He could scarce believe what he’d heard. “We’re going out, we’re going to the opera!”
“If you stop squalling like an infant, we are. Go get dressed immediately.”
3
TONIO TOOK THE STEPS two at a time. He splashed cold water on his face and commenced dragging out his fine clothes which he had not worn since Venice. In a minute he was dressed in a dark blue brocade coat and his finest white lace, with paste buckle shoes. And strapping on his sword, he was suddenly on the lower floor to Guido’s apartments.
It was then he remembered that he despised Guido. And that he wasn’t a child who’d never been to an opera. But he forgot that again immediately. In fact, he felt so happy he couldn’t quite understand it. He was almost laughing.
Then Guido appeared, and Tonio, who was unprepared for anything but his clerical black, was astonished. The Maestro wore a coat of rich chocolate velvet perfectly the same brown as his eyes and his smoothly combed hair, and beneath it a vest of gold silk. In the lights before the door of the conservatorio, the lace at his throat, though nothing as fancy as that of Tonio, was slightly luminescent, and his eyes were so large that they were distracting. Had he evinced the slightest pleasantness, the barest little smile, he would have been handsome beyond doubt. But he was surly and brooding as always.
Tonio stiffened when he saw his nasty expression. And he followed him in silence to the first busy corner where they hailed a cabriolet to take them to the Teatro San Bartolommeo.
It was an old building, brilliantly lit and very crowded, the gaming rooms smoky and noisy, the performance already under way before a restless and chattering audience. This was the theater in Naples for heroic opera—that is, serious opera—and for the aristocracy, which filled the first of its rectangular tiers.
To Tonio it was a vision. It was as if he had never seen such simple splendors before, never grown up with chandeliers of Murano glass, never seen such a wealth of wax tapers.
And Guido had definitely acquired a new dignity and polish in his eyes; the man appeared almost a gentleman. He bought both the libretto and the score and led Tonio not up to the noisy boxes, but down to the most expensive seats of the parterre before the footlights.
The first act was only half over, so the most important arias were yet to come. And as soon as Guido was comfortably settled, he drew Tonio close beside him.
This is the beast who has snarled at me for over a month, Tonio thought. He was somewhat mystified by it. And could not stop looking at Guido.
There were two castrati, Guido explained, and a lovely little prima donna, but Guido said it was the old eunuch who would outsing everyone, and not because he had a decent voice, he didn’t, but because he had the skill.
As soon as the castrato began to sing Tonio was enthralled. The voice was silky, full of tenderness, and brought an enormous hand of applause. “That’s not a great voice?” he whispered.
“The high notes were all falsetto because his range isn’t that great. But he has such control over the falsetto you didn’t notice it. Listen next time, and you’ll see what I mean. As for the tempo, it was written for him, and it’s slow so that he can take everything on with great care. His middle range is all that’s really left to him, and all the rest is pure skill.”
As the evening progressed, Tonio saw this was true. Meantime the little prima donna captivated everyone with her spontaneous and emotional singing, but she had grown up in the streets, Guido said, singing as Tonio sang, and though her high notes gave one chills, she couldn’t handle lower notes at all. They got lost in the pounding of the harpsichord. You saw her lips moving and nothing coming out.
The younger castrato was yet another surprise in that he was a fine contralto, which Tonio had seldom heard in a male. His voice was lustrous; it made you think of velvet, but when he went up high, he became rough.
Both of these young people could have outsung the older man by virtue of their natural gifts, but neither of them really knew how to do it, and over and over again it was the old castrato who stepped to the footlights and silenced the audience.