Part One ended with Dr. Kerr & Cameron arriving in Orient, IA, the town where Trazmo disappeared in 1983. They got a chilly reception from the current sheriff, Betty Diddon, and discovered the Express Motel, on the edge of town, hasn't changed much in over thirty years. Dr. Ulnar Femorsen, the county medical examiner, has estimated the age of the skeleton the boys found on Monday to be somewhere between mid-40s and his 60s. So that means it's probably not Trazmo's skeleton since he was in his early-20s when he disappeared. But what about this wrinkle: what if Trazmo, hiding out near-by, Kerr wonders, died only ten years ago, in his mid-40s?
= = = = = = =
– PART TWO –
CHAPTER 9
Not that I'd be doing anything differently at home in Doylestown or staying with Tom in the wilds of almost-coastal Maine, or longing for whatever we'd be doing if we were still in Venice, but I felt badly for Cameron not being with friends doing whatever friends that age would do on a Tuesday night. I'm not sure I remembered what I'd been doing at that age except it probably involved hanging out with friends like Tom Purdue or trying to fit in at my first college teaching job. While I was dealing with my small if not small-minded college in New England, the youngest on Cutler University's music faculty, Tom had landed at the larger and more prestigious Tansonville College in Indiana. Our letters, when we had time to write them in those days before e-mail, were filled with doubts, misgivings, and inadequacies.
Neither of us had been particularly lacking in confidence before we left the cocoon of grad school respected by the extended circle of friends and fellow students where we felt, mostly, comfortable and equal. But on our own, lacking any immediate support, we were now the newest on the Food Chain, freshmen all over again. And Tom arrived at Tansonville with his girlfriend Susan, a mid-winter wedding planned for the semester break his first year there. As if the pressures of adjustment to Real Life weren't challenging enough already.
Poor Susan, I thought, looking back on it. While Tom had his teaching and his students, balancing his already fragile creativity, the challenge of his fitting into the faculty pecking order was difficult enough. With no built-in circle of friends, Susan's loneliness wouldn't ease up even after she landed a job in the secretarial pool. It was only later Tom understood his colleagues' welcoming façade underscored more serious expectations he constantly had to prove himself worthy. Susan, bored around other faculty wives, found herself constantly pushed toward the margins.
His letters never mentioned those details – not until we talked last year – focusing more about his feeling inadequate to the challenges of teaching, much less composing or being a husband and, eventually, a father. One thing I did recall from those letters: any mention of Susan made her sound more a roommate than a wife.
While the only thing express about the motel had been its name, the diner next door was not to be outdone, not that you'd name a restaurant – and I use the term loosely – “Molasses.” “The Dining Car,” popularly called “The Express Diner,” run by Buck's cousin, Hank McQueen, was mired in a similarly nostalgic time-warp. When you're in an expensive place eating a well-prepared meal, enjoying yourself, the expanse of time is part of the ambiance. When you're considering subtleties between “inexpensive” and “cheap,” time can't go fast enough.
The waitress, conversely named Joy, was unfortunately slow in more ways than one. The cook was apparently moribund, the meal late, the meat overcooked and the vegetables boiled beyond an inch of their lives. A TV behind the counter, set to Fox News, speaking of ambiance, made conversation a challenge unless you felt like shouting.
In lieu of anything else “on the town,” seeking refuge in our room to recuperate from the experience of dining out, Cameron, after a quick shower, settled onto the bed to read his book. He was now beyond the halfway point, I noticed, and soon, maybe, I could ask him about it in more detail. I settled for the so-called stuffed chair, angling it more to face the wall which separated us from #12, Trazmo's Room. Beyond any interest in my book, I soon became lost in my thoughts.
And my thoughts soon drifted away from Trazmo, of what Sheriff Diddon could possibly find in his room after three decades, even of the body in Femorsen's morgue most likely someone other than Trazmo. If no one else was missing, who did those old bones belong to and how had he come by Trazmo's boots? I had thought, briefly, what Phillips Hawthorne's life might've been like, assuming he wasn't dead, wherever he might have disappeared to. For that matter, what would make him choose to disappear, assuming he did? It wouldn't be the first time someone old enough to have outlived “prodigyhood” had vanished from public view for whatever reason, the public or critics or agents, always fickle, having grown tired of them. What about those reviews of young performers and promising composers who've “disappeared”? “What's happened to them?” More importantly, I wonder, “why?”
To be honest, glancing over at Cameron when he shifted his position on the bed and turned a page made me wonder what Tom's life was like the night he'd spent in this room. What had he thought about – probably not Phillips Hawthorne in the next room. What did he and his one-night roommate discuss? What was his name – Perry Hardcastle, something like that? (No, Harcole, I think.) Both composers had spent two weeks cooped up at the colony: did they spend the night still deep in shop talk?
Cameron looked up and for that split second we made eye contact.
“What...?” He set the book aside, stretching his arms.
“Sorry,” I said, and tried not to laugh. “You were so quiet, I thought you'd fallen off to sleep, or meditated yourself into some remote parallel universe; and then suddenly I saw you'd moved.”
He got up and padded his way to the bathroom. “I'm not sure that dinner is sitting too well with me.” He flushed the toilet, washed his hands, then padded back toward the bed.
“So, not exactly the most exciting Tuesday night you've ever spent, I'm guessing?”
Cameron chuckled. “Yeah, but I'm enjoying the quiet.”
“Shh, remember, after someone says that in the movies, all hell breaks loose.”
Unconcerned, Cameron doffed the rest of his clothes and started his evening exercises.
Just then, my phone burbled, signaling a text.
Cameron stopped in mid-stretch, hands high above his head, and looked over expectantly.
“Ah, speaking of all hell,” I said, “what fresh nonsense is this?” as I fished the phone out of my pocket. Had it not been so deathly still in the room, I would have missed it, the sound muffled by a handkerchief. Naturally, if I'd received this mid-concert, the noise would've reverberated throughout the hall.
As I fumbled to open it, Cameron, curious, stood looking over my shoulder, ready if over-eagerness trumped my general technical ineptitude.
And there it was, the text rec'd icon. “I wonder who it's from?”
Next, the obvious question was would I be able to open it without accidentally deleting it before I'd actually read it?
“Maybe it's an ad from the Dining Car flogging their Breakfast Cornpone Special?”
“Spam in the truest sense of the word.”
Since I've never been good with phones, as Cameron was tired of noting, he often hovered nearby, especially with something unexpected, since if I don't lose them, I'd discovered ingenious ways to destroy them. Recently, he'd set me up with this flip phone through Senior Cellular, cheaper to replace, presumably less confusing, even for me.
“Oh,” I said, “it's from James Newhouse,” surprised as much by receiving it as by not having deleted it, so far. When I tapped “options” instead of “OK,” it came up with “delete thread.”
Grabbing the phone before I could hit “OK” – the same button on one screen was “speaker” but on another was “dismiss” – Cameron retraced my progress to the initial text message, and handed it back.
“Now,” he said, his patience a bit strained, “tap 'OK' – 'options' doesn't open it, 'OK' does. Maybe you tapped it twice...”
“Maybe,” I thought, “this phone moves slower than the one I'd had before. Maybe my tapping finger had already moved on to the second command before the screen changed.” It wasn't worth arguing about.
Even after a couple of months, I still hadn't gotten used to this phone, confused why so many things were different. Maybe they wanted to make a phone for seniors with slower response times. Of course, Beethoven never wrote a sonata quite the same way Haydn had, so why should computer technology progress any differently?
Maybe I'd drafted my request about the Doylestown Letter – the daPonte Letter, the Speranzani-daPonte Correspondence, even “The Salieri Letter” sounded better – as a way of feeling I was doing something on the Salieri Front, rather than sitting around Tom's cabin twiddling thumbs, placing this discovery on hold and impatient for Vole's complete copy to arrive. I had a pretty clear photo image of the first page – not sure how kindly Mr. Vole would take to that – so I transcribed the thing and couldn't wait to send it to someone.
Before, I'd been thinking I would wait till we returned to Venice, then show it either to Newhouse or maybe J.P., ask if they'd translate it for me or recommend someone else who could. If James could come up with something credible, fine, but either way I should probably ask J.P. for his opinion also.
I'd debated sending it to both, to see if one confirmed the other or they agreed on key words and subtleties. After all, two opinions were better than me working with on-line translation software, assuming there's even an on-line Venetian dictionary somewhere that wouldn't give me the equivalent of “My hovercraft is full of eels.”
Once I'd completed Newhouse's draft, Monday's call from Sheriff Diddon changed everything and then I found myself flying off to Iowa. Who knew for how long? Impatient, I'd figured “why wait?” and hit “Send.”
Since it's almost 9:00 here, after some quick calculations and remembering to account for being in Central Time, it was obvious the night life in Venice must be better than it was in Orient.
“Well, apparently somebody's having a better Tuesday night than we are,” I joked. “I wonder what he's doing up at 4am.” When I'd suggested a walk after dinner, Cameron, less concerned about getting lost, wondered what time Orient might close its sidewalks.
Cameron stepped back, pulling his pants on as if out of sudden modesty.
“Could he see us through the phone with just a text,” I asked. Cameron assured me, buttoning his shirt, he couldn't. “Well, don't worry, then. Besides, if James could see you, he'd be delighted.”
His expression probably meant that's what worried him. I recalled he hadn't felt entirely comfortable when left alone with our host.
The text, however, proved more cryptic than I would've thought, under the circumstances. “Why is James sending me a coded message?” This was followed by “and who was he hiding it from and why?”
“Maybe his night-life's a little too good,” Cameron wondered, “and he's completely stoned? Not a bad idea for a Tuesday night.”
“bgdbj dmahj.”
What kind of a code was this? With Frieda and Schnellenlauter's convoluted substitution codes, there was always a key.
“Or maybe it's the traditional fat-fingered code, the bane of modern cellphone users?”
“If it's the letter-before substitution, that's 'c-h-e-c-k e-l-z-i-k'... Is 'elzik' some special app?” (Like I need every app everybody's ever downloaded...)
“Wait,” Cameron said, reaching for my phone, “don't reply: could be a hacker.”
“With James? But who would be...? Uhm, okay,” I reconsidered, “I'd just talked to Bond on this phone the other day.”
Cameron handed my phone back. Whoever it was might already be on our tail here in Iowa: the Aficionati or SHMRG?
“Not to mention 'why?' As I said,” sighing loudly, “'speaking of all hell'...”
Another burble meant another text had arrived – there's the icon – also from James. This one I managed to open without incident.
“Srry,” it said, “2drunk2txt = check email :-)”
We both sighed with relief.
“Not that that should necessarily spell the end of our concerns about surveillance by SHMRG or the Aficionati,” I warned Cameron.
Cameron pulled the laptop out of his knapsack and fired it up – as usual, he was the “Keeper of the Interwebs” – as I continued worrying about the possible repercussions of letting our guard down, which in turn reminded me I hadn't contacted either LauraLynn or Vector yet, updating them about our sudden change in location. It's unlikely Tom's business with Trazmo would be of interest to either SHMRG or the Aficionati, but knowing our whereabouts might help them with other issues, particularly regarding Toni's safety, despite Vector's best efforts.
I asked Cameron why not use the motel's wi-fi – “wouldn't it be faster?”
“I doubt the manager's savvy enough to hack into our system,” he said, “but who knows who Dr. Piltdown works for.”
No sooner had I started reading James' e-mail over Cameron's shoulder than another burble indicated another text, also from Newhouse: “recvd?”
Cameron looked up at the new burble so I showed him the text. “Received?” he read as if thinking I needed some help with the abbreviation. “Ol' Jim's being rather impatient tonight, isn't he?”
If “Ol' Jim” was ten years older than me, I wasn't sure I should be offended by Cameron's eternally youthful perspective.
Taking my time – one click meant 'p,' two 'q,' and three 'r,' the major reason I rarely texted – I replied, “Riaws.”
About ten seconds later, James answered: “Riaws??”
“Yes, reading it as we speak.”
And I was trying to, honestly, but between his texts and my back pain acting up from stooping over Cameron's shoulder – once he had opened my e-mail account, we traded places, which might help – it was easy to be distracted, since it looked like it was a fairly long e-mail, the equivalent of several pages. Considering how few typos there were as I began reading his chatty introduction, I gathered James wrote most of it earlier, unless his typing would gradually deteriorate into chaos as his night-life quickly escalated.
I scrolled down to get some impression of its length which seemed unending until I saw at the bottom his attachment was a PDF marked Doc1Letter_Trans, not the jpeg of the letter I'd sent. And quite frankly, expecting this would merely be an acknowledgment he'd received it, the temptation was immediately to open the attachment.
Back to the beginning, I started reading it out loud. “Terry, got your request – not sure I'm best man for job – never one to back down from challenge, so I'll give it a whack. Venetian dialect has its own quirks, and very different from modern Italian – but I hear it among shop-keepers and the servants. There are nuances I can see that may resemble differences between modern and 18th Century Italian which I am familiar with. But you should run it by some linguistic scholars just to be sure.
“It reminds me how back in the day when I'd first moved to Italy and Lady Mina” – (that's Wilhelmina, Frieda's sister and Vexilla's mother, I explained parenthetically) – “used to call people from Venice 'Venutians.' (With her German accent, 'Venice' and 'Venus' sounded identical.) Reg” – (Vexilla's father) – “recalled people from nearby Ogilvy's Marsh were called 'Marshians.' Which confused poor Henry” – Reginald's nephew – “who was 7 when his parents were talking about H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and he'd asked why people from Ogilvy's Marsh were running around destroying Surrey.”
Cameron and I both laughed. I skimmed over the remainder and decided to skip reading the rest of it out loud.
“Anywho,” James concluded, “I asked Mario, a native Venutian, to check it over.”
Hmm. Mario the Butler was also a Ciapollo... I looked at Cameron and wondered if that was really a good idea.
= = = = =
May this letter find you well, if it finds you at all as I haven't written since you left for America. Imagine! 50 years have passed since our Dear Maestro arrived in a Vienna a penniless student from Venice just like I was almost 30 years ago, and he was so kind – as were you.
And poor Mozart, gone now almost 25 years. Giovanni and Figaro are still smiling though my own operas are barely noticed – can you believe: ten children! Alas, Salieri's have long since dissolved into shadows.
I looked around the assembled guests, celebrating Dear Maestro, so many I knew from my distant youth” – (Speranzani was what... 42?) – “and who of us might ever become as famous as the Great Salieri? In the end, isn't Genius really the gift we are given while Talent is only the box it comes wrapped in?
Maestro told me he does miss you 'now and then' and wondered what ever happened to you. 'If you write to him, would you please tell him I send greetings?' And so, I do.
'Ah, Mozart's success with The School for Lovers,' he wondered next. 'What could I have possibly done with it any better?'
That day still annoys him when he mentioned in passing your new opera was not going well, his muse eluding him. (In truth, he was frustrated working with you after that nasty Bee Business.)
Immediately, he told me later, it was too late to take it back. 'Perhaps,' he hoped, 'the Emperor won't hear this.' But someone, likely a mere shadow backstage, had heard him muttering this. Who?
Well, his Majesty heard! – instead of saying, 'I'm sure she'll find you,' quipped 'Let's see what Mozart can do with it.'
There was no mistaking the acid humor in our Emperor's tone if you had seen the look on poor Salieri's face.
And just like that, the damage was done. It was impossible to protest.
That night, with too much wine, Maestro wondered if you had already hinted how your libretto would be better with Mozart, some passing thought Mozart!! would do the Emperor's pet project the right justice. It all happened so quickly, he said, as if thought out in advance. Some plot against him, he was quite [illegible].
You know how politics behind the curtains work – you've experienced it often, yourself. 'And Mozart is an outsider, competition – an upstart!' Then he swore me, his Fedele Destromano as you dubbed me, to secrecy.
(“His Fedele Destromano,” Salieri's faithful right-hand! There it is! The letters from the Legnago library will prove this is Benedetto Speranzani!)
And in all those years, my friend, have I kept this secret with me, lips sealed, from that day to this.
(I scrolled down with the impatience of one desperate to turn a page.)
“Not ever have I told anyone about The School's New Year's Eve rehearsal, Mozart laughing quietly with his friend, Herr Puchberg: 'Salieri is so angry the Emperor has taken the opera away from him! And now,' I heard Mozart whisper, 'I hear he is determined...'”
= = = = =
“Do you have the rest?” James concluded. “Quite the cliff-hanger!”
Cliff-hanger, indeed!
A fortissimo “fuck!” not even the most amateurish hacker within twenty miles could've missed resounded through the room, taking several ounces of my control not to toss the laptop against the wall. It was a good idea Cameron grabbed his computer, pulling it out of my reach, while I took many deep breaths.
Meanwhile, he opened the PDF attachment, a line-by-line parallel translation in James' crabbed handwriting, like he was trying to imitate Speranzani's. Good, yes, but if that's all there was, that was all there was.
The excitement of reading this combined with the anxiety over not having heard from Mr. Vole would no doubt indicate a sleepless night for one old soul on the outer reaches of Orient, Iowa. There were so many things to imagine – what came next; what was Salieri “determined” about? – so many questions to be answered. Whatever Mozart may have assumed Salieri was planning, was it something Speranzani had known about, something Salieri had mentioned to him, perhaps only in passing, in jest? Or had Mozart, paranoid genius, imagined it?
And, yes, it hadn't escaped me that in 1816 Speranzani was now in his forties, or that Salieri, looking back on a career most of his students presumed was already over, had been 66. Subsequently inescapable was the realization Tom and I both turned 66 this year, whatever the verdict on our careers might be.
This reminded me of that old cartoon from Grove's Dictionary which I'd enlarged into a poster for my office at Cutler, an underwater seascape cross-section with numerous composers' names inscribed on mountains beneath the surface plus a few islands, some towering above the others, the best known well above sea-level, others largely forgotten now, below. Of the ones above sea-level, some, like Salieri, barely broke the surface, dwarfed by volcanoes behind them labeled Beethoven or Mozart, many once popular composers like Spontini or Weigl having disappeared beneath shifting tides.
We'll never know how many “C-Level” composers were out there, their names forgotten, their music, unperformed for ages, crumbled to dust, or “D-Level” craftsmen, anonymous carpenters in the shops, good workers but nothing special, once unearthed discarded for lack of interest, unless attaining footnote status in some fastidious tome like Collegnano's Salieri and His Times. Capable of rubbing two chords together to create something remotely musical beyond the average person's unschooled, untalented abilities, all those apprentices were once dubbed “gifted” as if preordained for a career in music (“Millionen”)...
Set aside by this “gift,” studying hard, filling out their assignments diligently, they still lacked enough “talent” to reach the “C-Levels,” maybe finding acceptance as Master Craftsmen in this field they'd been chosen for. But most of them lacked the imagination to be regarded among the Best, much less the “genius” to become An Immortal.
My students, given their innocence and inexperience, viewed the disappearance of certain composers as a trick of Fate because they just weren't as good as Beethoven, rather than on artistic short-comings beyond their control. They found this depressing, advice they should give up now because the odds they could ever succeed were stacked against them. But didn't the answer depend on how they defined “success”? Was it more important to be the next Beethoven or just another well-respected composer bringing pleasure to their listeners and insights to their students?
Instead of inspiring them, I was accused of nipping their dreams in the bud, but maybe some of them needed that – most of them could benefit from a reality check. “You're already 18, and by now Mozart would've written this,” and then I'd play his Symphony No. 25 in G Minor. Of course it's depressing...
“That's the thing,” I told them, “it's not like we know from the start we're not going to become another Mozart – there's still the chance it could happen – but maybe not necessarily another Mozart...” I felt like a priest urging a wavering parishioner who's having a crisis of faith to hang on to his dreams.
“Maybe it's a little like Calvinist predestination where only so many – or so few – are going to be received into Heaven. If you work hard enough, maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones.”
Beethoven knew he was already famous, his works performed and well-received across Europe – did he know his 1st Symphony had been performed in Kentucky by Johann Heinrich when he had recently finished his 7th? While his self-confidence sounds more like arrogance to us, could he have written the 9th or those last quartets without it? And whatever pride Mozart may have felt about his talent or his works, to us his music happened presumably without effort. He knew he was “better,” but would his future fame have surprised him?
Beethoven and Mozart continued to create while unaware what the future had in store for successful contemporaries like Salieri or Weigl. Today, we abuse terms like “genius” or “originality,” focusing on “competition” and “posterity.” What would've happened if Schubert, given his usual bundle of insecurities, had known success beyond the circle of his loyal friends?
“Look, Terry,” Cameron was saying, as he scrolled down through my unread e-mails.
True, living another twenty or thirty years wouldn't've hurt Schubert, either, my thoughts continued: perhaps that's the Trick of Fate.
“What...?”
I continued with the usual exceptions: not every composer needs Wagner's massive ego...
“Here's an e-mail from Toni – came in earlier.”
“'Greetings from England.' From England! It came in while we were at dinner.” I noticed it wasn't on the encrypted account.
“Is everything okay?”
Cameron opened it and slid the laptop back toward me.
“Hi, Uncle Terry” – (I liked how she regarded me as more than just a teacher) – “back in England, arrived Sunday night. Had audition today for Amadeus already in rehearsal. Long story, began in Legnago.”
We'd been talking about Salieri and whether or not he'd be remembered at all if it had been just his music.
“I checked the website” – (I assumed she meant the Surrey Royal Theater Company in Guildford which she'd spelled 'Surt-C' – “they still had some smaller roles to fill, so I decided to go for it. I've got lines and action and everything, not just a costumed walk-on poser! I'll be one of the Venticelli – court gossips!
“Dad” – (I loved how she's already referring to them as Mom and Dad) – “decided to stay in Italy, await our return.”
“We're in luck,” I said, “maybe we can still resume our Italian holiday!”
While I sat back, frustrated, Toni's e-mail aside, my head spun with possibilities – if that's what the Emperor told Salieri, then Constanze's right; how heated did the rivalry get between Salieri and her husband? Cameron tapped away at his computer, his face illuminated by the ghostly glimmer from the screen, determined to keep himself occupied. Was he feeling frustrated because he's realized it's too late to discover maybe he really doesn't have any talent to unlock? Was continuing to hang around me not the best thing for his future?
“The Letter” could be an important breakthrough in research about this “cold case,” one that, already 225 years old, still lacked enough evidence to bring it to trial: could this be the smoking gun? Instead, I'm stuck in this crazy goose chase in Iowa, but it's a promise to a friend: “The Letter” will keep.
“I don't understand: why this opera,” Cameron began suddenly, shutting down his laptop, “why Cosí rather than Figaro or Don Giovanni? I mean, as the supposèd flashpoint for this feud between Salieri and Mozart? Compared to the other two and their wide-ranging, universal themes, it seems insignificant. I mean, okay, yes, the music's pleasant enough...”
“Oh, it had nothing to do with that.” Mozart may have been bold setting Beaumarchais' play, but Salieri had collaborated directly with Beaumarchais for his Tarare, even more open about political ideas than Figaro.
And Don Giovanni, I pointed out, was just a re-hash of earlier “Don Juan Plots” which only added one more opera to the repertoire of similar plots, some, like Salieri's Talismano, with supernatural elements. “Mozart's seems such a grand – unique – accomplishment to us today mostly because we've lost sight of what it was modeled on.”
Before Cosí, they were competing to see whose opera got the better box office – “no change from the movie industry, today” – but this time, they were competing for the Emperor's favor, his pet project.
“More importantly,” I added, “it was the only one they competed on directly. If what Constanze told the Novellos is true, that the Emperor took it away from Salieri and handed it to Mozart...”
“And that's what Speranzani says, proving Constanze's statement.”
“But did Salieri 'give up on it' or just have momentary 'writer's block'?”
This “Bee Business” Speranzani mentioned had been a diplomatic problem that started in March between daPonte as the court poet writing librettos for the Imperial opera and Salieri being the director of the company. It created little fires among the singers Salieri had to deal with, including pitting daPonte's mistress, La Ferrarese, against Salieri's, Cavalieri.
“We know he and daPonte were collaborating on a new opera by the autumn of 1789 – La Cifra, premiered in December. But we also know 'their collaboration lacked spark.' When had they started Cosí?”
“But we don't know,” Cameron continued, “when the Emperor came up with the idea to convert some gossip into an opera and whether he intended to give it to Mozart in the first place.”
“In the court's eyes, Salieri should get the assignment automatically: giving it to Mozart showed Joseph lacked confidence in Salieri's position.”
But when Emperor Joseph died shortly after Cosí's premiere, the opera house closed down for a period of mourning, and knowing the new Emperor, Joseph's brother Leopold, Salieri chose to resign from the Directorship. “And Salieri knew his was above all a political appointment, something like the Secretary of the Opera in an Imperial cabinet.”
“So a new Emperor with old-fashioned ideas wouldn't appoint someone he didn't like to the post, therefore neither Salieri nor Mozart.”
“Exactly: no more rivalry. So why wait over a year to kill Mozart?”
Another thing that bothered Cameron was why Mozart would agree to a libretto like Cosí that was so degrading toward women. “Was that why Salieri couldn't do anything with it, because of the plot?”
So I launched into the whole lecture about “Life in the Times,” how plots like that dated back to the 1300s.
“The idea of testing one's lover's virtue was a standard plot device no doubt dating back to the medieval chastity belt. It was a stock 'type' in 18th Century comic operas, not just Cosí.”
In Shakespeare's Cymbeline, Imogen is eventually proven the innocent victim of male chauvinism: it should make men squirm who're watching it. Perhaps the issue is, proven not innocent, Cosí's happy ending seems too contrived. But it's a comedic “convention” in a male-dominated society: had Mozart even been interested, would he turn them into feminist provocateurs?
Another thing: while some men did express their dislike of the plot's treatment of women, which supposedly led to its less frequent performances, Salieri had already written a number of operas with similar plots. It was generally considered “good box-office” and Salieri, to put it bluntly, wasn't writing for posterity but to make a profit.
Rather than blame daPonte, much less Mozart, shouldn't we blame the Emperor for his wanting to turn gossip into an opera? Who's going to tell him, “Thanks, but no thanks: your tastes disgust me”?
With our present-day awareness of these, granted, very important issues – women's rights, sexual harassment, the reinforcement of gender stereotypes in society – is it worth sacrificing Mozart's opera, not performing it because tastes have changed? To what extent should we delete it or its composer or, given that, anything anyone finds offensive from the cultural Pantheon? Arguments pro and con still rage about Wagner's anti-Semitism, but what about Bruckner, who was also anti-Semitic, just not as vocal? Most of 19th-Century Europe was culturally anti-Semitic: it was part of “The Times.”
To many good Christians today, the Law of God outweighs the fact many Founding Fathers, Washington and Jefferson included, owned slaves. How does one balance that against the racism one increasingly sees more openly? People waving Confederate flags believe in Biblical law while some are offended by misogyny but others crave soap-operas and “The Bachelor.”
Cameron laughed. “As a gay man,” he continued the thread now going further off the track of Mozart and his opera, “I can reject the Old Testament's telling me I'm an abomination before God because, as someone raised as a Secular Christian, whatever that is, the New Testament tells me Christ forgave me my sins. But as a man who believes in gender equality, I reject a lot of what the New Testament says about the role of women in society with its subservience of wives to their husbands.”
His maternal grandparents had been scientists in Iran, raising his mother in a secular, intellectual household with a skepticism about religion in a modern Muslim country that suddenly became an extremely aggressive fundamentalist society. Then his mother married an Irish Catholic who considered himself a “lapsed Christian” who, as a stock broker, worshiped money instead.
Since Catholics, he thought, basically ignored the Bible anyway, he could treat it as a wonderful story and a kind of historical document about an ancient culture, doing the same with his grandparents' Quran. Both were part of his heritage – the dichotomy of Christian and Persian cultures – but neither dominated his life as a blueprint.
He didn't believe in either one, not thinking of himself automatically as a Muslim because he was part-Iranian or a Christian because he was part-Irish, in addition to also rejecting his father's extreme Capitalism.
Whenever we had similar discussions, more frequent now given the divisive political climate evolving across the country – speaking of dichotomies – I might admit to a God who gave us a brain to think with, but not enough to expect him to rescue me from an automobile accident only to complain he didn't answer my prayers. Did rejecting a part of the “argument” mean rejecting the whole of it? Or was cherry-picking what seemed acceptable, while ignoring others, any different from people who condemned homosexuality but were okay with adultery?
I might find the Bible a template for a moral code, considering The Beatitudes universally and some of the Ten Commands as a cultural heritage (coveting the neighbor's cow metaphorically as “my neighbor's property”). But I don't eat shrimp because Leviticus tells me it's an abomination; I don't eat it because I'm allergic to it.
He laughed again, this time because, as usual, we'd gotten so far off topic, after leaving Mozart and his fiancee-swapping cast of characters so far behind, it was difficult to find our way back.
“No, I don't want to lose that music, but is there a way to turn the opera into a 'teaching moment'?”
“Without engaging in the cultural revisionism that gave Romeo and Juliet a happy ending because the original was such a downer? That's where modern directors get in trouble today trying to make Art 'relevant'...”
That men – and Mozart's Emperor was one of Europe's most enlightened monarchs – thought this a perfectly reasonable, even a witty story could be balanced against their contemporaries who thought it was unlikeable and demeaning. “Or was it the double standard where women had to be faithful but a man's fly could open and shut automatically?”
“I wonder what a composer who was a woman might have done with this story,” Cameron wondered, “assuming there were any?”
“Oh, there were, just none who would've been able to get it produced.”
“What if the story were told from a woman's perspective, though: would men feel comfortable with the way they'd be portrayed?”
“I wouldn't suggest it to Toni, if that's what you're hinting at – or are you considering doing 'the Gay Angle' yourself? Not that I'd recommend it, but you could do that, staging Mozart's original...”
Back on his computer with more tapping and scrolling, Cameron announced he'd found some videos on-line with various scenes from Cosí, mixed in with the Overture alone and complete performances in no particular order. He'd only seen it live once before, an HD broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera which had been set in a circus. The first video was the scene where Don Alfonso breaks his sad news to the sisters, but in this production, they're gum-chewing waitresses working in a New Jersey greasy spoon called “Alfonso's Diner.”
“Pass...”
Cute as the concept of Alphonso in a t-shirt might be, the disconnect between the setting and the Italian they were singing, much less the musical style, was a good example of “cognitive dissonance.” I recommended an audio recording rather than some live production's video. “That way, you won't be distracted by the director's interpretation.”
Of course, when it came to such old and familiar standard repertoire, directors often outdid themselves trying to be original, coming up with new, often fashionably shocking premises that would make their productions memorable. Apparently, they only read the plot summaries in order to discover what one called “hidden universalities,” code for “I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-this” or “Mozart-be-damned.”
“Shouldn't that be 'daPonte-be-damned'?” Cameron looked up. “If it's the librettist's story, Mozart wrote the music – but he set daPonte's words.”
And they were the same words Salieri had tried to set... and failed.
One of the videos was the opening scene with Alfonso and the two suitors, Guglielmo and Ferrando (I was always having trouble remembering which was which) from my favorite modern recording with Solti conducting. “Modern” may have been a relative term from Cameron's perspective, recorded in 1974. However, the most recent didn't always mean “best.”
As entertaining as it would be to listen to the whole opera, I suggested instead just hearing the opening two trios. Speaking of daPonte's words, these were also all the words Salieri had set.
Cameron wanted to hear the overture, too, and I didn't complain, myself. It always struck me as perfection, Mozart at his peak – also, Mozart two years before his death – bubbling along with effortless inevitability. Whenever his career peaked, Salieri lived to be 74, his last successful opera written ten years after Cosí – he'd've been 49.
I suppose one could argue since Mozart's music is familiar – how many times have I heard this opera; how many times have I seen it live? – and therefore, in its familiarity, would sound “inevitable,” one phrase follows another with that logic nothing else could possibly improve it; but something unfamiliar – Salieri's sketches – were found lacking. Of course, if you gave Salieri the benefit of considerable doubt, his were only sketches, incomplete, unpolished, merely a rough draft. Who knows what improvements he may have made? But to better Mozart? Dubious...
Salieri was, not to be overlooked, one of the more significant “other” composers in the Vienna of Mozart's day: take away Mozart (and Haydn, for good measure), who'd be left to fill the void? Though all composers had works that didn't stand up to their best, Mozart's failures might be mistaken for someone else's masterpieces.
What was that story about Il ricco d'un giorno, the first libretto daPonte wrote for Salieri? Even the poet was disappointed, out of everything he'd suggested, Salieri chose this play for him to adapt. In the end, it was awful, the opera an opening night failure; but still, Salieri had gone ahead and completed it. What was so different with La scuola degli Amante – Cosí – a far better libretto, Salieri found it not worth the trouble? Or, as Constanze told the Novellos, he'd “tried to set it but failed”?
Rather than being original works, most librettos then were adaptations of pre-existing plays or stories (usually myths or old popular legends) which a poet then reworked into “lyrics” suitable for musical patterns and conventions. Basically, it's not very different from turning a novel into a script for a movie, creating dialogue where there'd been none. Given only a premise, daPonte, this time writing from scratch, strung together a number of theatrical clichés and operatic conventions; so, if traditional plots involved one man testing his lover's fidelity, why not two?
And since he was writing for Salieri, his title, La scuola degli amante, acted like a sequel to his earlier success, La scuola dei gelosi – The School for Lovers versus The School of Jealousy – which was why Mozart changed it to Cosí fan tutte, from a line in his latest hit, The Marriage of Figaro.
We know daPonte's work wasn't done when he handed Mozart a finished libretto: the composer would make suggestions about the dramatic flow as he saw it or the choice of this word over that. To Mozart, these were basic improvements, a better piece of theater, not just a string of pleasant poems for pretty music.
The words may have come first, unlike the chicken and the egg, but they weren't necessarily more important than the music. If Salieri had been dissatisfied, he could've told the poet, “Make these changes.”
As we listened to Mozart's sprightly music pattering along, the conviviality of young men bragging whose girlfriend is the more faithful, I resisted the temptation to turn this into a composition lesson about balance. Still, I couldn't avoid illustrating Mozart's impeccable phrasing with appropriately flowing gestures between my left hand's statement and my right's response.
Perhaps the lesson here was wondering what would Salieri's music have sounded like? The more experienced operatic composer – he'd professionally produced 28 operas compared to Mozart's few – shouldn't that give Salieri the home advantage?
“Now, do a search for Salieri's La cifra,” the opera he wrote after giving up on Cosí. “There – play the overture.” Maybe they were conceived almost simultaneously, but Salieri's music certainly paled by comparison.
“Remember what Speranzani wrote about 'genius being the gift but talent the box it came in'? When did he realize that?”
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©2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train
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