‘As I said in my review, anyone coming in new under these circumstances has an especially difficult task. It’s not an easy thing to lead an orchestra that has been rehearsed by someone else.’
‘Yes, I can understand that.’
‘But considering all the difficulties he encountered,’ continued the professor, ‘he did remarkably well. He’s a very talented young man, and he seems to have a special feeling for Verdi.’
‘And what about Maestro Wellauer?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘If you had written a review of the opening night, the performance Wellauer began, what would you have said?’
‘About the performance as a whole or about the Maestro?’
‘Either. Both.’
It was clear that the question confused the professor. ‘I’m not sure how to answer that. The Maestro’s death made it all unnecessary.’
‘But if you had written it, what would you have said about his conducting?’
The professor tilted his chair back and locked his hands behind his head, just the way Brunetti remembered his own professors doing. He sat like that for a while, pondering the question, then allowed his chair to slam hack down onto the floor. ‘I’m afraid the review would have been a different one.’
‘In what way Professor?’
‘For the singers, much the same. Signora Petrelli is always magnificent. The tenor sang well, as I said, and will certainly grow better with more experience on the stage. The night of the opening, they sang much the same way, but the result was different.’ Seeing Brunetti’s confusion, he attempted to explain. ‘You see, I have so many years of his conducting to erase. It was difficult to listen to the music that night without having all those years of genius interfere with what I was actually hearing.
‘Let me try to explain it this way. During a performance, it is the conductor who keeps things together, sees that the singers maintain the right tempi, that the orchestra supports them, that the entrances are on time, that neither is allowed to get away from the other. And he must also see that the orchestra’s playing doesn’t get too loud, that the crescendi build and are dramatic but, at the same time, don’t drown out the singers. When a conductor hears this happening, he can quiet them with a flick of his hand or a finger to the mouth.’ To illustrate, the musician demonstrated the gestures that Brunetti had seen performed during many concerts and operas.
‘And he must, at every moment, be in charge of everything: chorus, singers, orchestra, keeping them in balance perfectly. If he doesn’t do this, then the whole thing falls apart, and all anyone hears is the separate parts, not the whole opera as a unit.’
‘And that night, the night the Maestro died?’
‘The central control wasn’t there. There were times when the orchestra grew so loud that I couldn’t hear the singers, and I’m sure they must have had trouble hearing one another. There were other times when the orchestra played too fast and the singers had to struggle to keep up with them. Or the opposite.’
‘Was anyone else in the theater aware of this, Professor?’
Rezzonico raised his eyebrows and snorted in disgust. ‘Commissario, I don’t know how familiar you are with the Venetian audience, but the most complimentary thing that can be said of them is that they are dogs. They don’t go to the theater to listen to music or hear beautiful singing; they go to wear their new clothes and be seen in them by their friends, and those friends are there for the same reasons. You could bring the town band from the smallest town in Sicily and put them in the orchestra pit and have them play, and no one in the audience would notice the difference. If the costumes are lavish and the scenery is elaborate, then we have a success. If the opera is modern or the singers aren’t Italian, then we are sure to have a failure.’ The professor realized that this was turning into a speech, so he lowered his voice and added, ‘But to answer your question: no, I doubt that very many people in the theater realized what was happening.’
‘The other critics?’
The professor snorted again. ‘Aside from Narciso at
‘What do you think the cause of Maestro Wellauer’s failure, if that’s the proper term, might have been?’
‘Anything. A bad night. He was an old man, after all. He could have been upset, perhaps by something that happened before the performance. Or, ridiculous as this sounds, it could have been nothing more than indigestion. But whatever it was, he was not in control of the music that night. It got away from him; the orchestra did what they wanted, and the singers tried to stay with them. But there was very little sense of command from him.’
‘Anything else, Professor?’
‘Do you mean about the music?’
‘That, or anything else.’
Rezzonico considered for a moment, this time lacing his fingers together on his lap, and finally said, ‘This will perhaps sound strange. And it sounds strange to me because I don’t know why I say it or believe it. But I think he knew.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘Wellauer. I think he knew.’
‘About the music? About what was going on?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do you say that, Professor?’
‘It was after the scene in the second act where Germont pleads with Violetta.’ He looked at Brunetti to see if
