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  Contents

  Bernard Bastable

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. Masonic Funeral Music

  2. A Little Night Music

  3. The Impresario

  4. The Queen of the Night

  5. Mlle Silberklang

  6. La Finta Semplice

  7. Il Color di Morte

  8. Trial by Water

  9. Masetto

  10. Il Dissoluto Punito

  11. I’ll Play the Tune

  12. Mann und Weib, und Weib und Mann

  13. Lo Sposo Deluso

  14. E Quello è Mio Padre

  15. Sinfonia Concertante

  16. Così Fan Tutte

  17. Sono in Trappola

  18. Rondo Finale

  Bernard Bastable

  Dead, Mr Mozart

  Bernard Bastable

  Robert Barnard was a well-established crime writer. He won the prestigious Nero Wolfe Award as well as the Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Awards, was been nominated eight times for the Edgar Award and was the winner of the 2003 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for a lifetime of achievement. He also wrote crime novels under the pseudonym of Bernard Bastable. He lived with his wife in Leeds and had over 45 titles published in the UK and US.

  Dedication

  For

  Richard Rodney Bennett

  Another Musician in Exile

  Epigraph

  ‘I am an out-and-out Englishman’

  (W.A. Mozart, the real one,

  in a letter to his father,

  19 October 1782)

  1. Masonic Funeral Music

  I had hardly turned out of my apartment house in Henrietta Street and begun in the direction of the Strand when I was struck by something unusual: almost all the people I passed were in their soberest dress, and had on their faces expressions of more than the usual dyspeptic English melancholy. Mr Gibbs the Attorney was bustling past and, seeing my bewilderment, he stopped.

  ‘It’s the King,’ he explained.

  ‘Worse, Mr Gibbs?’

  ‘Dead, Mr Mozart.’

  And he hurried on to take some doubtless necessary legal cognizance of the new reign. I turned and regained my apartment, where I ransacked my cupboards for black and dun-coloured articles of apparel – no easy matter, for even at my age I am generally considered something of a dandy. My proceedings were regarded with mystification by Ann, my little servant maid, who I sometimes think is hardly better than an idiot.

  ‘It’s the King. He’s dead,’ I explained.

  I think she thought I said ‘Mr King’ – manager of the Grand Theatre, with whom I have had many dealings, mostly unsatisfactory to me – for she merely said ‘Well I never’, and went on with her work with no particular empressement. I went out again, more suitably draped to face a nation in mourning.

  The first acquaintance I met who wanted to talk was Lord Egremere, a one-time patron in whose debt I shall always be. We gave the handshake and he launched into the inevitable subject.

  ‘Sad news,’ he said.

  ‘Sad indeed, My Lord,’ I replied with suitable gravity. However Lord Egremere is a Whig, and I could be a little more honest with him than I could with a lord of Tory sympathies. ‘And yet—’ how to put the thought that must have been in everybody’s mind?—‘and yet for the royal sufferer, perhaps a happy release?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. Certainly he deserved rest at last. I believe there was never any diminution in the … symptoms. So now we have a new reign, eh?’

  ‘A new reign, and yet not a new reign, you might say, Mr Lord.’

  He nodded sagely.

  ‘Agreed, agreed. Prinny does seem to have been around for an age. Perhaps the excitements of Waterloo and Paris make it seem so. But still, a new reign! A Coronation! Maybe some festivities for a war-weary nation.’

  That idea was new to me.

  ‘I had not thought of a Coronation,’ I admitted. ‘It’s so long since there has been one.’

  ‘Before you came among us, eh, Mr Mozart?’

  ‘I should hardly have remembered even if I had been here,’ I pointed out (I am perhaps becoming a little bit touchy about my age, and the length of time I have been in this benighted country). ‘Being only four or five at the time. You don’t think the new King will forswear a Coronation, as being inappropriate to the spirit of the age?’

  Lord Egremere threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘You little know Prinny if you can imagine that! An opportunity to dress up? Pomp, circumstance, with him the centre of it all? He’ll revel in it. Anyway, why should he forswear it? Revolution defeated, the old Sovereigns restored – no, Prinny will have his show, whatever people feel. And perhaps he’ll be right: it will do the nation a power of good if it’s well done, and Prinny should ensure that it is … Could be something in it for you, Mr Mozart.’

  ‘For me, My Lord? Hardly, as a Catholic. I’m sure if there is any commission for music going it will be given to an Anglican and an Englishman.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking of music for the Coronation. I was thinking of something for the theatre. Our music theatre has been in a deplorable state for many years now.’

  ‘It would be impossible to disagree with that, My Lord.’

  ‘Revive its glories. Write something wonderful for Prinny’s jollifications. A fine stately piece. No – more to the point, a fine comedy. Something to cheer the nation’s spirits after the long war.’

  The idea appealed to me at once.

  ‘I do have something already in mind, My Lord …’

  ‘Splendid! Well, set to! Give us something to cheer us all up. I’m sure it will go like anything.’

  And with a wave he went on his way. The Lord Egremere is long on ideas, short on specifics. How the opera is to be revived without a theatre, without a fine company, without the best Italian voices, he did not deign to suggest.

  It must have been the purest coincidence, but it was not ten minutes later that I was conversing with Mr Brownlett the banker in St James’s, and after the preliminaries, which by now were becoming second nature, and the handshake, which was too, he said:

  ‘What we need for the new reign is a new opera.’

  I cleared my throat modestly.

  ‘Lord Egremere has just said the same.’

  ‘You’re the man for it. Something to express the nation’s joy – after a suitable period of mourning, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What was that piece you wrote – full of catchy tunes and magic and popular stuff like that?’

  ‘I think you mean The Enchanted Violin.’

  That’s what we want. Something light.’

  Something light! Only my most sublime music, my deepest thought, my finest exploration of the human condition! Clothed in the form of a burlesque such as John and Susan might enjoy on their evening off, but nevertheless music to take with me to the Judgment Seat. And Brownlett remembers it as ‘something light’! I would not for all the world hav
e the ears of a banker.

  He registered at least my speechlessness.

  ‘Too early to think of it now, of course. Naturally, with the poor old King only a few hours dead. You’ll feel it particularly, won’t you? He was such a benefactor of yours.’

  A benefactor! A benefactor! I saluted his departing back and went on my way. Those damned fifty guineas! Those fatal fifty guineas! What they have to answer for! I have spent my life cursing those fifty guineas.

  My revered father (may God have granted rest at last to his spirit) brought me to these islands in 1764. I was then – though I say it myself, who am the only one qualified to say it – the most musically talented 7-year-old musician the world had ever known. I, with Nannerl (I salute you in beautiful Salzburg, dear and fortunate sister!) played for the beau monde, played for the gentry, played for royalty. In particular I played for the young King George and his incessantly pregnant and incurably ugly queen, Charlotte. Over and over I played for them, expending for them the abundance of my juvenile fancy and proficiency. My rewards? Over and over, a purse of fifteen guineas. Good, my dear but perhaps over-deferential father would say: not wonderful, but good. Nannerl and I would look at each other, each of us somehow knowing that it was not good but stingy. But as I say my poor father was always inclined to take too roseate a view of the great and powerful.

  Then, when I had been in London for some months, I played for their majesties again at Windsor Castle, played with unparalleled brilliance and feeling, a concert fit for Saint Cecilia herself. Fool that I was! Infant dolt! We were rewarded with a purse of fifty guineas.

  I myself believe it was the result of a mishearing: the King’s. English was notoriously guttural and unclear. His Majesty’s love of music was really nothing more than a fixation on Handel, his patronage of me in later years consisting of constant requests to re-orchestrate his oratorios for larger forces. One can have enough even of masterpieces. I have had enough, over the years, of the Messiah.

  But that was it. The die was cast. On the strength of those fifty guineas, my father decided to stay on with my mother and the two of us in London. So I have grown old, rheumaticky and asthmatic in the foggy damp of England, who might have been well and happy in the beneficent climates of Salzburg or Vienna. I have spent a good part of my life writing trivial theatre music for footmen and shop-girls, condescended to by Court and Church alike – I, who would have been courted by my Emperor, wooed by Archbishops, the intimate of intellectuals and the aristocracy.

  O, accursed, fatal fifty guineas!

  I went on my way grumbling, as I have grumbled to myself a thousand – nay, a million – times before. When I finally reached the Haymarket and the Queen’s Theatre I found Mr Popper pacing the length of his office at the back of the theatre, as usual a mixture of pomposity and naïvety. In honour of the day we indulged in the handshake (something I normally avoid with Mr Popper, who should not have been admitted to any Lodge, nor indeed any less elevated association of gentlemen).

  ‘Ah, Mr Mozart – no doubt you’ve heard? Of course. Terrible news, terrible. A national tragedy.’

  I speculated yet again how anyone could describe as a national tragedy the death of a man who had been off his head these past nine years, and who spent his more lucid moments playing the organ at Windsor Castle (very badly, I am reliably informed, and Handel, I am morally sure). As before I held my peace, and merely bowed my agreement.

  ‘The theatre, of course, will have to be shut. As a token of the musical world’s participation in the national grief.’ He didn’t look at me directly, but shot me a sideways glance from his piggy little eyes. ‘I propose to remain closed for – three days!’

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘That will hardly be long enough, my dear sir. The funeral will take longer than that to organise. We can hardly reopen before the funeral, while the other theatres remain closed.’

  He fumed, as I knew he would.

  ‘Why should it take any time to arrange a funeral? The event is hardly unexpected – or only so insofar as we had all forgotten about him. Who is there to mourn him? His children who hated him, his countrymen who ridiculed him? I’d have thought they’d have buried him “hugger-mugger” … Oh, very well, then: we remain closed until after the funeral.’

  It was meant as a dismissal, but I remained.

  ‘Your apt quotation from Hamlet—’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘—reminds us that we should turn our thoughts to the new reign, and the new monarch.’

  I had struck an immediate chord. There came into his eye a look of calculation. I had seen it so often I had at last learned to capitalise on it.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We can’t reopen until after the funeral because it would look disrespectful to the new King. Though in the circumstances it’s hard to think of him as a new King.’

  ‘I said the same to Lord Egremere. The Prince has been reigning so long in all but name. Still, there will – after a decent period – be celebrations … A Coronation.’

  Mr Popper slapped his thigh.

  ‘God dammit, you’re right, Mr Mozart. And what you’re saying is that we must be part of those celebrations.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Put on something a bit special. A capital idea! Revive the Italian opera after all these years. What should it be, then? A production of Il Matrimonio Segreto?’

  I closed my eyes in distress.

  ‘The first Coronation for sixty years could only be celebrated, surely, by a new work.’

  ‘A new work! A new Italian opera. My, but that would be setting our sights high. I like the idea immensely – immeasurably – but who would we get to write the music?’ I coughed, this time so meaningfully that I managed to pierce his pompous self-preoccupation without further prompting. ‘You, Mr Mozart? You have ambitions to write further Italian operas? Yet how long is it since you wrote a full scale comic piece? It was a comic piece you had in mind?’

  ‘Oh yes. A Coronation could only be celebrated in the theatre joyously.’

  ‘Precisely. That would bring the customers in. You say you have a subject in mind?’

  ‘Yes, I do, though I am having a little trouble with the title: Le Moglie Allegre di Windsor? …’

  He raised his eyebrows in an attempt at satire.

  ‘It hardly slips easily off your tongue, Mr Mozart – let alone the tongue of an Englishman.’

  ‘Le Donne Allegre?’

  ‘Better, much better. The simpler the better, I always say. But that is a detail …’

  I saw from his eyes that he was sliding off into a reverie, so I slid off into one of my own. How long, he had asked, since I had written a comic opera in Italian? How long indeed? Since the disappearance from these shores of my good friend (if far from good friend) da Ponte, chased abroad and to the unpromising cities of America by creditors. How often did I lecture my friend on the proper method of managing indebtedness! How often did I explain ways – subtle, ingenious, gentlemanly ways – of getting into debt in such a manner that one could get out with impunity and without paying! To no avail. And yet, how grateful must I be to God for his years in England, and the glorious pieces that we made together: Le Nozze di Figaro; Don Giovanni; Così Fan Tutte (this last quite unappreciated by the beef-witted British).

  My librettist for the new piece is a sad come-down. He is an estimable man – one of liberal sentiments, a Venetian fleeing persecution by what he misguidedly calls the city’s Austrian oppressors. But being persecuted is no sure sign of being talented. He can no more read Shakespeare than I can read Confucius, and he has no notion of compression, of reducing the numbers of characters and incidents – of, in short, producing an opera, and an Italian opera in especial. But we proceed, we jog on. But, oh Lorenzo! If but you could return, without a plague of bailiffs descending!

  I emerged from my reverie to find that Popper was still in his, but was now beginning to share it – muttering, his eyes still fixed on a horizon we
ll beyond the Haymarket.

  ‘A Coronation opera season! A Season of Italian Opera to Celebrate the Coronation of King George IV … A Glorious Opera Season to Honour our Glorious Sovereign … No, the people would never stand for “Glorious”, though he could have a bout of popularity if he played his cards right … Mme Ardizzi and Mme Pizzicoli Honour These Shores to Celebrate the Coronation of King George IV …’

  His eyes might be fixed on a distant horizon, but the light of madness glinted in them. How well do I know that madness, how often have I seen it in theatre managers. The lure of an Italian opera season. Entice Mme X from Paris with the promise of mounting the opera that shows her powers to their greatest advantage. Invite Mme Y from Naples, dangling before her a production of the opera that shows her powers to the greatest advantage. Lure Mme Z out of retirement at Kew and a comfortable existence as the mistress of a Royal Duke with the promise …

  What is the upshot? One by one they arrive, with a caravan of luggage and a retinue of husbands, lovers and hangers-on. Each expresses surprise, bewilderment, shock, contempt, to find that other prime donne than themselves have also been engaged. Manager temporises on the subject of the new staging of the various favourite operas. Each lady presses, each lady’s lovers press, her husband, even, presses. Rows, ructions, substitute singers, cancelled performances, outraged reports in The Times and the Morning Post, and in the end: bankruptcy. Oh, I’ve seen it all so often before!

  ‘I think that’s a wonderful idea,’ I said.

  ‘But would they come, eh? Would they come?’

  ‘For a Coronation Season – with the eyes of all Europe and all its sovereigns on Great Britain? Of course they would come.’

  ‘Dear God, I think you’re right.’

  ‘If the ladies you’ve named won’t come, I hear great things of Mme Hubermann-Cortino in Vienna.’

  ‘What is her speciality?’

  ‘I believe it’s Iphigénie en Tauride.’