Free 6 - Whispers of Vivaldi by Beverle Graves Myers

behind. For a moment we bubbled with laughter, questions, and overlapping replies. Then we fell silent, entwined in each other’s arms. Now I was really home, my nose filled with the scent of orange blossoms from her skin and hair.
    Benito hovered in the foyer. He knew my moods well enough to realize that someone else would be undressing me that night, but his years in service had accustomed him to ask, “Will you require me, Master?”
    There was only one thing I required.
    I dismissed Benito to his bed, and Liya and I went happily to ours.

Chapter Six
    The next morning, after a hasty breakfast of bread and fruit, I set off for the Teatro San Marco on my own. The sky above was an even gray, as opalescent as the inside of an oyster shell, and the air was as moist as could be without actually raining.
    Once at the theater, I shook my damp cloak in the deserted lobby and pushed through the swinging double door padded with crimson velvet. Within the cavernous, horseshoe-shaped auditorium, five tiers of boxes rose into gloom. On the sloping floor, the empty gondoliers’ benches sketched a murky herringbone pattern. Down front, on the distant stage, the glow from footlights and wing lights illuminated two figures against a familiar backdrop: a landscape of wooded, rocky hills that seemed to disappear into a cerulean sky streaming with clouds so fluffy they’d put Heaven to shame.
    Despite the pastoral scene, I sensed a roiling unease in my theatrical home, as if those snow-white clouds concealed a rumble of distant thunder. Once I’d reached the stage, I understood why. Giuseppe Balbi, our violinist turned composer, was knee-deep in argument with the singer Majorano. Balbi was actually shaking his instrument as if he meant to use it as a club.
    The violinist was a smallish man, with a doughy, rounded face that usually displayed an affable expression, and slender, delicately boned hands that could mark the orchestra’s time signatures with inspiring flourishes. I was surprised to find him in such a rage.
    Balbi yelled at Majorano, “What in the seventh circle of Hell is wrong with you? When did you become such a prize ass?”
    The singer was staring daggers at Balbi, lips clamped together, arms stiff at his sides. Then Majorano caught sight of me and burst out, “Tito, Signor Balbi insists that I act like a bumpkin. A clod!”
    “No, no…like this.” Balbi whipped his fiddle under his chin and played a few bars of the huntsman’s showpiece aria from The Duke . “There, that is how it’s done. You are not a clod,” Balbi retorted, “but you must attack the tune with a jaunty flair. You must give a sense of the absurd idea that a huntsman is going to live in a palace.” Balbi appeared calmer, but his tone was as starchy as his wide white collar. He sent me a pleading look from protuberant gray eyes. “Am I not right, Tito?”
    Before I could reply, Majorano crossed his arms and assumed an expression of wounded vanity. Ah, our noble young star was resisting the role of a peasant. I’d feared this. But why was Balbi conducting rehearsal? Where was Maestro Torani?
    I jumped when someone tapped my shoulder. Aldo, the stage manager, had crept up behind me on the felt-soled boots he wore so as not to make noise during performances. “The old man’s been waiting for you—wants to see you right away. He’s on the boil about something.”
    I advised Balbi and Majorano to take a break—as far away from each other as possible. As the violinist repaired to the orchestra pit and the singer to his dressing room, I turned my attention to Aldo. Bullet-headed, stocky, and overbearing by nature, the stage manager had the Herculean task of keeping everything backstage running smoothly. Aldo and I had fought a few spectacular battles over the years but had lately settled into an indifferent truce.
    “What’s the latest crisis?” I asked, not overly concerned. Preparing an opera always amounted to one calamity after another. It