I gestured to the men around me.
Truly, no training in voice at all?
I shook my head and laughed. His interest seemed preposterous.
How . . .
I sang as a girl, I said. And I have seen one opera. Adelina Patti singing in Lucia. I was imitating her.
One opera! You must see more. And with me. I will arrange it with Odile.
Odile, at the mention of her name, appeared at his shoulder.
Chérie, what you have hidden here I cannot begin to explain, he said.
Don’t explain, she said, it’s too boring. Tell me what you want with her instead.
She must go to the opera, he said. She must sing opera. I will see her on that stage if I must set her down there myself. We start this week. She must see Cora Pearl! I have tickets.
She will be delighted to join you, Odile said, and smiled at me approvingly.
Six
AND SO IT WAS I went to see the legendary courtesan Cora Pearl perform during her infamous two-week run as Cupid in Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers. And began my education as a singer.
We arrived that night to join a long line of carriages for the theater, each disembarking guests who practically bounded up the steps of the Ga?té. The tenor had boasted of having these tickets, for the evening had sold out, as had the entire run. This meant little to me. I arrived largely ignorant as to Cora’s legend, the scarcity of tickets, or sold-out runs. Nothing in the cirque had prepared me. This was my introduction.
As I sat in the box with my new friend, I could not help but be fascinated by the fevered anticipation in the crowd. To the audience that night, the opera had a single star, despite her slight role. She did not appear until the second act. The opera began, but the murmurs continued—they would remain until Cora appeared.
I had exited the carriage self-consciously, dressed dutifully in what Odile and I could muster for my opera finery, which, I knew from the scene around me, was not quite fine enough, but there had been no time to order better—it was a navy velvet, and the opera bodice had a white lace collar at the neck and machine-embroidered white roses spreading across the front that I hoped made it look better than it was. It was the finest dress I had ever owned, and yet I was not quite proud of it.
I had no jewelry then except a new choker I liked, a pale gray-green enamel perfume locket worn on a black ribbon. I liked it as it looked like something from the sea, almost a natural pearl, and I knew these ribbon chokers were very chic then—the Empress Eugénie wore them, sometimes as many as ten or more, each with a different locket, though she would never have worn them to the opera.
The locket carried a few drops of Eau de Lubin, a gift from this man—he liked it very much and I knew to reapply it at least once before the evening ended. The scent was rose, musk, and oranges; and the richness of it at my throat was, to me, a little like wearing a gem, if secretly—like a ring turned toward your palm. In the short time I’d worn it, I’d learned to recognize it on others and to notice when it acted as a signal as you passed by someone on the stairs of the opera house or as you handed your cloak to the cloakroom; if you wore it, the person encountering you simply understood you to belong.
It was the atmosphere of wealth and security I did not know I had longed for, not just to surround me, but to belong to me; and I enjoyed it, too.
Orphée aux Enfers, the opera we saw that evening, is an opéra-bouffe-féerie, a comic farce on the myth of Orpheus—the bereft singer of myth enters the underworld to retrieve his wife only out of a sense of obligation. He finds she has fallen in love with the King of Death. She does not want to return. Gradually, despite the lack of interest in the other performers, the jokes won over the audience, and I nearly forgot, as the first act closed, why we were there.
The roar began from below and above before I could see her. Her hair was a mass of blond curls; her legs at first looked bare in their stockings, shapely, almost stark in their erotic intensity. She carried a bow and wore the most incredible high-heeled boots; as she walked, you could see the soles were made from diamonds. Pearls and diamonds covered her neck, in a sort of ridiculous collar, and the rest of her was a figure made of diamonds also. She glowed and flashed in the gaslight. As she turned so the audience could see all of her and walked toward the back of the stage, little wings, I noticed as she turned, dangled from her back comically. A bow rested against her thigh.
She glanced up into the boxes, as if to take attendance; and noticing my companion, she offered him a sly wink and a wave that made the audience laugh. He smiled back at her and blew her a kiss. And then she sang her song, looking directly at him for the first bars and notching her bow before turning to regard the crowd.
The crowd was silent as she sang, as if speaking might obstruct the view; and her plaintive, off-key voice struggled through its few bars.
She was dreadful, but not one of them laughed. She was the most powerful woman in Paris in that instant.
Paris, which, when I looked close, was a vast opéra-bouffe-féerie—and you did not know your role, I think, until it was too late, and the crowd was laughing at the joke you had uttered in all innocence. Which is to say there was another part of the evening I remembered for a very long time, and it began like this.
We will go to pay a visit to her after, the tenor said, as we stood. She is receiving friends.
§
She threw open her own door and kissed me twice as I entered, smirking as if I had told her a joke. Even without her diamond suit, she dazzled. She wore an evening gown of a loose pink silk toile and her golden stage curls were gone—a shocking red mass of hair had replaced them. Up close, I could see she had the pale eyebrows of a blond, painted over to match her hair.
Eau de Lubin, I bathe in it! she shouted past my shoulder, as she drew her head back and looked me over. She had a loud Cockney accent and spoke English and French mixed together. Un plaisir! She took my hand and began to pull me up her grand staircase, littered as it was with celebrants. Our mutual friend dragged along behind. Chérie, she said to me then, dropping her voice, tell me, how much do you charge? You can tell me, whisper it here, and she pointed to her delicate ear.
Our audience on the stairs smiled drunkenly from below. You can’t afford her! she shouted down at one as he reached up. You still owe me! Look down! Look away from us. He looked down.
Again she asked, How much?
I lied to her, and said, Two thousand francs.
Chérie, it’s good that you are that price. Because then he can afford us both, and we can be friends! With that, she pulled me into her dining room.
I turned to see my friend behind me following along, a somewhat hurt expression on his face. Cora turned back with a grin. You see? You bring her here to flaunt her to me and now she’s more expensive, just like that. I do believe it’s all your fault. Cora pulled me back to her side. You’re so pretty, not in the ordinary way at all. You must allow nothing, and I mean nothing, to happen with our friend here until he can bring you to the opera with better than an enamel locket. He can afford it. Come with me. You! There! Give this petit ange something; are we still in champagne?
She did this constantly, turning to people you weren’t sure were there or in her sight, and she would yell to them directly as if she’d been speaking to them all along.
A cool glass of champagne came into my hand.
This way! she shouted, I understood, at me.