Not an evening went by that they did not go out, hiring a carriage perhaps for a coastal drive, or to seek out some quiet tavern where over the table they might talk in heated whispers until a certain taste in the mouth from the wine, a certain lightness of the head, told them to go home.
They did not take their evening meal anymore at the conservatorio. They walked arm in arm through pitch-dark streets, and finding here a darkened door, there the cover of a stand of trees, they touched one another, clung to one another feeding on the danger of it, and some infatuation with the night itself, its rustling sounds, its carriages groaning uphill out of nothingness to appear suddenly with a rocking yellow beam to find them out.
But once on the long Via Toledo, they had their pick of fine taverns with the money in Tonio’s pockets and were soon feasting on roast fowl or fresh fish with that wine they both loved, Lagrima Christi, and in the pleasant glow of these clean and crowded places, they would talk.
Guido would give Tonio the names of the old masters who’d written the exercises he was studying, and explain how Guido’s own vocalises differed from these.
But the greatest pleasure now for Tonio was giving any question to Guido for an answer and having his teacher take it up at once. Had Guido ever seen Alessandro Scarlatti? Yes, certainly, when he was a boy he had in fact met him, and Maestro Cavalla had spirited him often to the San Bartolommeo to see Scarlatti at the keyboard directing his own work.
It was Scarlatti who had really brought greatness to Naples, Guido said. In the old days men looked to Venice and Rome for the new operas. But now it was Naples, and as Tonio could see all around him, it was to Naples that foreign students came.
But opera was changing all the time. The long boring recitatives that advanced the plot with all the information the audience had to know were becoming more lively instead of such tiresome interludes between the arias. And comic opera, that was the coming thing. People wanted to hear opera in the vernacular, too, not just in classical Italian. And more and more recitatives with the orchestra were appearing in operas, where before most of recitatives had been dry.
But you had always to care about what the people wanted, and no matter how long or boring the singing in between, the people would put up with it for beautiful arias, and that would never change.
That is what opera was, Guido said, beautiful singing. And no violin or harpsichord could ever do to a man what singing could do to him.
Or so Guido, at that time in that place, believed.
Some evenings when they were tired of the taverns, they went on to the continual round of balls, especially favoring the Contessa Lamberti, who was such a patron of the arts, but here their endless dialogue did not stop.
They would find some out-of-the-way parlor, rescue a candelabrum for the clavichord or the new pianoforte, and after Guido let his fingers fly for a while, he would nestle into some high couch and once again Tonio would begin his questions, or Guido would take off on his own.
His eyes were full of some new and softening wonder at such moments; his face, relaxed, was boyish and gentle, and he seemed incapable of the bad temper of the past.
And it was on one such night in one of the Contessa’s small music rooms, when they had found a round table, a deck of playing cards, and a candle and they sat opposite each other going through some simple little game, that Tonio finally said:
“Maestro, tell me about my voice!”
“But first you must tell me something,” Guido said, and there was a flicker of temper that sent a shudder through Tonio. “Why is it you won’t sing this Christmas solo when I’ve told you it’s simple and that I wrote it for you?”
Tonio looked away.
He laid down the hand of cards in a small fan, and singled out for no reason the king and the queen. And then, unable to seek for the moment the obvious answer to Guido’s question, he found a simple solution to this next battle he must fight. He would sing the solo for Guido, if Guido wanted it. He would sing it for Guido, even if he was not yet strong enough