Eva Ibbotson - A Song For Summer

He would not raise Ellen’s hopes at once: he’d just say he hoped to get tickets for the opera. Or should he say nothing about it at all and give her a wonderful surprise?

Standing on the pavement, jostled by the passers-by, Kendrick sighed with anticipation, and blushed, for he had just remembered that the prelude of Rosenkavalier was supposed to depict, in music, the act of love.

Was this something he should explain-but very delicately of course-to Ellen? She listened so nicely when he told her things, her head on one side, her lids drooping a little over her gentle eyes. Sometimes he felt that that was what he had been born for-explaining things to the girl he loved so much.

The Viennese afternoon was warm and mellow. The sun shone down on the green and golden roofs of the churches, warmed the stone archdukes and marble composers in the parks; touched the courtyards of the Hofburg, which had once been the home of emperors and now housed government ministries, Lipizzaner horses, and a few selected citizens who had been given grace-and-favour apartments by the state.

Among whom was Vienna’s favourite diva, Brigitta Seefeld, who now woke in her famous Swan Bed, stretched her plump arms and demanded (but in a whisper for she never spoke on the day of a performance), “Where are my eggs?”’

Ufra shrugged. Her eggs were where they always were, in a bowl on the dressing table, fresh that morning from the market. An ugly black-haired Armenian in her fifties, she had worked for Brigitta for fifteen years and knew that today there would be trouble. Brigitta was singing Mimi in La Bohème and they had brought in a new Musetta from Hamburg who was said to be both excellent and young. And tonight too Benny Feldmann was due back from America, and if he hadn’t found Marcus von Altenburg, thought Ufra, God help us all.

Brigitta rose, put on her peignoir and descended from her dais. On the walls of her bedroom, as on all the walls of her sumptuous apartment, with its inlaid floors and porcelain stoves, hung portraits of her in her most famous roles: as the Countess in Figaro… as Violetta in La Traviata… as a pig-tailed Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust.

Reaching the dressing table, she broke the first egg and tipped it down her throat. A second egg followed; then came the exercises. “Mi, mi, mi,” sang Brigitta, her hand on her diaphragm-and outside in the street, the porters looked up and grinned and the grooms leading the Lipizzaners to their stables nodded to each other, for Brigitta Seefeld’s voice exercises were as much a part of Vienna as the bells of St Stephen’s or the cooing of the pigeons on the roofs.

At four-thirty, Ufra admitted the masseuse and after her came Herr Köenig, the leader of Brigitta’s claque.

Marcus had disapproved of claques. “You don’t need them,” he’d raged. “It lowers you, paying for applause.”

How idealistic he’d been, that wild boy who’d come to her dressing room with an entire tree, and into her life. But what did he know about anything, with his tempestuous youth and his talent? It was all very well for him; he could afford to go slumming in the suburbs, conducting working men’s choirs and writing pieces for tubercular schoolchildren to play. He wasn’t dependent on an arbitrary collection of cords and tendons which could fail at any moment. A head cold, a chest infection, an impending nodule on her larynx would leave her defenceless, a prey to her rivals, her status threatened. No wonder she found it necessary to cultivate those who could help her.

Herr Köenig came forward to kiss her plump, soft hand-possibly the most kissed hand in Vienna-and was informed that Brigitta expected not less than twelve curtain calls, and for herself alone-not the beanpole from Hamburg who was singing Musetta.

Herr Köenig blanched. Twelve curtain calls, yes-but for her alone? The soprano from Hamburg was said to be very good. On the other hand, Seefeld was not singing again till her Rosenkavalier at the gala in four weeks’ time. For the ordinary Viennese who could not afford gala prices, tonight was effectively her last appearance of the season. Looking into the diva’s appealing blue eyes, he was driven to rashness.

“You shall have them,” he declared grandly-and could be seen, as he reached the street, striking his forehead and cursing his stupidity.

At five-thirty, Ufra prepared the dog. Combing the long, silky hair of the little Tibetan terrier, binding his topknot up in scarlet ribbon, took almost as long as dressing Brigitta’s golden curls, but the public expected Puppchen on his red lead, as they expected the sable stoles, the jewels, the famous smile.

“In Armenia we would have eaten you,” said Ufra as he wriggled and moaned.

At six-thirty the procession set off down the Augustinerstrasse watched by the shopkeepers, the man in the tobacco kiosk and those fortunate tourists who had been tipped off that Seefeld was en route to the evening’s performance.

Arriving at the stage door, Brigitta was extremely gracious to the doorman, considerably less gracious to the tenor who was singing Rodolfo, and not gracious at all to the beanpole from Hamburg who should have stayed where she was even if she did happen to be married to a Jew.

But the performance went well. The voice-that capricious Gestalt almost as external to herself as the tiresome little dog that Marcus had given her- had behaved itself, and Herr Köenig had kept his word. There were twelve curtain calls, and the other singers, relieved that Brigitta would be absent now for nearly a month, allowed her to take a substantial number of these alone.

Afterwards there was another smattering of applause as she crossed from the opera house to Sacher’s, the hotel where she was accustomed to dine after a performance. There were roses on the table especially kept for her, and more hand-kissing, more bowing as she was greeted by the maître d’hôtel and her dinner companions rose to their feet.

“You were superb, Liebchen,” said Count Stallenbach, her current “protector”, a man sufficiently stricken in years to make few demands on her person.

Julius Staub, extinguishing his cigarette, added his congratulations. A pale playwright with an enormous forehead, who wandered about in a pall of cigarette ash like an extinct volcano, he had written the libretto of an opera about Helen of Troy which only lacked a composer to be a perfect vehicle for Seefeld.

But the man she most wanted to see had not yet arrived: Benny Feldmann, her agent and business manager, who had just returned from the United States.

“He phoned to say he’d be along in half an hour. The train was delayed and he’s just gone home to change.”

Brigitta nodded, but as she chose her dishes and sipped her champagne, she could hardly conceal her impatience.

It had begun over a year ago, her desire to find Marcus von Altenburg again. She had been furious with him when he withdrew his violin concerto in that melodramatic way. To lose the chance of a Berlin premiere for a little Jew like Meierwitz was absurd, and she had written to tell him so. Music was above politics.

But if Marcus had been labelled as a person not welcome in the Third Reich, there were other countries, seemingly, which did want him. The French had just performed his First Symphony, the Songs for Summer had been recorded in London, and the Americans had invited him back on generous terms to conduct. He was rumoured to be over there now, negotiating.

“He hasn’t been so stupid,” Benny Feldmann had told her before he left for the States. “The future is over there, Brigitta. More and more people are going.”

Brigitta had no intention of leaving Vienna; she was Viennese through and through. But the news from Germany was bad: more and more Wagner operas staged for the Führer, more and more influence exerted by the Bayreuth clique. She was a lyric soprano: Wagner did not suit her voice.