They’re not calling it a debut. But it is a first, in its way. And they’re both beside themselves with nerves.
That night:
THE ORPHEUS SOCIETY OF SYDNEY PRESENTS
ELEGANT SPECIAL SCENERY
WONDERFUL MECHANICAL DEVICES
MYSTERIOUS ELECTRICAL EFFECTS
IN A VERY MERITORIOUS PRODUCTION OF
Great Moments from Grand Opera
Don Juan disappears in a blaze of flashpots, dragged to hell by a statue. Silence. Applause. “Bravo!” “Encore!” “Blow ’er sky high, b’y!” The Lyceum is packed, standing room only. They’ve seen Tosca skewer Scarpia, then immediately leap into a void upstage. Seville has given way to Nagasaki, women have sleepwalked, been entombed in Egypt and brown body paint, stabbed themselves on their wedding day, and gone mad. Just the high points. INTERMISSION. Fans revolve in the vaulted ceiling, where leafy bowers and painted youths droop beside nymph-infested ponds. Below, spectators are happily abuzz as they unstick themselves from wooden seats and head for the lobby, where tea is served with date squares and little Union Jacks.
James stays put, his face shiny with impatience and anxiety, his stomach half turned by the past hour of grotesque huffing and straining on the tiny stage. Sister Saint Cecilia places a hand on his sleeve, but he doesn’t notice. She rises and rustles off for a cuppa, thinking it’s too bad and even a little odd that the girl’s mother can’t be here tonight — she had looked forward to meeting Mrs Piper at last, and congratulating her on such a talented daughter. James is feeling badly in need of air but he’s frozen in his seat. He has no wish to mingle and hear the effusions of the benighted throng. Kathleen is on after the intermission.
Unseen by James, a dark little round woman with a grey bun slips into the back of the hall with a tall young black woman. Mrs Mahmoud is here because Benny made a delivery this morning. All these years, she has been able to resist waiting outside Holy Angels to get a look at Kathleen. She has managed never to send a note or a word via Benny to her daughter. But Mrs Mahmoud has come here tonight because she needs to hear her granddaughter sing. And Teresa, her maid, was happy to accompany her, enjoying as she does, refined entertainment.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats for the second act.” The audience rhubarbs back in — the upper crust of Sydney plus quite a few music lovers. The Sydney Symphonette tunes up. The house lights come down. The stage manager puts a taper to the footlights. The curtain rises. A courtyard. A midnight moon. A fountain. Ivy and climbing roses. A cardboard cat with eyes that open and shut, and one working paw — James is irritated, we’re here for the music, not cheap theatrics. A man with a hump and a jester’s hat of bells limps importantly onto the stage. The blood recedes from James’s hands as he waits, every sinew in his body rapt and wrought like the strings on the first violin.
The orchestra sees her first. Then she appears from behind the painted jet of water. Incandescent. Kathleen. In a flowing white gown, her undone hair a halo of fire. James sits forward slightly — stop, stop, stop everyone and just look. Before you listen. You up there in the jingling hat, be still.
Rigoletto cries, “Figlia!” She flies into his arms; “Mio padre!” Father and daughter embrace. They weep, pledge their love, she asks what his real name is — “I am your father, let that suffice.”
She asks who her mother was and what became of her.
(Con effusione) “She died.”
“Oh Father, what great sorrow — quanto dolor — can cause such bitter tears?” But he can’t tell her anything, he loves her too much. So much that he keeps her locked up here —
“You must never go out.”
“I go out only to church.”
“Good.”
— so much that he’ll put her in a bag and stab her by mistake (Orror!) — but that comes later. For now:
“Quanto affetto! Quali cure!
che temete, padre mio?
Lassù in cielo presso Dio,
veglia un angiol protettor….”
With the first notes a frisson runs through the house; hairs spring to attention on napes of necks; erectile tissues stir unbidden beneath pearl-studded shirt fronts and matronly bodices, and within the farthest folds of nuns’ habits. Two things can inspire such a shiver: a beautiful voice, and someone walking on your grave. But only the former can allow you to share the shiver with a packed house.
As the song takes wing, the Lyceum disappears and the heat melts away. James cannot suppress his tears. At first he’s self-conscious, then he notices other people are wiping their eyes. It’s nothing to do with the words, which are in a foreign language, or the story, which most people don’t know. It’s because a real and beautiful voice delicately rends the chest, discovers the heart, and holds it beating against a stainless edge until you long to be pierced utterly. For the voice is everything you do not remember. Everything you should not be able to live without and yet, tragically, do.
“… Da noi toglie le sventure
di mia madre il priego santo;
non fia mai divelto o franto
questo a voi diletto fior.”
The cavatina comes to an end, a simple song. There is a silence in the hall, full of the peace that can follow music and allow you to forget for a moment your mortal enemies, flesh and time.
The curtain falls. Applause. James releases Sister Saint Cecilia’s hand. “I’m sorry, sister.”
She smiles, testing discreetly the harmony of twenty-seven compressed bones.
The baritone in the hunchback suit waddles out and bows deeply with all the humility of haute ham but James pays him no mind — here she comes! The applause soars. “Brava!” cries the crowd, “Bravissima!” “Atta girl!” The audience rises to its feet. She curtsies, poised, dignified. James has never been so proud. For all his boyhood ambitions he never could have dreamt of this, of her, a gift of such magnificence. She belongs to the world, she’s almost gone, he knows that and does not begrudge it, he applauds with the rest. The baritone takes her hand, kisses it — foolish lardass, get out of the way — any second the stagehand will bring out the roses James has arranged, he can’t wait to see her face — she’s being pelted with daisies — James swivels in his chair, intending to spot the culprit, and instead looks straight into the eyes of his estranged mother-in-law. Teresa, the maid, sees the avid white face with the boy-blue eyes and bird-of-prey bones and wonders, who is he to be staring at Mrs Mahmoud?
Meantime, the boy who fired the daisies is running towards the stage, a black haired scallywag barely out of knickerbockers. The house is still applauding. James turns to the front to see the boy vault onto the stage and kiss his daughter on the cheek. An uproar, a laugh, more applause; the youth turns pink, drops to his knees, laughing, worshipping. She knights him with a daisy, James is on his way down the aisle, going to put a stop to this, when “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your urgent attention, please!”
Clanging a handbell at the back of the hall, it’s grey Mr Foss, head of the Orpheus Society. James stops in his tracks halfway through the brass section. The roar of the crowd dies. All eyes are on Foss, who clears his narrow throat and, with a reedy dignity befitting hope and glory, announces, “The offices of The Sydney Post have just received a cable from the provincial parliament in Halifax. Today, Great Britain declared war on Germany. Canada will heed the call of the Mother Country in her hour of need. Ladies and gentlemen. We are at war.”