6 - Whispers of Vivaldi Read Online Free Page B

talked out of Prometheus all along? Perhaps, thanks to his vast supply of eyes and ears throughout Venice’s musical world, Torani had already known about The False Duke and was curious to see how staunchly I would defend my new opera against his nay-saying. Hmm. Perhaps Torani had also planned for me to be the one to convince the Savio that the change in operas would be a good idea.

Chapter Three
    Other cities are built on dry land—terra firma. My ancestors had made their own.
    Centuries ago they faced the choice of being overrun by Visigoths or fleeing to the relative safety of offshore mud flats. In this enclosed bay of the Adriatic, they drove pinewood piles into the muck, packed them tight to resist the pull of tides, then topped the piles with beams of larch wood. From Istria they fetched dense, pale gray stone to fashion sea-proof foundations for their expanding islets. Dwellings arose, finer and more magnificent with each passing century—and bridges, stately houses of business and government, churches, all interlaced in a pageant of arches, balconies, colonnades, and emerald canals.
    Having wrested a home from the sea, the Venetians set out to further subdue the waters. In oared triremes and tall-masted sailing ships, they gradually secured a monopoly of Mediterranean and Oriental trade and acquired an empire that stretched from the Levant in the east to the Alps in the west. By my time, much of that had been eaten away. The turn of trade to the rich New World across the Atlantic favored other nations, and perhaps, just perhaps, Venetians had become lazy and complacent. They’d allowed themselves to be suffocated by layers of governmental rules and regulations. Protective, yes. Also stultifying.
    There were, however, a few men who embodied the vigor and courage of our ancestors. Worthy men who combined a love of learning, a head for business, and a taste for adventure. Thank God, Signor Arcangelo Passoni, the current Savio alla Cultura, was one of these.
    I first sought Passoni on the Broglio, the arcaded walk across from the Doge’s Palace where Senators and their minions retired to whisper and plot during recesses of the Great Council. The wind had blown up a bit. In the Basin, a forest of masts rose and fell beneath screaming, circling gulls. Discarded gazettes and other trash skidded along the stones between the great columns dedicated to our patron saints. Under the arcade, I pushed through a crowd of Venice’s foremost aristocrats, asking first one and then another about Signor Passoni.
    “Not here, Signor Amato,” a minor dignitary swathed in his black robe of office advised me. I was still recognized, you see—opera-besotted Venetians never forgot their heroes. The man continued, “They say Signor Passoni has a touch of catarrh. Poor old fellow. He’s missing a fascinating debate on the licensing of caulk purveyors for the shipyards.”
    Caulk, yes. If our Savio found the subject as engrossing as I did, I suspected I’d find him at home, reading in his library with a cup of chocolate within easy reach. The Ca’Passoni lay in the Dorsodura district across the Grand Canal, and the great clock on the piazza had just struck eleven. I hastened to secure a gondola and present myself before the Savio would have roused himself for his afternoon activities.
    The footman attending the Ca’Passoni’s water entrance must have found my person and recently engraved card acceptable. With barely a trace of the haughtiness that servants of noble houses so often absorb from their masters, the liveried youth led me across the foyer and deep into the great palazzo.
    Despite the marble floors displaying an endless pattern of varicolored squares and diamonds, and the elegant silk-damask wall panels framing gilded mirrors, the Ca’Passoni oozed a subtle shabbiness. Many of the plastered acanthus scrolls above the archways had lost a few leaves. And then there was the whiff of rotting damp emanating from a stairwell