The Doctor and the Diva (67 page)

Just ten days earlier, the previous understudy had quite suddenly broken her contract and left for Verona, where she’d found a more promising engagement. In the impresario’s eyes, Erika was only a temporary substitute, to be used as a last resort. If he had been able to send for a more celebrated singer to stand in as Rosina—if he had been able to arrange for another revered mezzo to rush in from Milan or Rome to satisfy the audience—he would have done so. But at this hour, on such short notice? That was impossible.

In the smaller room, a wardrobe assistant slipped one of Gabriella Lanza’s gowns over Erika’s head. The fabric felt damp, the puffy sleeves still warm from a steam iron. The dress smelled of the vanilla-like cologne of the woman who had worn it the previous night. The seamstress pulled the bodice—which was far too loose—closer around Erika’s waist and ribs. With pins clamped between her lips, the seamstress worked with thread and needle, basting the darts until the fabric hugged Erika’s form. Another assistant knelt at Erika’s feet, shortening the hem. They made her step out of the dress while their fingers flew and scissors snapped, finishing the adjustments.

Through the walls she heard the theatre abuzz with sounds of arriving musicians who were soon plucking and tuning their instruments. In the adjacent room, a tenor was warming up by vocalizing a few phrases. He accompanied himself on a piano, stopping repeatedly to praise or chide himself. “That’s it,” he called out happily, or he cried out, “Awful! Come on, let’s try that B-flat again.”

Before a brightly lit mirror Erika sat while another attendant combed her hair and pinned it severely against her head. A long, curly wig was lowered and tugged tightly against her hairline. Her scalp grew warm, as if covered by a winter cap. A makeup man wielded his thin brush, his breath smelling of salami as he leaned close to paint her eyebrows into sable arches. He daubed color onto her lips until her mouth shone like cherry candy that had been licked.

While the wardrobe assistants made her stand and turn sideways like a mannequin, or while the makeup master took hold of her chin and tilted her face, Erika closed her eyes, going deep into herself, preparing to become young Rosina. (“The prompter will be there,” the impresario had assured her, but Erika knew the role very well.) Earlier that week, when Gabriella Lanza had failed to appear at two rehearsals (the diva’s fatigue must have been real—not a result of laziness—Erika realized now), the director had called upon Erika to sing phrases from the wings. At the time she’d felt as insignificant as a prompter herself, serving only to cue others and help them recall their lines.

In the hallway she heard a commotion. Later she understood that must have been the moment when a group of men lifted the ailing prima donna from her sofa and carried her to a waiting motorcar. Gabriella Lanza needed to remain on strict bed rest, Ravell had told the managers and the impresario. Erika presumed that Ravell would escort the singer back to her hotel room.

Tonight Ravell had accompanied Erika to the opera house to see
Il barbiere di Siviglia
, but now he would miss it. No one close to her would witness tonight’s performance; none of them would remember how the next hours proved either a little miracle or a fiasco for her.

Out of respect—just in case Gabriella Lanza was still present nearby—Erika stayed hidden in the small dressing room, fully costumed and coiffed, until the overture began. When she heard it, she opened the door and eased her head into the corridor, which was eerily empty and filled with chilly night air because, as someone later told her, a back door had been left open after they carried Gabriella Lanza out.

It was possible that the great singer might lose her baby tonight. Erika told herself she must not think about that.

When the moment came for the heroine’s grand entrance aria, Erika glided across the stage holding a letter, and she felt herself swell from within. Beyond the footlights, the theatre opened before her like a cavern of terraced seats. Ladies wearing feather boas raised their lorgnettes in anticipation. Gentlemen in stiff collars waited for her to begin. Their presence expanded her.
All my life, I have been walking, singing, sailing toward this moment
, she thought. By the end of this aria, the audience would know who she—the character Rosina—really was.

Before she sang a single note, the orchestra foreshadowed everything about the heroine. The opening notes sounded imperial, commanding; but that effect was soon mixed with a flirtatious flourish of strings. Rosina was coquettish and alluring, but she had fierce power, and she could bite like a viper if that was required of her.

The conductor did not take his eyes off Erika, not for a moment. It was a great risk they had taken, letting her go on. As she began the
andante
from “Una voce poco fa,” he followed her voice with cautious flicks of his baton.

By tomorrow, the famed mezzo Gabriella Lanza might recover and stand once again in this wig, in this gown.
But for tonight,
Erika thought,
this stage and this theatre and the wild sparkle of this aria are mine.
Even if such an opportunity never came again, Rossini’s music was filling her now, and she felt herself flying. As she sang of her would-be lover, Lindoro, her tongue caressed his name. Tension eased in the impresario’s face as he listened from the front row.

As Erika continued to sing, the conductor’s eyes grew huge, the swipes of his baton more bold. The heroine Rosina was at the center of this opera; she brought fiery playfulness to everything. When Erika came to the line she loved most—the phrase that exposed Rosina’s steely spirit—the conductor’s mouth opened and his eyes seemed to ignite, as if he could hardly believe the sounds coming out of her.

An extreme stillness settled over the audience.

The next part of the aria—the moderato
—
echoed the sweet harmonies of a popular song. The conductor’s coattails swayed as though he were dancing—a marionette animated by her voice. Smiles crept into the listeners’ faces; they might as well have been humming along.

Toward the end of the famous aria, she remembered the gesture Magdalena had taught her long ago. (“You send up the last note like this—” Magdalena used to say, demonstrating the pose.)

And so it happened. Just as Erika released the last high, flourishing note, she raised her right arm in triumph, as though she were holding a torch. When the music ended, a roar rushed toward her from the audience. A man sprang into the aisle, ran halfway to the stage, and hopped around like a crazed monkey. She laughed and touched her heart; she bowed her head and curtseyed. When she looked up again, even the members of the orchestra had risen to their feet. Men bellowed,
“Brava!”
Ladies shivered in their satin sheath dresses and raised their clapping hands above their heads. They made her sing “Una voce poco fa” all over again.

The shiny black taxicab carried Erika and Ravell through the ancient streets of Florence. Light from lampposts flashed against the glass windows, illuminating the car’s interior. Their faces darkened as they turned a corner, then brightened and dimmed again. Flowers that people had brought to toss at Gabriella Lanza now belonged to Erika; the taxi moved carefully, weighted down with sprays. Bouquets quivered against the windows. As they motored through the streets, a bunch of long-stemmed roses rolled from the seat and threatened to fall; Erika caught them with one hand and pushed them back.

“A happy night,” Ravell said.

An Italian doctor had finally appeared to tend to Gabriella Lanza, so Ravell had not needed to accompany her to her hotel room after all. From a loge overlooking the stage, Ravell had been present for the entire performance. “It was thrilling,” he said, “from beginning to end.”

Before they’d left the theatre, Ravell had telephoned Gabriella Lanza’s hotel and spoken to the other doctor. The singer’s pains had eased; she had gone to sleep.

Ravell took Erika’s gloved hand and gazed through the taxicab window. They still struggled for money and had not married yet, although they told everyone in Florence that they had, because that made their lives here simpler. On her left hand, she already wore a gold band. She expected that they would marry soon.

The lights on the Arno looked like small comets that had fallen from the sky; the bright streaks now lay on the dark water, cooling. The blaze of each would be gone by morning.

“Things won’t be the same now between Gabriella Lanza and me,” Erika said.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

She had not forgotten her brief experience as an understudy for another well-known mezzo-soprano; that singer had glared in Erika’s direction, telling the management, “I don’t want to lay eyes on her,” until they sent Erika away.

“Gabriella must have considered me a novice,” Erika said. “She never expected me to perform well.”

“She heard your voice,” Ravell said. “Shouldn’t she have known?”

After the final curtain fell, the impresario had bounded backstage, his face florid with delight and relief. He bent his tall body in half, bowing. He caught Erika by the wrists, saying, “We will talk. We must talk.”

Gabriella Lanza had begun bleeding that morning, and yet she had come to the theatre anyway. Erika wondered about this. It made no sense that the other singer had been so determined to perform, or that she had delayed so long in telling the impresario and the managers about her incapacity. But if Gabriella had not created such an emergency . . .

Tears spurted from Erika’s eyes. On one of the happiest nights of her life, she wept into her gloves, wanting to go to Gabriella Lanza’s bedside and thank her—for what? Erika knew that her own night of triumph had been made possible by another woman’s suffering.

A phrase from “
Una voce poco fa
” kept going round and round in Erika’s head:

The taxi rolled closer toward Donna Anna’s house—toward the rented room with the red-tiled floor that overlooked the Arno, a place much too small to accommodate two people. If she and Ravell continued a life together in Florence, they would need to find more spacious quarters, and perhaps one day they might bring Ajeet from the Cocal to live with them.