Vienna Nocturne (19 page)

“Well,” he said, with a wry smile. “You’re the only one, then.”

All the rest of the day Lidia’s compliment bolstered him, and as the week went on, he began to think that his opera was not so bad at all, really, considering Mozart was nearly ten years older and had been composing since he was a tiny boy. And everyone always complained that Mozart’s music was too complicated. Really, when one looked at it that way,
The Discontented Spouses
was an extraordinary opera and would be a smashing success—especially with Anna to sing it.

He looked forward to seeing Mozart again, though, and vowed to himself that the next time he would hold his own. “He’s absolutely brilliant,” he said to his sister. “I knew he would be—I daresay I’ve been his admirer long before he had many admirers—but I never would have guessed the
extent
of it. Why, if I had only the skill in his little finger! But I’m more practical than he is, I’m not afraid to bend to the wind of populism. Music should be agreeable above all else. Mozart knows this but
he gets in his own way
. My God, and I thought
my
orchestrations were complex! I wondered if
I
had gone too far! I would never dare go further than that, than what I myself have done, and yet look at Mozart going to the ends of the earth. If
I didn’t admire him so much, I’d have thought he had no care for his future or his family. And then you hear the bloody thing and can’t help but be taken in, even as half of you is begging him to cut it down a little, for pity’s sake, and let us enjoy the beauty underneath. Would that be so hard?”

The Storace siblings were often remarking, as the premiere of Stephen’s opera drew nearer, how amazed their father should have been at their change of circumstances. To have seen Anna sing in a royal house the music of her brother—to have known that Stephen had written it—well! At the time of the premiere Anna was almost nine months pregnant, although only her mother and Lidia knew that. Even her brother did not know. He had a vague impression that there were still one or two months remaining. Anna was calm, however. She knew the baby would wait.

In Stephen’s face on the night of the premiere was a sort of patient excitement Anna had felt herself so often before—the feeling that everything that could be done had been done, that it was done extremely well, and could not help coming off like a perfect dream. The patience came from fullness of preparation and purpose, and the excitement, from the inconstancy of the theater, which was like the natural world in that events must occur that the actors could neither foresee nor control.

The Duke of York was in the audience, a guest of the emperor in the royal box. Laughter and applause greeted the first act. Stephen’s music was charming, the libretto no worse than any other. Anna’s costume disguised her condition tolerably well, although it was difficult for her to get a proper breath with the baby taking so much room. The other singers, because they loved Anna, were at their best. The orchestra did not indistinguish itself, and compensated, in its placid collective way, for Stephen’s eager and somewhat impulsive behavior at the keyboard. So consumed was he by this moment, by the unbelievable felicity of his art made manifest—audience, stage, word, music—that he might have been forgiven for forgetting his own name.

What happened during Anna’s bravura aria at the end of the first act could have been predicted by no one, least of all by herself. She felt no warning. All was as it had ever been. She was always at her best on stage—she felt it clearly—a better, more beloved Anna, an Anna of mystery and fortune and power.

What she would remember afterward was the time between ignorance and understanding, those few seconds or perhaps even minutes when none knew the extent of her misfortune but herself; when many indeed had not yet realized there had been any misfortune at all. There was a pain or spasm in her throat—a knife in her windpipe—then a blossoming of broken glass. She choked on the A-flat, on the word
dolce
—sweet. When she coughed and cleared her throat, and tried to continue, unknowing at first, there was no voice she recognized as hers, just rags and smarting air and pathetic wheezing. The orchestra kept playing. Stephen, almost deaf with excitement now that the moment of greatness was upon him, did not notice his sister stop singing, and was indeed one of the very last to look up. But Anna saw him. His forehead was knitted in happy concentration. It will break his heart, she thought.

The orchestra went on—oh, for many painful measures. Michael Kelly, on stage with her, leapt out of his part in an instant to be at her elbow.

“Is it the child?” he whispered.

Anna looked at him without a word.

“Is it the child, Anna?”

The hall had gone deathly quiet. The orchestra, divided between those who had noticed her distress and those who yet had not, limped to a halt. Stephen looked up and met his sister’s eye, the enraptured smile fading on his lips. He would think she was joking, or that she hated him and was doing it on purpose. And in some selfish part of her heart she wished that were true, because this helplessness, this loss so sudden and unimaginable, was not anything she could remedy or bear. There was the emperor in his private box. There was the Duke of York with his medals and his disappointment. There was her mother with her hand over her mouth, and Mozart leaning forward in his chair as if he wanted to spring to the stage and finish the aria himself. Salieri, across the aisle, whispered something to his mistress. All of them were whispering now. The members of the orchestra looked up at her in alarm. Anna shook her head, once, “
No,
” for all their benefit, and someone had the sense to draw the curtain.

There was an uproar. They kept asking what had happened and if it was the baby and whether she could still finish the opera. She tried to sing, but it was no good. The voice had left her. She had done something terribly wrong, abused her heavenly gift, upset the balance. Now the work of years was reduced to nothing. Any girl might lose her voice, just as she might lose her hearing, her sight, or her life. But not so young—not, surely, at the flourishing of her powers.

She was made to recline on the floor; a physician was sent for. Stephen came running and was told everything.

“What will we do?” he asked wildly. “Who will sing it in her place?”

He had knelt beside her and seized her hand but looked away, all distraction and agitation. The desperation of his sister’s case was not yet evident to him. She seemed distraught and mortified but
otherwise in robust health, while his infant opera, his fragile, miraculous construction of thought and air, was in the throes of death. There were two more acts to be gotten through. Some other soprano could sing from the orchestra, while Anna put on a dumb show. He proposed this repeatedly to the crowd surrounding them. He helped Anna sit up in order to demonstrate that she was fit and well. He was urging her to stand—she was weeping and could hardly draw air from her panic—when the emperor’s own physician came in and made her lie down again. Stephen hovered above them, muttering for a new singer and looking around frantically, but it would not do, this plan of his to save his opera from the brink. In the first place, there was no one else capable of singing Anna’s part. In the second, the physician, who thrived on situations of public urgency, positively forbade Madame Storace from exerting herself in any way. She must be bled, she must drink bitter powders, she must have poultices applied to her throat and chest. In the third place, a new opera by an unknown English composer, without Anna Storace, was no opera that any Viennese wished to see.
The Discontented Spouses
died in Vienna that evening, at half past nine, and was ever after known only and infamously as the opera that muted a lark.

The doctor said she was not in danger of miscarrying; that had not caused Anna’s distress. Rather the problem was black bile, in her chest and throat, which must find its way out. Black bile was the worst kind of bile, thick and noxious, seeping through all the vital organs. The black bile had filled her neck and burst out during the bravura aria, whereupon it had spilled into her bowels and lungs. If they did not release it, it would choke her heart. The doctor gave her ice baths. He made her drink bitter powders so that she would vomit, which only hurt her throat more. He bled her twice daily, until she was weak and delirious. Lidia became so distressed she threatened to take her own life. Finally Mrs. Storace, seeing her daughter white and parched as death, declared the doctor a murderer and sent him away.

Mrs. Storace found an old midwife, a sturdy woman from the country, who swept in and gave Anna good food and cooling drink and bathed her and aired and cleansed everything. And though Anna still had no voice, at least there was no one talking anymore
about the black bile and how she must vomit it out. The midwife did not believe in black bile. She said she’d never seen the stuff in her life. She gave Anna herbal drinks that were sweetened with honey and not bitter. She said Anna was a strong girl, and that there was nothing wrong with her. Anna was grateful for her kindness, and tried to believe her, but could not. Her throat hurt with every breath. She could barely speak. She was afraid for the baby and afraid, too, terribly afraid, that giving birth to it would kill her. She prayed it would not come out at all, so she would not have to feel any pain.

But she delivered the baby as well as the midwife had predicted. She was brave and strong. She hardly made a sound, to spare the rags of her voice. The midwife said she’d never known such a quiet young mother. But after the birth Anna became terribly ill.

The baby girl had Benucci’s eyes. They sent it to a wet nurse. The wet nurse, though they did not know at the time, was sick, as well, and gave the illness to the baby, and it died a week old. They did not tell Anna for two weeks more that the infant had died, and when they did—for she had been begging to see her baby—her wails were like a banshee’s, and after that she would not eat, nor speak, nor sign to anyone, and for a long time they feared she would not recover.

The emperor came often to the Countess Thun’s salons. He was as in love with her as everyone else. She treated him exactly as he most wished: as an ordinary man.

Her husband, the Count Thun, had lately become a devotee of Dr. Franz Mesmer and his miraculous magnetism, and their salons, in addition to the usual happy fare of some of the best music and conversation in all of Vienna, had attained a new and exciting air. The emperor, who loved everything modern, found himself tempted and intrigued by this new medicine, which worked on a patient with mere magnetic touch.

Dr. Mesmer had left Vienna in disgrace some years ago, after failing to cure a blind pianist, a young lady. There were some who saw Dr. Mesmer as a charlatan, and for years the emperor had counted himself among them. But there had been encouraging reports filtering in from Paris, Mesmer’s new center of practice, and Joseph’s own sister Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, spoke warmly of the speed and painlessness of the doctor’s restorative
cures. While the Count Thun had never had a session with Mesmer himself, he had invited the attentions of several young disciples, and seen some not insignificant improvements to his gouty foot. Tonight one of these disciples was installed in a side room, and into this sanctum the guests entered in twos and threes for treatments. The emperor declined to visit with the young mesmerist himself, but he watched the proceedings with curiosity. All things scientific interested him, and at a musical salon like this, one particular illness could not help but come to mind.