Free 4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight by Beverle Graves Myers Page B

continued over Octavia’s increasingly strident commands: “Set it here. No, not there, you fool. I’ll be too warm. Put it over here. No, this is the spot to catch the breeze—you must move the settee.”
    The duet concluded on a subdued note. Before dismissing Grisella and Emilio, Karl mumbled a few obvious corrections. I expected him to mention several others, but something had happened to the composer. As Carmela took her place, Karl leafed through his score distractedly. The adroit master of the company was once more the moody artiste.
    At least Carmela was in good voice, and seasoned enough to handle her aria without much direction from Karl. Her bold, vivid soprano was the perfect instrument to convey the frustrations of Irene, the princess of Trebizond who had been callously rejected by Tamerlano. She also showed herself an accomplished actress with artful expressions and sweeping gestures that could have given a deaf man the sense of her words. I rubbed my chin thoughtfully; holding my own would not be easy when I shared the stage with Carmela.
    Several times I glanced across the salon toward our hostess. Octavia plied her needle with an air of rampant gentility, but her promise to imitate the house mouse didn’t last long. The concluding note of the aria had barely faded when she popped off the settee.
    Octavia’s heels tapped a staccato beat across the floor. “Karl, my lamb, you know I don’t like to interfere, but must Signora Costa be so loud?”
    The composer cleared his throat. “It’s an impassioned aria, expressing the anger of a wronged woman.”
    “Yes, but for female singers, the common vogue favors more… restraint. The public wants their lovely nightingales to chirp, not shriek. Don’t you agree?”
    “I’m afraid I don’t.”
    “Charm, Karl, feminine grace.”
    The composer steeled himself like a schoolboy expecting to be boxed on the ear. “Carmela is delivering the aria exactly as I asked.”
    “Really, now. I understand Venetian audiences just a bit better than you. Vincenzo keeps a box at both the Teatro San Marco and the San Moise. I’ve had my eye on the nobility for years, and I know what will win their approval.”
    “ Il Gran Tamerlano is not just for Venice. It will open there, to be sure, but soon it will play in London and Paris. They expect fire from all Italian singers, men or women.”
    Octavia tapped a furious toe. “London and Paris are nothing to me. I’m mounting this opera for Venice’s benefit. Above all, I’m lending my name to it. Think how humiliated I’ll be if people say Signora Dolfini’s soprano trumpets like an elephant and spreads her jaws as wide as an Egyptian crocodile.”
    Carmela had been following this exchange with one hand on the rim of the harpsichord. Octavia’s comparison to wild beasts propelled her away from the instrument. “I’ll have you know that my singing has been praised from Lisbon to St. Petersburg.”
    “Perhaps by moonstruck students or rabble who know no better,” Octavia snapped.
    “By the Czarina, herself. I was a favorite at her court for months. When I left Russia last spring, Anna Ivanova presented me with a pair of pearl-studded garters and a purse full of rubles.”
    The women continued to bicker, yowling like angry cats, Octavia towering over Carmela by a head. Karl’s melancholy face sank lower and lower behind the harpsichord’s music stand, and the rest of the company began to stretch and chat as players tend to do during any rehearsal interruption, however contentious. Jean-Louis left his gazettes and spoke with Grisella in low, intense tones. Was he giving her a personal critique?
    I didn’t join in any of their conversations. Carmela’s mention of St. Petersburg forced me to confront something I’d been trying to ignore. I strolled over to the loggia doors and gazed toward the lawn dozing under the gentle autumn sun. The lake beyond twinkled as if diamonds floated on its lazy waters, and the tops