Consuelo, page 80
"Mr. Director, I beg to tell you that I am exceedingly unwell, that my voice is completely gone, and that I have passed a frightful night."
Tesi languidly interchanged a malicious glance with Caffariello.
"And that, for all these reasons, it is impossible for me either to rehearse today or sing tomorrow, unless I resume the part of Ismenia, and you give that of Berenice to another."
"Is this really your intention, madam?" exclaimed the thunderstruck Holzbaüer. "Is it on the eve of representation, and when the court has fixed the hour, that you would allege indisposition? It is impossible! I can by no means consent to it."
"You must, however," replied she, resuming her natural tone of voice, which was any thing but gentle. "I am only engaged for second-rate parts, and nothing in my engagement obliges me to take the first. It was a feeling of civility on my part which induced me to accept them, in order to oblige Signora Tesi, and not to interrupt the pleasures of the court. I am too ill to keep my promise, and you cannot oblige me to sing against my will."
"My dear friend, they will make you sing by command," said Caffariello; "and you will sing badly; we were perfectly prepared for it. It is but a trifling misfortune in addition to those which you have so often confronted, but it is too late to draw back. You should have thought about it sooner. You have presumed too much upon your abilities. You will break down, but that is of little importance to us. I will sing in such a way that the audience will forget that there is even such a part as Berenice. Porporina also, in her little part of Ismenia, will compensate the public, and every one will be satisfied except yourself. It will be a lesson which you will profit by, or rather which you will not profit by, another time."
"You much deceive yourself as to the motives of my refusal," replied Corilla, boldly. "Were I not unwell, I should perhaps perform my part as well as another; but, as I cannot sing, there is one present who will sing the part better than it was ever sung at Vienna, and that no later than tomorrow. So the opera will not be put off, and I shall resume with pleasure the part of Ismenia, which will not fatigue me."
"What!" said Holzbaüer, affecting surprise; "do you suppose that Madame Tesi will be well enough tomorrow to resume her part?"
"I know very well that Madame Tesi cannot sing for a long time," said Corilla aloud, so that Tesi could hear her from her sofa, which was not ten paces distant. "See how changed she is! her face would frighten one. But I told you that you had a Berenice—a perfect, incomparable Berenice, superior to us all; and there she is," added she, rising, and taking Consuelo by the hand, and leading her into the midst of the turbulent group which had collected around her.
"I?" exclaimed Consuelo, as if waking from a dream.
"You," replied Corilla, pushing her upon the throne, almost with a convulsive effort. "You are now our queen, Porporina; your place is in the first rank. It is I who give it you; for I owe it to you. Never forget it!"
Holzbaüer, in the midst of his distress, and seeing himself on the point of failing in his duty, and perhaps being obliged to send in his resignation, was unable to refuse this unexpected aid. It was obvious enough to him from Consuelo's performance of Ismenia, that if she undertook the part of Berenice, she would perform it in a superior manner. In spite therefore of his repugnance toward Porpora and toward her, his only fear was that she would refuse the part.
She did, in fact, refuse it very earnestly, and cordially pressing Corilla's hands, she warmly entreated her, in a low tone, not to incur for her sake a sacrifice which would not gratify her, while to her rival it would afford the greatest triumph, and would seem an act of the most humble submission that could be tendered. But Corilla was immovable in her determination. Tesi, frightened at a junction which threatened such serious consequences to her, would have willingly attempted to resume her part should she even expire the moment after, for she was seriously indisposed; but she dared not do so. They were not suffered at the court theater to manifest those caprices to which the good-natured public of our day so patiently submits. The court expected something new in the part of Berenice; this had been announced, and the empress reckoned on it.
"Come," said Caffariello to Porporina, "you must decide. This is the first trait of common sense that Corilla has ever shown in her life; let us take advantage of it."
"But I do not know the part," said Consuelo. "I have not studied it; I cannot have it prepared for tomorrow."
"You have heard it; therefore you know it, and you can sing it tomorrow," thundered Porpora. "Come, no faces; let there be an end of the matter; we are only losing time, Mr. Director, you will instruct the orchestra to begin. And then, Berenice, to your place! Come, lay down that music! when the piece has been rehearsed three times, every one ought to know it by heart. I tell you you know it."
"No, tutto, O Berenice," sang Corilla, becoming Ismenia again.
"Tu non apri il tuo cor."
"And now," thought Corilla, who judged of Consuelo by herself, "all that she knows of my adventures will appear nothing in her eyes."
Consuolo, with whose wonderful powers Porpora was well acquainted, sang her part, both music and words, without hesitation. Madame Tesi was so struck with her performance, that she found herself much worse, and had herself conveyed home after the rehearsal of the first act. Next day Consuelo had prepared her costume, gone over her striking positions, as well as repeated the whole, by five o'clock in the evening. Her success was so complete, that the empress said, on leaving the theatre: "That is really an admirable girl: I must positively marry her: I will see about it."
Next day the Zenobia of Metastasio, the music by Predieri, was put in rehearsal. Corilla still persisted in handing over the part of prima donna to Consuelo. Madame Holzbaüer took the second part, and, as she was a better musician than Corilla, the opera went off much better than the other. Metastasio was delighted to find his music, which had been somewhat neglected during the wars, once more regain favor and become the rage in Vienna. He no longer thought of his sufferings; and, urged both by the kindness of Maria Theresa, and the duties of his place, to write new lyric dramas, he prepared himself by the perusal of the Greek and Latin classics, to produce one of those master-pieces which the Italians of Vienna and the Germans of Italy unhesitatingly preferred to the works of Corneille, Shakespeare, Racine, or Calderon.
It is not here, amid these perhaps tedious details, that we shall weary the reader's patience by giving him our opinion of Metastasio. It matters little to him what that opinion may be. We shall merely repeat what Consuelo said privately to Joseph on the subject.
"My poor Beppo, you cannot imagine the difficulty I have in performing those parts which they tell us are so sublime and pathetic. The words to be sure are well arranged, and present themselves readily in singing; but when I think of the personage who utters them, I do not know where to find, not inspiration, but even gravity sufficient to pronounce them. How strange a mistake it is to ascribe the notions of the present day to antiquity, and to describe passions, intrigues, and morals, very apropos perhaps in the memoirs of a Margrave of Bareith, a Baron Trenck, or a Princess of Culmbach, but meaningless and absurd with such characters as Rhadamistus, Berenice, or Arsinoe. When I was a convalescent at the Castle of the Giants, Count Albert often read to me to put me to sleep, but so far from sleeping, I listened most attentively. He read the tragedies of Sophocles, Eschylus, or Euripides, translating them into Spanish without hesitation or obscurity, although it was a Greek text which was before him. He was so conversant with all the different languages, both ancient and modern, that you would have said he read from an excellent translation. He piqued himself on rendering the shades of meaning exactly, that I might become acquainted with the genius of the Greeks. Heavens! what grandeur! what images! what sobriety, and yet what poetry of thought! what energetic, as well as pure and lofty characters! what striking situations, what deep sorrows, what terrible and harrowing pictures, he displayed before my wrapt and wondering eyes! Still weak and nervous from my severe illness, I imagined while listening to him that I was by turns Antigone, Clytemnestra, Medea, and Alectra—not on the stage by the light of foot-lamps, but in frightful solitudes, on the threshold of yawning caverns, amid the columns of ancient temples, or beside dreary watch-fires where they wept the dead and conspired against the living. I heard the wailing of the Trojan women, the cries of the captives of Dardania! The Eumenides danced around me, but to what wild and fantastic music, and infernal cries! Even yet I cannot think of it without a thrill of mingled pain and pleasure which makes me shudder. Never in the theater or in the waking realities of life, shall I experience the same emotions, the same power as then sounded like the mutterings of the distant thunderstorm through my heart and brain. It was then that I first felt myself a tragedian, then first that I conceived types of excellence of which no artist had furnished me with a model. It was then that I comprehended the tragic drama, the poetry of the theater, and as Albert read I composed a strain of music which seemed to express and utter all that I heard. Sometimes I assumed the attitude and expression of the heroines of his drama, and he would then pause, terrified, thinking he saw Andromache or Ariadne before him. Oh! I learned more from those readings in a month, than I should all my life repeating the dramas of Metastasio; and if there were not more sense and feeling in the music than in the words, I should break down under the disgust which I feel, in making the Archduchess Zenobia converse with the Landgrave Eglé, and in hearing the Field-marshal Rhadamistus dispute with Zopyrus the Cornet of Pandors. Oh! it is false, Beppo; false as the light periwig of Caffariello Tiridates, as the Pompadour deshabille of Madame Holzbaüer the shepherdess of Armenia, as the pink calves of Prince Demetrius, or as yonder scenic decorations, which from this distance bear about as strong a resemblance to Asia as the Abbé Metastasio does to old Homer!"
"What you have just said," replied Haydn, "enables me to understand why I feel so much more hope and inspiration when I think of composing oratorios than in writing operas for the theater. In the former, where scenic artifice does not contradict the truth of the sentiment, and where, in an atmosphere all music, soul speaks to soul by the ear and not by the eye, the composer methinks is able to develop all his inspiration, and to carry the imaginations of his auditors into the loftiest regions of thought."
Thus conversing, Joseph and Consuelo, while waiting for the rehearsal, walked side by side along an enormous sheet of canvas, which was that evening to be the River Araxes, but which by the indistinct daylight of the theater, presented only the appearance of an enormous stripe of indigo running between huge stains of ochre, intended to represent the mountains of Caucasus. These scenes, as every one knows, are placed one behind the other so as to be rolled up on cylinders whenever the locality of the drama changes. During the day the actors walk up and down in the space between them, repeating their parts, or conversing on their private affairs, and sometimes spying out the little confidential communications or deep-laid machinations of their fellow-actors, who are perhaps separated from them by an arm of the sea or some public building; while the scene-shifters, sitting or crouching in the dust under the dripping oil, nod lazily on their posts or exchange pinches of snuff with each other.
Happily, Metastasio was not on the opposite banks of the Araxes, while the unsuspecting Consuelo thus vented her artistic indignation to Haydn. The rehearsal commenced. It was the second of Zenobia, and all went on so well that the musicians, according to custom, applauded by tapping the violins with the end of their bows. Predieri's music was charming, and Porpora directed it with more enthusiasm than he was able to command for that of Hasse. The part of Tiradates was one of Caffariello's triumphs, and would have been well conceived if he had not been equipped as a Parthian warrior while the composer made him warble like Celadon, or chatter like Clytander. Consuelo, although finding her part poor and mean when placed in the mouth of a heroine of antiquity, was at least pleased with the agreeable feminine cast of the character. It even seemed to suggest a sort of similarity to her own situation between Albert and Anzoleto; and forgetting the localities, and thinking only of the human sentiments expressed, she felt raised to a pitch of sublimity in this air, whose force and meaning had so often been present to her heart:
"Voi leggete in ogni core;
Voi sapete, O! giusti Dei,
Se non puri, voti miei,
Se innocente è la pietà."
She possessed at this instant the consciousness of true emotion and well-deserved triumph. She did not need Caffariello's look (uninfluenced that day by Tesi's presence), to confirm what she already felt; namely, her capacity to produce an irresistible effect on any audience, and under all circumstances, by so exquisite a union of melody and execution. She immediately became reconciled to her part, to the opera, to her associates, to herself—in a word to the theater, and notwithstanding all the sarcasms which she had so recently lavished on her calling, she could not help experiencing one of those deep-seated, hidden, and powerful emotions which it is impossible for any one but an artist to comprehend, and which compensate in an instant for whole years of toil, suffering, and disappointment.
CHAPTER XCVII
HALF as pupil, half as attendant on Porpora, Haydn, who was most anxious to hear the music, and study the arrangement of operas in all their parts, obtained permission to glide behind the scenes when Consuelo sang. For a couple of days past he remarked that Porpora, at first unwilling to admit him to the theater, had good-humoredly invited him to be present, even before he requested it. The reason was, that events had contributed to change the intentions of the maestro. Maria Theresa, while chattering on the subject of music with the Venetian ambassador, had returned as usual to her matrimomania (as Consuelo termed it), and had expressed to him her wish that this great cantatrice should fix herself permanently at Vienna by marrying the maestro's young pupil. She had made inquiries about Haydn from the ambassador himself, and the latter having assured her that he evinced very great genius, and moreover that he was a good Catholic, her majesty had commissioned him to arrange the marriage, promising at the same time to provide handsomely for the young couple. Corner was delighted with the idea, for he had a strong affection for Joseph, and gave him a small allowance monthly to enable him to pursue his studies. He mentioned the subject in warm terms to Porpora, and the latter fearing that Consuelo would leave the stage in order to marry some nobleman, suffered himself after much opposition (for he would have much preferred his pupil's remaining unmarried), to be persuaded. To strike the blow more securely, the ambassador determined to show him Haydn's compositions, and to inform him that the serenade with which he had been so pleased was his own production. Porpora confessed that they displayed strong evidences of talent, and that with his instructions and assistance he might come to write for the voice; and in short that the marriage of a cantatrice to a composer might be very suitable and advantageous to both parties. The youth of the young couple, and their slender resources, would impose on them the necessity of unremitting labor, and Consuelo would be thus chained to the theater. The maestro surrendered. He had received no reply from Riesenburg any more than Consuelo, and this silence made him dread some opposition to his views, or some frantic project on the part of the young count.
"If I could marry, or at least engage Consuelo to another," thought he, "I should have nothing more to apprehend from that quarter."
The difficulty was to bring Consuelo to this determination. To exhort her to it would only have tended to arouse the idea of resistance. With his Neapolitan acuteness, he said to himself, that the force of circumstances must bring about a change in the sentiments of the young girl. She had already a friendship for Beppo, and Beppo, although he had conquered love in his heart, yet displayed so much zeal, admiration, and devotion toward her, that Porpora might very well imagine that he was violently in love. He thought that by not putting any restraint on his intercourse with her, he would furnish him with opportunities for making himself heard, and that by informing him in proper time and place of the empress' designs and his own, he would impart to him the courage of eloquence and the force of persuasion necessary to his success. He consequently ceased to ill-treat and look down upon him, and gave a free course to their affections, flattering himself that the less he interfered the better affairs would proceed.
Porpora, in thus never doubting of success, committed a great error. He laid Consuelo open to misrepresentation and slander, for no sooner was Joseph seen twice with her behind the scenes than the whole dramatic staff proclaimed her attachment to this young man, and poor Consuelo, innocent and confiding like all upright minds, never dreamed of the danger she was in, nor took any means to avoid it. So from the day on which the last rehearsal of Zenobia took place, all eyes were on the watch, all tongues in motion. In every corner, behind every decoration, the actors, the choristers, and the underlings of all kinds, passed their good-natured or severe, their kind or malignant remarks, on the scandal of this budding intrigue, or on the happiness of the betrothed pair.
Consuelo, wholly absorbed in her part and in her feelings as an artist, saw or heard nothing of all this and suspected no danger. As for the thoughful Joseph, he was so completely taken up with the opera in course of performance, or that which he purposed composing himself, that he heard indeed some passing equivocal remarks, but did not in the least understand them, so far was he from flattering himself with vain hopes. At such times he would raise his head and look around as if to seek who they were leveled at, but not succeeding in his search, and completely indifferent to every thing of the kind, he relapsed into his meditations.
