ominous lack of reply. And of those that did, almost all were chorus singers and musicians for the orchestra, not opera stars.

Knowing he must still be ahead of their arrival, even assuming that roads and tides were good, Conrad took the advantage of the following twenty-four hours to secure any as-yet overlooked Neapolitan singers, whether with Teatro experience, church choir, chorus, or merely sitting on the sea-wall singing folk-songs. With the good ones secured, he was left with a succession of weak tenors and mezzos whom Conrad would cheerfully have pushed into Vesuvius—too many opera plots featured that already, unfortunately. It was a great relief when the next knock on the door announced Sandrine Furino.

“Back from Rome? I thought you'd abandoned me like the Persianis. I swear, Sandrine, if I weren't an atheist I'd say
Thank God!”
Conrad kissed her hand and led her to the cherry-striped satin couch that the Dominicans had at least left with all four legs. “If I need anything right now, I need a stunning mezzo…”

“Then you won't mind paying me a stunning amount of money.” Sandrine Furino unpinned her hat and veil. As always, she left her gauze scarf still around her neck. She wore her bodice a little higher than might be expected, but the width of her satin
gigot
sleeves emphasised her tiny waist. She spoke in the low,
slightly breathy tone which fascinated all her young male admirers at the stage door. “What sort of role would you have for me? Not another britches-part?”

Conrad sighed and threw his quill down, coming to join Sandrine on the couch, and pour tea from the slightly-dented service Tullio had brought in. “But you're so good at playing romantic heroes.”

“And sometimes I'd like to play the girl!” Sandrine smoothed down the set of her gown at her hips, and threw Conrad what he took to be a deliberately smouldering look from under her long lashes. “Travesti roles are losing their appeal, Conrad. They remind me… Well. They remind me.”

“All right. I still wish there was a way to get your amazing lower range on stage…”

Conrad braced himself and gave the warning about the supposed Camorra. Making a mental note:
If she does join, she'll certainly be one of the ones told about the Prince's Men.

“I'm in sufficient danger walking down the street as it is.” Sandrine gave him a somewhat rueful look. “I don't suppose I care about more.”

“All right, then…”
If she says that, I have to accept it
. Conrad reached for the scribbled notes spread over his desk. “So, JohnJack for the villain, unless a decent tenor unexpectedly leaps out of the woodwork. Velluti's just been signed up, he'll expect to sing the hero… So, yes, I could offer you a female role.”

“A role central to the story,” she insisted, looking at him under her lashes again. “Not the heroine's maid, or the villain's discarded mistress. Something with meat in it.”

As things stood at the moment, she looked fair to be the
prima donna
, but Conrad bit his tongue in case he had to retract the offer later.
It's only been four days, who knows what the King will say?

“I swear—” Conrad held up his hand, only to find his notes whipped out of his grasp.

“You're in, Signorina Sandrine,” Tullio observed, shuffling the papers together, and returning her welcoming smile. “Now go away for a few hours, while my master explains to me just why he appears to have forgotten how to sleep or eat…”

“Certainly.” As she passed Tullio on the way to the door, Sandrine Furino stood up on tiptoe in her neat ankle boots, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You look after him so well, you sweet, sweet man…”

It didn't take her wink from the doorway to collapse Conrad in choking laughter—Tullio's expression had already robbed him of the ability to breathe.

“I'll bring in the food,” Tullio Rossi managed eventually, with immense dignity. “Parsley omelette. If you weren't so starved, you'd end up wearing it!”

Conrad had barely finished eating when footsteps trod up the stairs again, and he heard a knock on the door.

Tullio lifted an eyebrow. “More appointments?”

His caution made Conrad conscious, suddenly, that he himself was wary of an unknown caller.
I don't suppose that's too surprising. Not with the Inquisition and everything the Prince's Men did to Castiello-Salvati.

“No, I was done.” Conrad watched as Tullio went to answer the door. “I've hired everybody I know here who are good singers or stagehands.”

There had been something of a local dearth of the latter, too. The King's first attempt at the counter-opera, secret though it supposedly was, had scared a lot of people off, Conrad's more peripatetic friends among them.

“Well, padrone, I don't suppose the secret society of assassins would knock…”

“The Dominicans did!”

He found himself still nervous while Tullio was out at the front door.

“Man to see you,” Tullio reported back. “Don't know him. Young chap.”

“Show him in.” Conrad moved the short distance from the table to the chairs by the fire. “If I'm lucky it's a world-famous
tenore di grazia
…”

A well-dressed young man in his early twenties followed Tullio back into the room, removing his tall hat. His hair was of that colour neither brown nor blond, he wore narrow white trousers, black boots, and a cut-away dark blue tailcoat with wide lapels; his neck-stock was spotless linen. Conrad found himself frowning.

I know that face…do I? Surely…

The youth bowed, hair flipping energetically. “Gianpaolo Pironti at your service, cousin!”

This would be that one of Baltazar's sons, Mother's nephews, and… my cousin? I know I haven't seen most of my cousins for years, but… No. I don't think so. No.

“And you're here because…?” Conrad prompted.

“I've just done two years in the Conservatoire in Catania.” Gianpaolo Pironti beamed. “Eventually I want to join the opera world as a composer. I have no patronage—so I appeal to nepotism! Can you help me, as a member of the family?”

Conrad went for a delaying action. “That would depend on how good you are.”

Cousin Gianpaolo looked hopeful.

Conrad gave up and asked directly. “And, also, on why you're a girl dressed up as a man?”

“Ah.” Pironti looked startled. “I thought I was good enough not to be spotted.” The slim figure had nothing to betray her in her body, the slightly padded coat shoulders distracting from any bust. If she looked young to have graduated from a Conservatoire, that was the only consequence of her having no facial hair.

Conrad snorted. “I'm in opera!”

He waved a hand at her male clothing.

“I'm used to seeing women in britches roles, and male castrati singing men disguised as women. Our last production, we had a soprano dressed as a woman singing the heroine, a mezzo dressed as a man playing the hero, and a contralto dressed as a man but playing a woman
disguised
in male clothing. If I can keep that lot clear while they're singing their trio—
and
the love-duet—I can certainly spot a woman off-stage when I see one! But you do look like my cousin Gianpaolo… like family…”

She gave him a fishy eye. “That's because I'm your
sister
, you berk.”

Conrad blankly stared at her.

He realised his mouth had fallen open, and shut it. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Tullio looking slightly relieved.
Was he truly afraid of a visit from the Prince's Men?

“You
are
Isaura, aren't you?” Conrad examined her in quiet wonder. “Isaura… I haven't seen you for… oh Lord, is it nine years?”

He stood up before he realised he was going to do it. The cross-dressed young woman looked apprehensive at first—and as he moved towards her, threw her arms around him, and hugged him as tightly as he gripped her. Despite being of a height with him, she felt small in his arms.

“Nine!” She sounded as if she were laughing and crying together. “You came home after Papa died.”

He put her back at arm's length, and she rubbed the heel of her hand across her face, the gesture all boy. Her words brought back the past: coming home, after his father Alfredo had been dead for some months, and finding the house was in the process of being sold to cover a little of Alfredo's debts. Conrad had arranged for his mother Agnese to live in a house her maternal uncle Baltazar could loan her, after arguing that it would disgrace the family for them to be on the streets. And Baltazar Pironti had consented, provided Conrad added him to the list of Alfredo's most pressing creditors.

“I remember it was Cousin Gianpaolo who eventually persuaded Baltazar into a compromise that at least let me eat.” Conrad's mind was still in the past. “Paolo writes to me every year or so and tells me about our finances. But you… I remember you as this dark, withdrawn, fifteen-year-old beanpole of a girl, always standing behind Mother's skirts, and now…”

“It isn't Paolo. It's me.
I
write to you.”

Conrad opened his mouth to contradict her, and shut it again.

All the minuscule doubts of a decade—Does Cousin Gianpaolo Pironti have either the talent or the energy to cope with Law and finance, never mind any ability to go against his father Baltazar?—vanished like dead leaves in a fire, supplanted by the instant realisation that this is his sister; his sister, telling the truth.