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had eaten so little that he was light-headed now and could not trust his senses.
And when he reached the countryside again, he knew he could go no farther. Knocking on a monastery door, he placed half of all the money he possessed in the hands of the father superior.
He was grateful when they put him to bed. They brought him broth and wine, and took away his boots and clothes to be mended. He could see a little sun-drenched garden through the window, and before he closed his eyes, he asked the date of the day and how long it was before Easter Sunday.
Of one thing he was certain. He must be with Guido and Christina before Easter Sunday.
* * *
Days passed. They ran into weeks.
He lay on his pillow looking out into the garden. It reminded him of some other time when he had been content, the sun falling on the flagstone walks, flashing suddenly in the water of the little fountain. The cloister was full of tinted shade. But he could not remember anything clearly. His mind was empty.
He wished it weren’t Lent so that he could hear the monks singing.
And when the night came and he was alone in this room, he knew a misery so terrible it seemed to him that each year of his life would mean only a greater capacity to feel it. And he would see his mother in her bed of drunken sleep, and it seemed she had known some wise secret.
No change was worked in him. Or so it seemed. Yet he took more food each day. Soon he was rising early to go to mass with the friars. And he found himself thinking more and more of Guido and Christina.
Had they made a safe journey from Rome? Was Paolo worried about him? He hoped Marcello, that Sicilian singer, had come with them, and of course they couldn’t have left without Signora Bianchi.
Sometimes he did not think of them so much as he pictured them. He saw them dining together, talking to one another. It annoyed him that he didn’t know where they were, really. Had they taken a villa in the hills with a terrace on which they might sit in the evenings? Or were they in the heart of the city, some bustling street near the theater and the palaces of the Medici?
Finally one morning with no decision or plan, he dressed, put on his boots and his sword, and carrying his cloak over his arm, went to take leave of the father superior.
The monks in the garden were cutting down the young palm branches and putting them in a wooden wheelbarrow. And he knew it was the Friday in Passion Week, the Feast of the Seven Sorrows. He had only twelve days until the opening of the opera.
* * *
By the time he reached the post house he was hungry. He ate a hearty meal and fell to watching with uncommon interest the comings and goings of other travelers. Then he hired the best horse he could, and rode south towards Florence.
It was just before dawn in the town of Fiesole that he saw the first playbill for the opera.
Old women and laborers were coming out of the early mass on Palm Sunday. They carried their blessed palms, and the open doors of the cathedral threw a warm yellow light on the stones before it.
Tonio was walking his horse through the piazza when on a weather-stained wall he saw his own name SIGNORE TONIO TRESCHI in high letters.
It seemed an apparition. Then he was seized with an irrepressible excitement. And feeling foolish at the same time, he brought his horse up to the wall and peered at the wrinkled paper.
Richly bordered in red and gold, it announced the performance of XERXES at Easter at the Teatro Di Via Della Pergola in Florence. Even Guido’s name was included in modest letters. And there was a portrait of Tonio too, an oval engraving very flattering indeed, and in praise of his voice a few florid verses.
He walked his horse back and forth, steadying himself with a hand on the wall. He could not stop reading the poster.
Then he asked the first man who passed how far was it to the city.
“Go up the hill and you will see,” came the answer.
The sky was still a dark blue and full of tiny stars when he reached the summit, and the city of Florence lay spread out in the valley before him. Through a mist he saw its bell towers, a hundred flickering lights, and the motionless path of the Arno. It was as beautiful to him as the sleeping Bethlehem of Christmas paintings.
And as he looked on those distant spires, he realized that never in his life had there been a moment such as this one.
Perhaps when he had waited in the wings of the theater in Rome on opening night, he had known something of this mounting expectation. Maybe years ago in Venice, he’d known it when he went out on the water on the Feast of the Senza.
But he did not dwell on those times.
Before the sun rose he would be with Guido and Christina. And for the first time they would truly be together.
BY ANNE RICE
Interview with the Vampire
The Feast of All Saints
Cry to Heaven
The Vampire Lestat
The Queen of the Damned
The Mummy
The Witching Hour
The Tale of the Body Thief
Lasher
Taltos
Memnoch the Devil
Servant of the Bones
Violin
Pandora
The Vampire Armand
Vittorio, The Vampire
Merrick
Blood and Gold
Blackwood Farm
Blood Canticle
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
Christ the Lord: Road to Cana
Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
Angel Time
a cognizant original v5 release november 24 2010
ANNE RICE has written more than twenty-five bestselling books. She lives in New Orleans.
AFTERWORD
CRY TO HEAVEN could not have been written without extensive research, and I am deeply indebted not only to many writers of the period, but to the authors of numerous scholarly and popular works on the opera, the castrati, the eighteenth century, art, music, Italy, and the cities of Naples, Rome, and Venice.
In addition much material was consulted on the physical characteristics of eunuchs, and I express my special thanks to Robert Owen, M.D., for helping me make my way through the morass of medical literature on the subject.
I would also like to thank Anne-Marie Bates, who very generously made available to me a tape recording of Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato to sing in the Sistine Choir, and the only castrato ever to be recorded.
All the main characters in the book are fictional. And though every effort has been made to portray the castrati and the century accurately, some liberties have been taken with persons and time. Nicolino, Farinelli, and Caffarelli were real and famous castrati; however Caffarelli’s appearances in the book are invented.
Guido’s teaching methods are based upon Early History of Singing by W. J. Henderson, and I must bear the responsibility for simplification and any inaccuracy.
“Baroque Venice, Music of Gabrieli, Bassano, Monteverdi,” recorded by the Decca Recording Company, 1972, with its album notes describing Jean Baptiste Duval’s visit to San Marco in 1607, was the direct inspiration for Tonio’s first musical experience there.
Alessandro Scarlatti’s The Garden of Love (Catherine Gayer, soprano, as Adonis, and Brigitte Fassbaender, contralto, as Venus) on Deutsche Grammophon, 1964, was the inspiration for Tonio’s duet with the Contessa in Naples, and this was the only portion of the book actually written to music.
Metastasio’s Achille en Sciro, the libretto that Guido chose for Tonio’s debut in Rome, is described in detail by Vernon Lee in her unique Studies in the 18th Century in Italy.
And there are many baroque operas on record today which were popular during this period.
However, for a real understanding of the music, I strongly urge the reader to seek those recordings in which female singers take the old castrato roles. The castrati were true sopranos and contraltos. And countertenors or male falsettists can give no true idea of the beauty of their voices.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1982 by Anne O’Brien Rice
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49422-1
This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
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