Vienna Nocturne Read Online Free PDF Page B

it. He had an aquiline nose and a broad, steeplysloping forehead. Everything about him was precise and well contained. Anna had liked his singing very much. His voice was not as beautiful as Benucci’s, nor as loud, and his manner was less passionate, but the technique was without flaw. Mandini could probably sing anything he liked, and he gave one the impression that he did so not to entertain, as Dorotea did, but because it was a physical challenge that happened to provide him with an income. “I think we’ll find ourselves lucky to have you,” he said. “I think you’re the piece we were missing.”
    “Brava,” said Salieri with a wry smile. “When I heard how young you were, I was afraid you’d embarrass me. Now I’m afraid I might embarrass you.”
    “Oh, never!” said Anna.
    “Look it over, tell me tomorrow if there’s anything you want changed. There’s not much time, but time enough.”
    “You sang prettily,” her mother conceded on their way home. “And you looked well.”
    “She was an angel, madam,” cried Michael Kelly. “Those are the best buffa singers in the world and your daughter holds her own among them.”
    “You are too kind, sir,” said Mrs. Storace. “I enjoyed your aria, as well. Very nice Irish tenor.”
    “I thank you, madam,” Michael declared fervently. “I am neither a large man, nor a great one, but with my voice I hope to seem so.”
    “That is all one can ever do,” said Mrs. Storace, and she talked with Michael all the rest of the way home and through dinner. She liked having a gentleman to speak English with. Anna, lost in daydreams and fatigued by the rehearsal, was glad to stay quiet.
    A few days later they began staging the opera. They memorized their parts as they went along. They were well trained in memory and the music fell into familiar tropes and patterns. Sometimes Salieri would alter something or other. He was a dry, thin gentleman, with a square head and a habitual, wincing frown; a man at oncesmooth and sharp, who held the rigor of an ascetic while yet, at least according to Michael Kelly, enjoying his women and his drink.
    The men all knew one another from previous engagements and acted like brothers. They were scrupulously courteous with Anna and Dorotea. Only Michael treated Anna as a friend, with frankness and unreserve. She supposed this was because he was not handsome, although he had a pleasant expression, boyish and birdlike. At any rate, she could be easy with him.
    Benucci said very little to her. He let the others talk. He seemed, on purpose, after that first day, to situate himself far from her when they weren’t rehearsing, and whenever she caught his eye he would find a reason to turn away and say something to Mandini or Bussani.
    Nevertheless Anna felt his presence keenly. He would tap her shoulder and say, “Well done,” or, “Very fine,” and when she found in their staging some interesting motion or turn of phrase, his approval was open and genuine. When they sang together there could be no appearance of reserve. They must look into each other’s eyes, argue and exclaim, laugh, dance, despair, declare their love and their hatred, and then again their love renewed. On stage they had a rapport, a secret, silent dialogue that could be indulged in nowhere else. They spoke in glances, in movements of head and hands, in inflection, in touch—all there, on the open stage. Dorotea remarked to Anna that she had never seen a leading couple so well matched. They acted as if they already knew each other, she said. She had never seen Francesco Benucci better than he was now. All the other sopranos had been too dumb—they hadn’t known what to do with him.
    Anna shook her head and demurred, but in her heart she felt it was true. Francesco Benucci had found his match. That was why he wouldn’t talk to her, and why, on stage, his hand seemed to linger in hers a moment longer than was necessary. It was wonderful and strange. She thought only