6 - Whispers of Vivaldi Read Online Free

to hand.
    Caprioli stepped back and signaled his waiting chairmen with two fingers in the air, lace cuff aflutter.
    Scarface sprang to open the chair’s front panel while his flat-nosed partner raised the domed roof.
    The impresario muttered, “You must excuse me, Signori. An important matter—I have an appointment with a man who trains birds.” He turned on the heel of an elegant shoe, then threw a last remark over his shoulder: “Our Venus and Adonis will have a flock of live songbirds released in the pastoral scene that opens Act Two. Top that, if you can.”
    As Caprioli’s chair receded into the noisy ebullience of the market, I studied Torani’s smoldering expression. The manager of the Teatro Grimani had just declared war, and the biggest cannon in his arsenal appeared to be an opera of precisely the type I was urging my mentor to rebel against.
    Torani and I were of the same mind—as so often in our years of collaboration—only he phrased it this way: “That scabby, scheming, puffed-up toad has fired a shot across our bow.”
    “What do you mean to do?”
    Torani left me in the dark for a few tantalizing minutes. Hurrying away from the campo, he revealed his strategy in small increments, rather like water dripping from a leaky bucket. First he located his gondola.
    “Row us to the Teatro San Marco,” he ordered his boatman, Peppino, who uncurled lazily from his perch on the quay’s steps. “By the most meandering route you can devise,” Torani added, as I steadied him into the swaying boat.
    Peppino touched the side of his nose to signify understanding, pushed away from the quay with a booted foot, and leaned into his oar. The high, iron-tipped prow cut through the thinning mist under the Rialto Bridge, and we emerged into the clear sunlight of mid-morning. Around us, the canal stretched out in a jade-green road cobbled with tiny whitecaps right up to the base of the marble palaces that lined Venice’s most important waterway. We were moving away from the heart of the city where the theater was situated, toward the outlying Cannaregio, the quiet domestic neighborhood where I lived with my family.
    Torani’s sharp gaze warned me to keep my mouth shut, so I leaned back and closed my eyes. Behind me, Peppino’s oar groaned rhythmically as it strained in the rowlock. The breeze cooled my discord-warmed cheeks as my thoughts ranged to other matters.
    Two years ago, a violent accident had reduced my highly trained throat to a dry husk. Overnight my crystal clear soprano had deepened to a gravelly alto—despite doctoring from eminent physicians as far away as Bologna, despite taking the waters at several German spas, despite swallowing pitcherfuls of Liya’s herbal concoctions.
    Despite all, my celebrated stage voice was irretrievably lost.
    It had taken several agonizing months for me to admit that I’d never sing for an audience again, then several more to consider Maestro Torani’s urgings that I turn my talents and experience to assisting him at the Teatro San Marco. Instead of shining at center stage, I learned to dwell in the backstage shadows, overseeing rehearsals and drilling the singers I had once joined in creating beautiful music. Thank the Blessed Virgin for the director’s patience. While I was still in my doldrums, I had been a moody, distracted ghost of my former self and couldn’t have been much help. Eventually, with the support of Liya and Gussie, and Benito, too, I found my way out of that dark forest of despair.
    Since then, I’d been considering my future in a more serious fashion than ever before. Against my will, when I was still an innocent boy, a surgeon’s knife had forced my life onto one path. Now I needed to forge another. Mounting the opera I had chosen to save our theater would be the first step on a path of my own choosing—if Maestro Torani had enough faith to let me see it through.
    My eyes flew open at the sound of Torani’s voice, and I edged forward on the