A little, I said.
He is a traveling singer, she noted. And he also travels as an agent for his king. They are excellent spies, singers, she said. No one thinks to stop them.
There was a commotion in the hall and then the door to the box opened. Shadowed at first was the figure of a woman, her hair piled high on her head and an enormous choker of pearls covering her throat and chest. When the door closed, we could see her more clearly.
Jou-jou, my dear, the Comtesse said. I present to you Giulia Barucci. The greatest whore in Paris. Giulia, this is Jou-jou of the Bal Mabille.
The new arrival smiled at this, as if it were a royal title, and made something of a curtsy before laughing as she stood upright. Enchanté, she said to me, and then she threw herself into a chair.
They then dropped into conversation in rapid Italian. Giulia made occasional nodding glances at me as her eyes swept repeatedly up and down the box and my own figure. She then reached out and touched the emeralds on my ears.
Que bellissima, she said, with a sigh.
I was careful not to reply or even look at my patroness. I was nervous, though, to be introduced that way—was it a joke?
She stood. See you in Baden-Baden, then, she said in clear English to me, and left, her glass nearly untouched.
When the door was shut, the Comtesse asked the waiter to stand outside the box, and then when he was gone, she said, She meant you. I won’t be going.
The opera began.
May I use your opera glasses? I asked.
Of course, she said.
I was curious and excited, but I had also become afraid and, with the glasses, searched the boxes near us as surreptitiously as I could. This was the opera the tenor loved above all others, and as such, it contained the soprano role he most wanted me to learn, that of Leonora, the doomed lover to the trovatore. We’d never seen it performed during my time with him, and if I were still with him, we would have been seated in another of these boxes that night. For this reason, I was sure he was near; he would have to be ill or away from Paris to miss this. But I could not see him and decided to be content: If I could not see him, he likely could not see me, and in the meantime, I was grateful for the chance to decide on the role without him.
I passed her opera glasses back to her.
The curtain rose. Guards sat outside a palace at night, anxious to help their Count di Luna catch the trovatore who had been coming regularly to serenade the Duchess Leonora at night. The Count loved her jealously and, having failed to court her successfully, was anxious to end this interference. The guard captain sang to the guards of the Count’s tragic history to keep them awake—how as a child, the Count’s younger brother fell ill, and the Count’s father blamed a Gypsy and burned her at the stake. After the fire, a child’s bones were found among the Gypsy’s ashes and the brother was missing. It was said the Gypsy’s daughter had kidnapped the sick boy and left him to burn with her mother in revenge. Only the Count’s father was sure his youngest boy was still alive somewhere and charged the Count with finding his younger brother.
But for now, the Count was in love, and his guards were ready to help him.
The curtain closed and reopened to applause. A beautiful young woman in a veil stood in a garden at night, another woman approaching her through the dark, calling for her. When the woman in the veil turned to face us, the applause deepened. Adelina Patti was tonight’s Leonora, the best possible surprise. I had not seen her since she had changed my life with her Lucia. My fears left me; surely this would be the best night of my life.
She began Leonora’s first aria, of a mysterious knight in black armor she’d crowned the victor at a tournament, and described how she fell in love with him then. War had begun shortly thereafter, separating them, and she’d sustained herself on her memories of that day until one night here in the garden she was surprised to hear the song of a troubadour, her name on his lips. When she came to the garden, she saw it was him, the love she’d feared lost.
The night I’d heard her sing as Lucia was nothing compared to this—on that night I had only remembered the music, which moved me. This, however, was my first experience of the ridiculous and beloved thief that is opera—the singer who sneaks into the palace of your heart and somehow enters the stage singing aloud the secret hope or love or grief you hoped would always stay secret, disguised as melodrama; and you are so happy you have lived to see it done. The singer singing to you with the full force of what you feel is transfigured and this transfigures you; you feel as if it were you there in the opera, the opera your story, the story of your life. And so I stared in amazement from the box as Patti sang what was in my heart, what I hoped was my secret future; and in her slow, soaring, searching aria full of surpassing sweetness I found my first real consolation since leaving Compiègne. By the time she began her defiant cabaletta—My fate will not be complete if he is not by my side! If I do not live for him, for him I will die—her final note sustained like a sword held to the sky, the crowd rose to its feet cheering, the flowers raining down on the stage, and I, I caught myself. I had already stood, clutching the edge of the box.
The Count appeared alone then, singing stolidly of his hopes for his love for Leonora. Also of his jealousy. And so I sat.
I knew then I would sing Leonora if I could. I wanted nothing more. I was her, and she was me.
This was, of course, what the tenor had hoped for, what he’d never been able to arrange for me or describe. The roles he had tried to tempt me with were like little crumbs he had laid out for me compared to this. He knew this was the quickening; he knew what I would know after this night: that it is impossible to sing opera if the singer has never felt this.
The song for the entrance of the trovatore, Manrico, began next. It is one of the most beautiful, I think, of the songs there are for men. He is announced first by a harp, which is his lute, heard in the distance as he approaches through the forest at night, intent on Leonora, who listens for him from her window as Count di Luna, on hearing him, hides in the dark garden.
Alone on this earth,
at war with his fate,
one hope in his heart,
of a heart for the troubadour!
If he possesses that heart,
beautiful in its pure faith.
He is greater than any king . . .
The troubadour king!
Leonora rushes to the garden and embraces the Count, not the trovatore, mistaking the one voice for the other, the one man for the other, upsetting both. I knew the story well enough from the tenor; this is a clue that the trovatore is the Count’s long-lost brother, his hated rival for Leonora’s affections, unknown to him. But I knew, even if the tenor had a brother who sang, his voice would not sound like the tenor’s; there could be no mistake.
The tenor was not in the audience because he was on the stage.
You imagine it, I told myself then, for the trovatore was still singing in the distance, unseen. And so I even believed this little lie for an instant more until the moment he stepped into the clearing and removed his mask.
I wondered if he could see me through the dark, sense me here in the box. I glanced at the Comtesse, who held her opera glasses close to her face, intent on the stage. Was this a trap? She betrayed no sign of what I suspected.
If this was a trap, it was a beautiful one.
Never, I silently swore there in the dark. Never will I be on that stage with you, singing this. Never.
The scene ended as Count di Luna and Manrico fought a fierce duel and Leonora threw herself to the ground in despair.