In the previous chapter, Prospério
Kárax started losing control of the Casaubon Society's gathering even before the unexpected arrival of Victor Spoyles, his one-time friend turned adversary. And IMP Chief Inspector Sarah Bond, pursuing a new lead in her on-going investigation into the Aficionati's ever-elusive leader, Osiris, had already met with Capt. Ritard in NYC and voiced her concerns about any possible danger to Dr. Kerr's safety. Then, once she arrives in Orient, IA, Bond's made not one but two discoveries.
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CHAPTER 21
Since everything was new, the first students at the Allegro Conservatory would need to have that old-time pioneer spirit and flexibility to be innovators with a willingness to improvise and “roll with the punches.” Likewise the faculty, whether first-timers recruited with newly minted degrees or the recently retired who perhaps still had something to offer. There was never a dearth of good students or reliable faculty, Dean Ringman told them, talented musicians looking for solid situations, if they had the right entrepreneurial attitude and the requisite sense of adventure. It might take a few years until things could become more firmly established and yes, there were complaints about a couple inexperienced theory teachers with one-year master's degrees barely ahead of their own students, but Ringman pointed out Tchaikovsky, a recent graduate himself at 20-something, had similar issues when a new conservatory opened in Moscow.
As the Dean never failed to remind them (donors or students), here they were “in the very heart of this great nation of ours whose very towns and great traditions would not exist today if those legendary 19th Century pioneers had stayed back East with their traditional comforts rather than face hardships and the unknown.”
In that spirit of groundbreaking entrepreneurialism Ringman so admired, the young and otherwise inexperienced Director of the Opera Department, Lauren Mostovsky, began to explain a bold new concept for an old, often maligned classic.
Gathered in a semi-circle, the boyfriends on the right, the sisters on the left, while the schemers sat in the center – or was it the men on one half, the women on the other? – they read over their lines through the first ten scenes in a literal English translation, saving the original Italian for later. “First,” the director said, “you must know what you're singing and to whom you're singing it, not just to the audience. Also, mark in your score where you're thinking but singing it out loud. In theater, you have different levels of nuance you need to make clear: Dorabella's conversation, whoever's on stage, could involve talking to them or talking to them,” Mostovsky said, pointing to Ferrando, then Alfonso. “Or it could be something only Fiordiligi's supposed to hear, even if in reality we can all hear it, can't we?”
For the moment, Mostovsky skipped over various gender-based issues mentioned earlier to focus on more general details about the dramatic situation – Alfonso makes a bet; the girls realize their boyfriends are called to war – then asked each character what he or she'd be thinking, how they'd react, what facial expressions they'd have when not speaking.
“As you transfer to the Italian you'll be singing, We want you to think about 'how you look when you're listening.' You're not just standing there counting measures until the next time you sing.”
There was a slight flash of awareness that spread across several of their faces: Mostovsky sat back and smiled as they realized in the past they had thought more about what they'd sing next. “Yes, you do have to think about that, where you must move and why but you must also listen – think 'multi-tasking'.”
The plot was simple, almost basic, focused around two sisters and their relationships: girl-having-met-boy, girl-loses-boy; then ultimately a happy ending, girl-gets-boy-back. But it becomes more complicated when you add the X-Factor, an old philosopher. “What do they add? Why do they do this? What is its outcome? They're throwing a catnip mouse among the cats.
“And what happens between the losing and the getting-back is the confusion – in fact, it's the chaos – that advances the plot. Anyone familiar with the opera will know the outcome, but you... do not.”
Mostovsky stood up and pushed the chair back. “In Mozart's day, there was an old saying, 'First the words, then the music.' But is it the equivalent of 'First the egg, then the chicken'?”
(“Okay, we've gone from interactive to lecture mode.” Rosa Miller sat back and prepared to at least try to look interested.)
“When you rehearse a scene, find time to start with the words – in English, like spoken drama – and work out the nuances. Question yourself: 'why did We do that?', 'what would We do here?'...”
Mostovsky, looking around, noticed different levels of awareness. Some, with more experience, nodded in agreement (“yes, I already do that”); others, with less, shrugged a metaphoric shoulder (“that's obvious”); nobody seemed to question why.
“So,” Orchis ventured with some hesitation, “what do we do with our duet scenes? People don't speak in unison in pairs.”
“Good point.” Mostovsky wondered how long before that'd come up. “Work mostly on the recitatives – that's where the action is – but you still have to listen and interact when both your characters 'speak' simultaneously. Do you both agree, 'one mind, one voice'? If you disagree, who's viewpoint prevails? Are you identical twins or rival siblings? What was it the great Anna Russell once said? 'You can do anything in opera so long as you sing it!'” Given most responses, Mostovsky assumed they'd no idea who Anna Russell was, either.
Frank wondered what the hell that had to do with their duets' characterizations? Russell meant Wagner's character relationships in The Ring, but Orchis meant Fiordiligi and Dorabella's speaking in unison, especially in the recitatives. If they speak in one voice, like they sing in the music, how can you make that understood in spoken theater?
“Well, okay, so, assume I am singing it,” Orchis added, “I guess my question is 'how do I speak it?' – we...?” (These damn non-specific pronouns only confused her, if she couldn't even say “I.”)
“Those are the things we want you – as in 'y'all' – to go find on your own, so question everything you do. The rehearsal process – learn the words, then the notes – is all about discovery.”
(“Well,” Rosa thought, pretty sure it wasn't out loud, “I want to sing Mozart but this shit is for the birds.”)
Mostovsky, setting aside the director's cap, now slipped into Professor Mode oblivious to whatever attention not already lost completely slipped away. But like many a seasoned university teacher knew, as long as it was said, that was the important thing, “mission accomplished,” whether it fell on fallow ground or took root and become memorized fact.
“Most of the early critics of Mozart's Cosí fan tutte reacted not to the music but first to the words, to Lorenza daPonte's script, which he always referred to as The School for Lovers. It had been found immoral despite being an old theatrical convention that pre-dated Shakespeare's time – to remind you, that's the early-1600s – 'impertinent and unfunny,' 'primitive and unimaginative,' 'cynical and frivolous,' to quote early critics, three pairs of balanced adjectives like these characters in a story Beethoven and Wagner dismissed as 'offensive,' complete with insipid music.”
These days, the opera's current tribe of detractors were more likely inspired by the 21st Century's concerns for issues like Gender Equality and Sexual Harassment, but these same “complaints” – Mostovsky emphasized this with air-quotes – existed already even in Mozart's day, “hardly an enlightened time for women, even as the French Revolution brewed 'round the corner.” Men were hypocrites, in private demanding absolute fidelity from their wives, while in public they carried on with their own “affairs” – yet they found the lovers' Trial of Faithfulness by Subterfuge degrading to women?
“Or did Mozart's turning a dirty story into the stuff of Art offend critics when he placed private foibles on the public stage, a place usually regarded as the home of gods and aristocrats? It was a time of lavish public prudery and lascivious privacy, metaphoric fig leaves to hide the truth from knowing eyes. Sex – and to proper 18th-Century Classical gentlemen who tried to understand life as a rational world, this was all about sex – sex was the problem but it was easier to blame the surface thing.”
Mostovsky pointed out people were shocked Mozart set The Abduction in a seraglio, that secret harem for women where men were forbidden: and what went on there? Sex! Therefore, the story had sexual overtones. With Cosí, he turned a story about love into a game of wife-swapping; and who couldn't see through those ridiculous disguises?
“Well, then,” Mostovsky said, ready to wrap things up (soon, each singer hoped), “what are we to make of this story? When Paris adapted Shakespeare's Love's Labours Lost to Mozart's opera, it was daPonte's words, the Emperor's dirty joke, they were erasing. But how do we, now, make the whole of it relevant to today? Here's a game that involves three pairs: two couples and a couple accomplices. Don't be fooled by the obvious symmetry: three men, three women; two boyfriends, two sisters, two schemers – it's not that simple!
“Each couple is a pair of opposites: the boyfriends are not the same; the sisters are not clones but reasonably independent. They each approach everything thrown at them differently, and become each other's rival. Of the schemers, Alfonso is a cynical old man, but Despina's world is one of romance novels, a realm of hedonism.
“Or,” Mostovsky added with the vaguest semblance of a sparkle in the eye, “as We like to call it, Despina's 'shedonism'.” Some of them groaned, one of them giggled. Only Frank chose to argue.
“With all due respect,” (meaning none was intended), “the male pronoun is not the root of the word 'hedonism,' is it?”
But Mostovsky dismissed this since “hedonism” was a male domain and this was hedonism boldly espoused by a woman. “Pun accepted.”
(Frank worried maybe she'd confused his “male pronoun” as a euphemism for “penis.”)
“We'll talk about other aspects you'll need to consider to create your characters in the weeks between now and dress rehearsal, but right now let us mention some obvious aspects behind this particular production.” Mostovsky opened a ring-binder and referred to some pages before closing it again. “These will involve a series of improvisatory exercises. Something you will not do is remember any production you've ever seen of Cosí fan tutte either live, on TV or on video. Don't watch one: that is not 'research.' Music-only files are okay.
“In fact, show of hands: how many of you watched a video, perhaps on-line, before your audition?” All hands went up. “Okay, so, now, erase everything you'd seen on them from your memory cache.” She swiped a hand across her forehead and shook it out, like tossing stuff on the floor. “Go ahead – do it.”
After they did that, most of them a little too self-consciously, Mostovsky resumed.
“Most productions treat the sisters like nearly identical twins except for maybe their hair color or the color of their gowns.” A couple nodded yes but she pointed out, “you were supposed to have deleted that, remember? Again,” wiping across the brow.
“The same with the boys – to distinguish them from Don Alfonso, the 'elderly' philosopher, usually turned into a portly senior citizen. Despina the maid is young, flighty, probably still a teenager, a wild card.
“The problem with the pairs of lovers, they not only become interchangeable, switching their relationships in the course of the action, the audience becomes so confused about who's who they can't tell them apart. The only thing worse would be if Mozart had cast both the sisters as sopranos and all the men as tenors. Or we'd listen to some Baroque opera where men were sung by castrati, singing in the same range as the sopranos. (Don't worry, guys, relax; we won't ask you to go quite that far...)
“After Ferrando discovers his girlfriend Dorabella's given in to Guglielmo, he goes after Fiordiligi more adamantly, determined to win Alfonso's bet, at which point our confusion (like those disguises weren't enough) turns into chaos. In the end, do they really think, once they're back together with their original partners, all will now be smooth sailing?”
Since each of the lovers are essentially opposites – “do opposites really attract?” – Mostovsky explained when they come to those scenes where the differences begin to show, “like cracks in their otherwise amicable social armor,” they'll improvise some hypothetical conversations, “like they're sitting around the kitchen table, sipping coffee, talking about whatever comes into their heads. Except one member of a pair starts with a declarative statement about something, then the other member says something that's contradictory. For the sake of the exercise, in this case, the genders are equal.
“It's not just saying something to be contrary, maybe just a clue about how you feel until things get more serious and you begin to reveal more of what you actually, deep-down, genuinely believe. We assume you all have social media accounts? Yes?” (They all nod.) “Then you know what it's like to feel attacked.”
“So, then,” Mark Winsome, the Don Alfonso, the first time he's entered the fray, offered, “it's not like I tell them – Despina – I'm a Republican and she... they respond 'Well, We're a Democrat, yeah'?”
“You're a Republican? Well, damn, I'll be gobsmacked,” Rosa responds, slapping her forehead. “For your information, I'm... we're being ironical, here?”
“But it has to be a declarative statement-of-fact. Say something about policy – hypothetically. We doubt either of you'd be Conservative: for the sake of stereotypicality,” Mostovsky reminded them, “don't you think Alfonso would be?”
Mostovsky turned to Frank and said, “let's say you insist 'pedophiles should be castrated,' and you,” turning to Henry, “say... what...?”
“Well, they should be...”
“It's a theatrical exercise, Henry, not an actual discussion.”
“So... what do I say?” Henry looked around, hoping the others would help.
“It's an improvisatory exercise, Henry; so, improvise... respond.”
“Okay, um... I can't just disagree, so I'd say, 'pedophiles come from broken homes and were probably abused themselves as children.” He was clearly uncomfortable, then added, “they need therapy and understanding – and... support?”
“Felicia, do you think Henry was very convincing?”
She laughed. “No! He's trying a line like he's presenting it for approval.”
Rosa thought it was too tentative, more of a question, not a statement.
“Okay,” Mostovsky said. “Felicia, how would you sing that last line of Henry's? Joe, give us a G Major chord, recitative-style.”
Felicia shrugged her shoulders. Her simple phrase, sung mezzo forte, used few notes, dominant to tonic, a short scale to the third, back to tonic, emphasizing the note just above the tonic on “-standing,” before tentatively going up to the third for “sup-port?”
The pianist, without prompting, rolled a B Major chord as punctuation.
They all laughed.
“Excellent! Perfectly Mozartean! Now, more convincingly, the same basic notes...”
With the volume louder, her tempo more clipped, she changed the last three notes, ending on G, and the pianist obliged.
Again, they all laughed, and a few applauded.
“Exactly – even resolving emphatically to the tonic, where the first one, tentative, moved off into active harmonic territory, maybe headed toward E Major or somewhere else. It wasn't the words you generated – words on the printed page the reader must interpret – but how the character 'inflects' them.
“So, if you feel Henry was equivocal for some reason,” the director asked, “are you convinced this is what Felicia believes?”
“It doesn't matter what Felicia believes,” Rosa said. “It's what her character believes.”
“As you may have noticed,” Mark said, “Rosa and I, the 'schemers,' are both Black, and reinforces the stereotype she's a servant, maybe a household slave.”
Rosa responded. “Yo', suh, be assimilated, yo' passin' fo' White. I is a po' black girl an' I's longin' fo' freedom!”
The others had no idea how to respond.
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
The players of the Surrey Regional Theater Company, still subdued after last night's fiasco, had begun to assemble for their afternoon rehearsal. There was a lot of ground to make up, not knowing what the short-term outcome would be from Underhill's untimely accident, or even its long-range effects, more than enough to give anyone pause. There were rumors the production might be canceled without one of its stars, which made no sense: just find another actor. Still early in the rehearsals, would it be that hard finding another Mozart?
Backstage, Toni saw Mr. Bridges and Mr. Grahl deep in conversation, understandably preoccupied. He hadn't been keen on Toni's idea of Dr. Kerr's talk about “The Real Salieri” to set the historical record straight. It disappointed her – he'd so quickly dismissed it – but he had enough on his plate without dealing with some pesky kid.
Bridges had cocked his head with this look as if thinking into the distance (the only way Toni could describe it). “I admit,” he said, “I'd been in Vienna a few times, even visited Mozart's birthplace there, but it's hardly relevant, yeah?” (She debated whether she should correct him, that Mozart was born in Salzburg.) “Sure, the play's not historically accurate, but you saw the movie – that's what most people believe is true, anyway, isn't it? Why confuse them with boring facts? This is theatre, after all. It's magic!”
Rigley Fielding, old and dumpy despite attempts at stylishness in his open shirt, peach-colored silk ascot, and unfortunately too-tight jeans, tried on his best snarls before a mirror in need of some serious cleaning. Toni got the impression the only thing missing was an eye-patch to cross-pollinate the Viennese Court Composer with Long John Silver. Agnes Tiepolo, wearing yesterday's same outfit only re-imagined in different colors, sat in the same chair and read the same magazine. Ben Tishell paged through his script, slowly mouthing his lines, word by word.
For a moment, Toni went back to last night, everybody in these same places, everybody doing the same things as if this were all part of those pre-rehearsal rituals each one had to perform. She could almost hear an old man with shaggy white hair, the production's Mozart, practicing that silly giggle from the movie.
Most everyone regarded her blandly, another inexperienced kid making her “debut” in the theater (or, as they overacted it, the theatre), and who was she anyway, just one of those annoying little Venticelli kids. Only the old man playing Salieri (was there a stunt double to play Salieri as a young man?) smiled at her. Did the actress playing the singer Cavalieri snub her because Toni had more lines than she did? (She had none, actually.) At least Cavalieri got to wear an elaborate costume and make grand entrances. Of course, the director was very friendly, had been ever since that first video-call, with advice how to approach the character which wasn't much of a character, was it? – more like half a character. She'd done some on-line searches about Laurence Bridges, about his early career, but didn't tell her folks what all she'd found.
The actor who'd turned out to be the Emperor (he didn't seem tall enough) had listened to Bridges' long-winded introduction about their new cast member, peered over his bifocals and quipped, “Too many words” at which the actor who'd turned out to be Mozart (he certainly wasn't young enough) had let out his fatuous giggle.
Bridges's assistant, Pete Grahl, and Grover Horner, the harried stage manager, were the only people on stage who looked their parts. There wasn't much about this first impression Toni looked back on as “magical.”
And all that before she'd witnessed the in-fighting between Fielding and Underhill, an old married couple living off years of pent-up bitterness, not a famous team of actors with a long theatrical pedigree goading each other with their ridiculous backbiting, calling each other “Wrinkly” and “Overhill” and all those barbs about each others' “dramatic nuances.” Was she the only one who found them embarrassing or was this another thing she'd learn about life, how our ideals don't always turn out the way we've hoped, as Uncle Terry often hinted? Did the other actors, the ones hired from London or the local ones who've been included in the supporting cast who thought this would be the highlight of their careers, working with these two, did they feel the same disappointment she did, that the reality behind the scene made the magic on stage virtually impossible?
When Underhill tripped doing those silly hops, she saw the fear in his eyes as he fell backwards: this wasn't planned. It played in her mind over and over again, all in slow motion. Had she seen Tiepolo reach over to pick up that gum wrapper she'd thrown on the floor which he'd slipped on? Or when Fielding said, “oh, don't worry about him,” to some actors fussing over Underhill, “if pain's all in the mind, his brain's so challenged, he won't even notice it in a few hours.”
There was also the odd suspension after they'd carted Underhill off to the nearest hospital, fortunately only a few blocks away: do we stay and continue rehearsing or should we call it a night? Bridges, after seeing the ambulance off, announced Grahl “drew the short stick” and went along to handle the bureaucracy of admissions. Toni wasn't sure if the concern on his face was more about his injured actor or what inconvenience the insurance required. Fielding was the only one with his script held open, ready to resume.
“We'll wait and see what tomorrow brings and if Heath still isn't ready to join us,” Bridges said, “we'll just run the scenes that don't involve Mozart, starting with the opening four. Three o'clock?”
Once they'd all nodded their agreement, the Emperor said, “Ah, well... there it is,” and processed stage left into the wings.
Word had already made its rounds before the afternoon rehearsal began that Underhill's condition was much worse than they'd initially expected: a fractured femur, a slight concussion but at least the hip was okay. “Old people and hips – dangerous combination in a fall,” Toni'd heard Grover say. “Still, he could be laid up for weeks.”
Bridges appeared unperturbed by whatever news he may have heard, when he announced, as he stared Fielding down to keep him quiet, the “situation is fluid; we'll take it one day at a time.”
Without further ado, he ordered everyone into places. This opening was a big scene for the Venticelli, two “middle-aged gentlemen” according to the script but Ben especially had trouble sounding not like a teenager. Salieri in a wheelchair, his back to the audience, sat near the back, everyone else part of the whispering off-stage chorus.
“We're not supposed to notice him – Salieri,” but Toni couldn't help it: without makeup, Fielding made a convincing Old Salieri (the play opened in 1823 when Salieri was 73, a patient at the asylum), except for the fact he's smiling rather contentedly, perhaps because his rival (Underhill, not Mozart) wasn't there to ruin his day.
Bridges tried getting Ben to sound more “urgent,” more like a gossip who wanted to be the first with “the news.” The only thing Ben could do was shout and sound even more stilted.
They made it through the first four scenes, skipped Scene 5, Mozart's first appearance, but after Fielding finished his brief soliloquy, surprised “the filthy creature” could compose at all, deciding Mozart was nobody special, everything stopped. With everyone else in place, ready to go, the Emperor made an imperial gesture toward Bridges – “Shall we proceed?”
It was the first big Court Scene with Salieri and Company on one side of the Emperor, Mozart on the other.
Bridges looked around. “But let's have... ah... – Toni, would you read Mozart's lines?”
Ben handed her his copy of the script – she noticed it was unmarked – and told her, “Better you than me, luv.” Toni blushed, paging through it to find the spot, and took her place.
When she got through the flurry of French – flawlessly, Bridges noted – everyone applauded.
“Take a break. Toni, come talk to me.”
It would take a small orchestra, maybe only a dozen or so, but it would need to be coordinated with the actors, those crucially timed shouts. She thought her Uncle Terry could conduct it.
“There's nothing in the budget for that,” he apologized. “Can't you find recordings and play them through the CD player backstage?”
Another disappointment. He suggested that bit from Disney's Fantasia – “the one about the grape harvest's storm?”
“But,” she wondered, “would starting a play about Mozart with a famous bit of Beethoven be all that suitable?”
“Seriously?” Bridges wondered if anyone would notice.
Yet one more disappointment. The magic had by now been successfully, completely dispelled.
“Ah, Grover,” Bridges interrupted himself, calling over his stage manager. “Can you find Pete and bring him back to my office? We need to discuss something. Oh, and Toni,” he added, “we'll talk later.”
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©2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train
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