The composer flopped awkwardly at the harpsichord. The musicians raised their bows, and suddenly the house was filled with a rush of festive music.
It was lovely, light, full of celebration with nothing of tragedy or foreboding, and Tonio felt an immediate enchantment. He bent forward as the crowd chattered and laughed behind him. Just where the balcony curved, the Lemmo family was already at dinner, steam rising from the silver plates before them. An angry Englishman hissed in vain for silence.
But when the curtain rose there were oooh’s and aaah’s from everywhere. Gilded porticoes and arches rose against an infinite backdrop of blue sky in which the stars twinkled magically. Clouds passed over the stars, and the music, rising in the sudden silence, seemed to reach the rafters. The composer was pounding away, his powdered curls flopping all of a piece, as grandly dressed women and men appeared on the stage to engage in the stiff but necessary recitative that began the opera’s all too familiar and utterly preposterous story. Someone was in disguise, someone else kidnapped, abused. Someone would go mad. There would be a battle with a bear and a sea monster before the heroine found her way back to her husband who thought she was dead, and someone’s twin brother would be blessed by the gods for vanquishing the enemy.
Tonio would memorize the libretto later. He didn’t care right now. What maddened him was his mother’s laughter and the sudden cries of the Lemmo family, who had just been presented with an elaborate broiled fish.
“Excuse me.” He pushed past Alessandro.
“But where are you going?” Alessandro’s large hand folded easily and warmly over Tonio’s wrist.
“Downstairs, I must hear Caffarelli. Stay with my mother, don’t let her out of your sight.”
“But, Excellency…”
“Tonio.” Tonio smiled. “Alessandro, I beg you, I swear on my honor, I will go no farther than the parterre, you can see me from here. I must hear Caffarelli!”
Not all of the chairs were taken. Midway through the performance many more gondoliers would come, admitted free, and then it would be mayhem. But now he was easily able to get close to the stage, pushing through the rougher, cruder crowd until he sat only a few feet from the raging, storming orchestra.
Now all he could hear was the music and he was ecstatic.
And at that moment there appeared on the stage the tall, stately figure of the great Caffarelli.
This pupil of Porpora was definitely claimed by some to be the greatest singer in the world, and as he advanced to the footlights in his enormous white wig and flowing carmine cape, he appeared a god rather than the great king whose part he played in the performance. Delicately handsome, he allowed all eyes to drink him in. Then he threw back his head. He commenced to sing, and at the first immense swelling note the theater fell silent.
Tonio gasped. The gondoliers beside him let out soft moans and cries of pleasant astonishment.
The note swelled and soared as if even the castrato himself could not stop it And then bringing it to a close, he rushed into the body of the aria, without seeming to pause for breath as the orchestra raced to catch up with him.
It was a voice beyond belief, not shrill but somehow violent. In fact, the castrato’s almost exquisite face seemed quite disfigured with rage before he had finished.
It was a face that had been painted, powdered, rendered as civilized as anyone could imagine in its frame of white curls and yet those eyes smoldered as he strode back and forth now, bowing indifferently to those who waved and clapped and nodded from the boxes, glancing to the pit, and now and then to the higher tiers as if with some remote calculations.
But the prima donna had commenced to sing, and it seemed the opera was falling apart around her. Or was it simply that now Tonio could see all the commotion in the wings, ladies with brushes and combs, a servant who darted out now to puff more white powder on Caffarelli.
Yet the prima donna’s thin little voice continued bravely over the continuo of the composer at the harpsichord. And Caffarelli stood in front of her, his back to her, as if she didn’t exist, affected a yawn in fact, and the hum of conversation rose again, a dull wave taking the edges off the music.
Meanwhile around Tonio all the real judges of the performance gave off their