Mozart’s Blood by Louise Marley Read Free Book Online Page A

public areas of the new La Scala as elegant and inviting as possible, none had been wasted on these little spaces. No adornment brightened the walls, but a small bouquet of roses in a glass vase, sent by Russell, rested on the makeup table. A little Schulze Pollmann upright piano stood ready against one wall. Octavia lifted the lid and struck a chord, nodding to herself. It was in good tune.
    The shower was as compact as it could be, but someone had kindly equipped it with shampoo and French soap. Tiny bottles of creams and lotions waited before the lighted mirror, with a welcoming note from a Milanese profumeria. There was an electric kettle, with packets of Nescafé and tea in a basket. The assistant returned to knock on her door and to ask, in halting English, if she would like to go to the canteen for lunch or have something brought in.
    Octavia answered her in Italian. “Giuditta, I’d love to stay in. I’m a little tired from the time change. Do you think perhaps you could bring me something?”
    Giuditta smiled with relief at being able to respond in her own language. She went out and came back bearing a tray with a tomato and fennel salad and a panino of prosciutto and mozzarella and basil, with a bottle of mineral water and two chocolates on a doily. She laid it on the makeup table and then withdrew. Octavia ate, idly leafing through an Italian copy of Opera News. She saved half the panino for Ugo. She heated water in the electric kettle and poured it into the teapot. With a cup of tea in her hand, she lay back in the velvet chaise longue and wondered where Ugo was. Usually, if he had slept in, he would join her at the rehearsal hall by lunch-time. Perhaps, she thought, he was too tired. It had been a long flight, and she had told him he didn’t need to be there this morning.
    She let her head fall back against the cushions. Faintly, through the layers of the opera house, she heard the strains of violins and flutes. The cranking of machinery and the scraping of plywood sounded from the tower as set pieces were moved about. The distant fragments of music began to coalesce into the first bars of the overture, and Octavia closed her eyes, remembering.
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    Such a feeling of haste there had been, in those early days. Teresa Saporiti had only recently joined the Bondini theater troupe, and they struggled to master Mozart’s new opera.
    No one knew if Don Giovanni was meant to be a tragedy or a comedy. The opera opened with the attempted rape of Donna Anna and the murder of her father, the Commendatore, by Don Giovanni. The rejected lover Donna Elvira spent her time alternately screaming her rage or avowing love for her seducer. But the other characters played comic rôles, Leporello as the hapless servant keeping a catalog of the Don’s conquests, Masetto and Zerlina as the peasant bridal couple whose wedding the Don tried to ruin. The first act ended with a festive party scene, dancing choristers, a band onstage, and sly jokes. But the opera’s climactic scene was one of pure tragedy, with the Commendatore’s cemetery statue coming to life to drag an unrepentant Don Giovanni into the flames of hell.
    The singers stood by, helpless and confused, as Bondini and the librettist, da Ponte, had screaming arguments at rehearsals. Mozart was little help, procrastinating the overture until the night before the opening, keeping copyists working frantically to have parts ready in time.
    All the singers suffered under accusations of incompetence and laziness. Teresa, the youngest of the Bondini company, agonized over all of this, fearful of losing her opportunity to create a Mozart rôle.
    But at last, the premiere of Don Giovanni was to begin. The composer was on the podium. The Countess Zdenka Milosch, so they said, was in the audience. The instrumentalists’ parts were on their music stands. The singers were ready.
    Teresa had rouged and powdered her cheeks. Her hair was dressed in a