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[Chapter 17, continued...]
But the dream evaporated as pale light began to break through nighttime clouds beyond the tree that guarded her bedroom window, whether or not she dreamt she'd been dreaming or was lying there half-awake, how, if she looked out on the garden below, beyond the yews, no one would be having tea on the lawn. There was something she never quite got used to these past few years: this incredible place was now her home. “Home...” Their stay in Italy proved refreshing, but she was glad to be back. She sat on the edge of the bed, facing the window, and rubbed the last bits of sleep from her eyes. Toni hoped she'd remember enough of the dream to make sense of it, and reached for the little notebook on her bedside table, ready to jot down any surviving ideas for this dream septet.
It was, after all, a dream which she considered not the approximation of an actual event but the symbolic meeting of disparate and possibly unrelated characters in perhaps unrealistic situations. Yes, Frieda was dead. Toni heard her voice often enough when she's alone; why shouldn't Granny appear walking around in her dreams, advice or not? Frieda firmly believed logic was a fine starting place but it was a touch of the irrational that gave it sense. “Without the other, the one is only as good as any inanimate object.”
The glow from the lamp, too dim to read in bed, made it difficult to see what she tried to write – names, instruments (she could always match them up later), helpful hints like “picnic.” She didn't need to reconstruct the dialogue completely – this wasn't for a novel – but certain topics might eventually suggest eventual themes.
She took it over to her little desk (it still amused her to have a little desk as well as a big one where she could compose); the lamp there was a bit stronger.
Quick strokes like an artist roughing out a sketch – action! save the details for later – turned into a crude seating chart. Symmetrical pairs seemed obvious, instruments aside – Frieda and Kerr; she and Cameron – but Mozart and Salieri might strike others as odd, all under the umbrella of Beethoven (beneath which she'd written “Op.20,” his Septet).
One thing confused her, beyond the informal seminar-like gathering between teachers and students – it made her think of The Symposium though Kerr told her she was too young yet to be spoiled by Plato: why were Underhill and Fielding in this dream especially in full stage make-up and costumes (they hadn't gotten that far, yet)? Not that one should expect logic when it came to dreams: it could easily have been Jesus and the Easter Bunny. But since she detested the pair of them (the two actors), why them?
She looked out between the branches and saw the sun begin to rise. Never good at interpreting dreams (she rarely remembered them, less often could reconstruct them), they meant something, something “symbolic,” but what? Watching the dawn helped clear her mind. Symmetrical pairs: teachers and students; Frieda and her; Kerr and Cameron – Mozart and Salieri?
Or not the composers (certainly not the actors) but what they stood for, the role they played in Toni's dream seminar. Salieri was old-fashioned, “establishment,” compared to Mozart who was an outsider and “liberal.” Kerr often said Mozart was the First Romantic – things like the G Minor Symphony, the D Minor Piano Concerto, Don Giovanni. If the symmetry here was Kerr's favorite “Dionysian/Apollonian Divide,” maybe she should represent Mozart by the cello which she viewed as a more expressive, “Romantic” instrument. Salieri could make a decent flutist, “Classically proper.”
Coming back early from Italy had clearly been a mistake. A few weeks in Provençe and Venice had been “tremendously pleasant” (she was so starting to sound like some pathetic refugee from Downton Abbey) but she hated LauraLynn's having to accompany her because Toni couldn't travel alone, separating her from Burnson while he remained behind. Uncle Terry and Cameron would be back from America soon enough, so they'd all spend a few more weeks doing nothing but composing uninterrupted in the midst of the prettiest landscape she'd ever seen.
Memories of last night's rehearsal, disastrous on any level, threw this whole dream into confusion. “Debut, indeed,” as Kerr would say. She'll back out before it gets worse and return to Italy. Besides, it wasn't fair to her mother or good for her father for them to be separated like this, not on her account.
There was that scene where both Venticelli stuck their heads up Constanze's skirts after the game of Forfeit, measuring her thighs. Toni didn't think this was proper for a girl who was only 16.
The director waved the playbook. “Your character is 'genderless,' a theatrical convention who merely has a few lines to spread gossip.”
“In this scene, they've got names: #1 is called Karl; when he tells #2 to hold her, he calls him Friedrich.”
The odd way Bridges looked at her she could only describe as “creepy.”
Her dream had been to gain some behind-the-scenes experience, insights how a play was put together so she'd have a better grasp when she'd set one to music some day, another dream of hers. It's unlikely she'd be about to write an opera any time soon: she could afford putting this off for a while. But really, wasn't it the in-fighting between those two old actors who had ruined the experience for her, Underhill and Fielding, not to mention that whole business last night that cut the rehearsal short.
“Okay,” she'd rationalized as Vector drove her home, “maybe the playwright wrote it that way, but wasn't Underhill a bit over-the-top?” She could hear Frieda's distant voice: “why would you do something so stupid?” Was that Bridges' idea or had he given Underhill free rein to improvise? Was that Salieri rolling his eyes – or Fielding?
It hadn't begun well, either, that rehearsal, already off to a late start. Once everybody finally arrived, the director announced they'd start with Act One, Scene 8, but then Angela Tiepolo missed Constanze's entrance. “She was here one minute, then poof!,” Underhill quipped, adding in a stage whisper, “flighty bitch!” (“Speaking of 'poof,'” Fielding laughed.)
Further irritated by on-stage giggles, the director bellowed into the wings, “Angela! – now!” only to be met by echoes and silence. They waited several seconds in icy stillness before Grahl went to find her.
When his assistant came back with no Constanze, Bridges decided they'd continue with the scene between Joseph the Emperor and Mozart backstage after the Abduction's premiere and its famous line about “too many notes.” Bridges would read Constanze's few lines, but Fielding jokingly refused to kiss his hand, but then kissed Underhill's instead (more laughter).
After Mozart argued with the Emperor – “no more notes than necessary” – there's a confrontation between Salieri and Mozart who insults Gluck's memory and makes a tasteless joke about the bathroom habits of certain statues. Then the Venticelli tell Salieri that Mozart's married Constanze Weber, the very first words Toni ever spoke on a theatrical stage.
So far, everybody's reading from their playbooks, including Underhill who's supposedly performed this role for years (or so his bio says). Toni's the only one not holding a playbook: she'd already memorized her lines.
While they had waited backstage, Toni asked her fellow Venticello, Ben Tishell, a young man barely out of school, what Bridges may have suggested for him, what he's developed so far for his character. He looked at her blankly then shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno, do I? Only my third rehearsal. Just run a few scenes.”
Toni asked him if they were expected to, like, mirror each other, create poses, retreat into inanimate stances when not involved? “The Venticelli aren't in the movie and I've never seen the play before.”
“There's a movie? Cool. I'll look on NetFlix.” Otherwise he just stood there.
The two of them were supposed to run on, fresh from a party, but Ben shambled out, stiff as a post. Not only didn't he have his few lines memorized, he couldn't even read them properly, and stumbled over every other word.
Ben struggled over the street name (again) where the newly married Mozarts set up housekeeping when a woman in a flouncy skirt bounded onto the stage and congratulated Mozart who was nowhere in sight. She stopped suddenly, seriously confused. Toni assumed this was Angela Tiepolo, their Constanze. Bridges was about to explode. Nobody else breathed.
“You're late, Angela,” was all the director said, walking out toward them, a wilting tableau in the middle of the stage. Fielding turned his back to stifle his amusement. “Actually, you're several pages late...”
Angela paged through her playbook, not in the least concerned she'd brought the rehearsal to another screeching halt. “Where are we?”
“In the middle of a rehearsal. Where are you?”
Fielding strolled further off.
Toni tried to look anywhere but at Angela or Mr. Bridges, and watched Ben, now thoroughly confused, skim through his script.
“I was in the little girls' loo,” Angela pouted. She was chewing gum. Could it be her way of channeling Constanze's spirit, a bit flighty, an air-head, or was this just Angela being Angela?
“Well, Angela, dear, you've missed your scene, brief as it was: we'll get back to it later. Continue! Venticelli – your entrance?”
Indignant Bridges didn't want to do her scene now, she stomped over to a chair near the edge of the stage, flopped herself down and, ignoring everything and everybody else, paged through a magazine.
“Right.” Pete Grahl waited till the Venticelli were back in the wings and Salieri was alone at center stage. “Aaand... – action!”
After their entrance, Ben still muffed the same lines the same way, Toni tried a few extra nuances to define her identity (since Venticello #1 had none) and Fielding gave her an appreciative nod.
The next scene began with a lighting change, designated for now by Bridges clapping his hands, and Mozart entered with Strack. The Venticelli had only one line each, delivered to Salieri standing downstage, observing.
After that, the Venticelli had nothing to do, so she watched everybody indifferently, didn't react when Mozart cracked his “marble-shitting” joke, though Ben let out this great guffaw like it was the first time. Then Mozart complained about all the foreigners dominating the music at court, a comment Toni herself had long wondered about, too.
Why were the Italians so frightened of a little complexity in their music?
The first time she'd heard any of Salieri's music, she wondered what it lacked compared to the Mozart she's familiar with. Mozart complained about the same things: the simplest harmonies, the most unimaginative modulations. Salieri's music sounded like it possessed nothing substantial.
Something similar she'd have said of Verdi and Puccini, compared to what Wagner and Strauss had written around the same time. The main difference was they weren't boring like Salieri, but beautiful and emotional.
Dr. Kerr had quickly “adjusted” her dismissive attitude about Salieri and his music. Given the little she'd heard compared to all that familiar Mozart, was it fair to reject Salieri because he wasn't Mozart? He then played two pieces for them, her and Cameron, and asked them to identify which was Mozart and which, Salieri. One was a pretty innocuous but pleasant dance she said couldn't have been Mozart's, it was so – too – simple. Obviously Salieri. The second was a dramatic chorus straight out of Magic Flute. Mozart – absolutely!
Cameron, who knew better, sat back and smiled: he suspected this would happen.
The dance, Kerr revealed, was one of those little insignificant contradances Mozart wrote for the Imperial Court (she forgot which one).
The tragic-sounding chorus, which Cameron realized was in French (she hadn't noticed), had been composed for Paris: Salieri's opera, Les Danaïdes.
This difference Mozart complained about went back centuries: “simply put, Italians grew up on Gregorian chant; Germans, immersed in Lutheran chorales. Palestrina's contrapuntal masses aside, Italian operas from the very beginning were simple and direct, melodies to get the words across over harmonies that wouldn't obscure the melody, and lots of clichés to ensure popularity. The contrapuntal complexity the Germans had learned in Italian cathedrals, once transplanted to northern soil, evolved into Bach and from there to Beethoven and, in a nutshell, eventually to Wagner, to put it simplistically.
“But in Italy, their love of opera produced, along with Vivaldi concertos, all those numbers operas of the Bel Canto with their emphasis on 'the beautiful song,' and on to Verdi's and Puccini's arias. Mozart loved beautiful melodies: it was the harmonies beneath them, even behind them, where he became so adventurous and where he...”
Dr. Kerr's typically discursive explanations, like this one, usually ended when he'd say, “of course, it's always more complicated than that,” and Toni awakened from her revery, standing there pretending to be a doorway. After Count Rosenberg entered, Toni bowed and extended her arm, before Rosenberg retreated behind the baffling onslaught of Mozart's boorish insults.
Bridges took a moment to remind Underhill he must go instantly from this rude child telling potty-mouthed jokes to an ass-kissing beggar pleading for a job – “like that!” (He's done this play before, right?)
They started the scene again, from Rosenberg's entrance, whom Mozart greets as a toad because the man's supposed to wear something bright green (and the actor playing him was appropriately on the chubby side). Many great personalities may be unpleasant people, but, Toni wondered, could such great art come from such a jerk as this? Mozart went from a moron cracking puerile jokes to an abject fool on his knees, then rose to towering arrogance (“you do know I'm the greatest musician in Vienna?”), all in one short page.
He broke out in a tirade of childishness aimed at Rosenberg's retreating back (Toni ushered him off, glanced over her shoulder) when Underhill and his signature giggle became almost demonic with his ensuing tantrum. He stomped and jumped about, pointed, thumbed his nose toward the empty doorway, while Fielding rolled his eyes in helpless disgust.
Instead of trying to rein in Underhill, Bridges made “calm down” gestures to Fielding, as if later he'll tell Mozart to “tone it back a notch.” Fielding responded with a flurry of Italian hand-gestures.
Underhill, howling “wop-wop-wop,” hopped across the stage, then whirled about, tried an air-kick caper but, landing, tripped over some non-existent furniture.
It was a pratfall that would have done any old vaudevillian proud until this intense scream of pain shred the air. Underhill grabbed at his right leg, cursing. Angela looked up from her magazine.
For a moment, everyone seemed suspended in time before pandemonium exploded out of their disbelief. A few rushed toward the fallen actor as if they could help but would only get in the way. With great cries of agony, Underhill ensured he'd become the center of attention which seemed to make Fielding even more angry.
“You did that on purpose, you blithering moron!”
Underhill yelled in his best stage voice “You tripped me, you did this!”
“How could I – I'm way over here!”
Angela got up and walked away.
Somebody called an ambulance, Underhill, writhing on the gurney, was hauled off to the hospital, and Bridges canceled the remaining rehearsal. Everybody filtered their various ways off stage, leaving only Toni, in disbelief, on one side, Bridges, in disbelief, on the other.
Toni thought the way Bridges looked at her was more unsettling than creepy.
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©2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train
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