Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

Her first aria, “ Regnava nel silenzio ,” or “Reign of silence,” is her telling her maid she has seen a ghost in the woods, the ghost of a girl killed by a man from the family of her lover. This is what she sings before she goes to marry her lover in secret.

Whenever I thought of it, I could still hear the oboes murmuring as Lucia enters. The night we went, Adelina Patti sang, one of the very best Lucias in history.

Odile was moved enough by my attachment to this aria that she had urged some of the various musicians who came to the house to help me learn to sing it — so I could prepare, perhaps, for a concert in the salon. She often had us enact salon dramas and tableaux vivants as a way to begin the night; some nights we began as begowned princesses; others, as harem girls; still others, as goddesses. One composer even promised a salon opera. She had decided I would go from being the girl with a crop to being her opera siren. A baritone client, on hearing of my love for the aria and the opera, had even written out the lyrics for me one night and left them for me as a love note.

I had suspected this meant Odile was somehow moving Euphrosyne out. Which I could not imagine. But if a circus was a family you had to audition for, a maison close was a family that would sell you as a compliment.

Regardless, this was truly all the training I had in this kind of singing at the time, and while I was reluctant to sing for anyone with so little by way of preparation, I sang my best rendition of “ Regnava nel silenzio ,” accompanied on the piano by the tenor’s friend who had played the cancan in the salon, even though I knew it was all crude improvisation and the illusion stage was so close to them I could see Euphrosyne’s legs shake in the air — I still cannot imagine it gave him any pleasure, and yet it did not matter what I could imagine, what matters is what happened next.

It seems to me that when I am near him, heaven opens itself to me, Lucia sings at the end, telling her maid of why she will go to marry in the woods.

When I reached this and the diminuendo of the piano, the scene above came into view: Euphrosyne’s tenor leaning over the box, staring at me with fierce ardor. Euphrosyne behind him, her face lit by the ember of a cigarette.

Incredible, he said. And then he began to clap, finally turning to Euphrosyne, who clapped at last as well.

§

What training do you have? he asked me. We were downstairs in the salon again, drinking Odile’s champagne, seated on a crimson velvet chaise. Euphrosyne had left for her ablutions.

I gestured to the men around me.

Truly, no training in voice at all?

I shook my head and laughed. His interest seemed preposterous.

How…

I sang as a girl, I said. And I have seen one opera. Adelina Patti singing in Lucia . I was imitating her.

One opera! You must see more. And with me. I will arrange it with Odile.

Odile, at the mention of her name, appeared at his shoulder.

Chérie, what you have hidden here I cannot begin to explain, he said.

Don’t explain, she said, it’s too boring. Tell me what you want with her instead.

She must go to the opera, he said. She must sing opera. I will see her on that stage if I must set her down there myself. We start this week. She must see Cora Pearl! I have tickets.

She will be delighted to join you, Odile said, and smiled at me approvingly.

AND SO IT WAS I went to see the legendary courtesan Cora Pearl perform during her infamous two-week run as Cupid in Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers. And began my education as a singer.

We arrived that night to join a long line of carriages for the theater, each disembarking guests who practically bounded up the steps of the Gaîté. The tenor had boasted of having these tickets, for the evening had sold out, as had the entire run. This meant little to me. I arrived largely ignorant as to Cora’s legend, the scarcity of tickets, or sold-out runs. Nothing in the cirque had prepared me. This was my introduction.

As I sat in the box with my new friend, I could not help but be fascinated by the fevered anticipation in the crowd. To the audience that night, the opera had a single star, despite her slight role. She did not appear until the second act. The opera began, but the murmurs continued — they would remain until Cora appeared.

I had exited the carriage self-consciously, dressed dutifully in what Odile and I could muster for my opera finery, which, I knew from the scene around me, was not quite fine enough, but there had been no time to order better — it was a navy velvet, and the opera bodice had a white lace collar at the neck and machine-embroidered white roses spreading across the front that I hoped made it look better than it was. It was the finest dress I had ever owned, and yet I was not quite proud of it.

I had no jewelry then except a new choker I liked, a pale gray-green enamel perfume locket worn on a black ribbon. I liked it as it looked like something from the sea, almost a natural pearl, and I knew these ribbon chokers were very chic then — the Empress Eugénie wore them, sometimes as many as ten or more, each with a different locket, though she would never have worn them to the opera.

The locket carried a few drops of Eau de Lubin, a gift from this man — he liked it very much and I knew to reapply it at least once before the evening ended. The scent was rose, musk, and oranges; and the richness of it at my throat was, to me, a little like wearing a gem, if secretly — like a ring turned toward your palm. In the short time I’d worn it, I’d learned to recognize it on others and to notice when it acted as a signal as you passed by someone on the stairs of the opera house or as you handed your cloak to the cloakroom; if you wore it, the person encountering you simply understood you to belong.

It was the atmosphere of wealth and security I did not know I had longed for, not just to surround me, but to belong to me; and I enjoyed it, too.

Orphée aux Enfers, the opera we saw that evening, is an opéra-bouffe-féerie, a comic farce on the myth of Orpheus — the bereft singer of myth enters the underworld to retrieve his wife only out of a sense of obligation. He finds she has fallen in love with the King of Death. She does not want to return. Gradually, despite the lack of interest in the other performers, the jokes won over the audience, and I nearly forgot, as the first act closed, why we were there.

The roar began from below and above before I could see her. Her hair was a mass of blond curls; her legs at first looked bare in their stockings, shapely, almost stark in their erotic intensity. She carried a bow and wore the most incredible high-heeled boots; as she walked, you could see the soles were made from diamonds. Pearls and diamonds covered her neck, in a sort of ridiculous collar, and the rest of her was a figure made of diamonds also. She glowed and flashed in the gaslight. As she turned so the audience could see all of her and walked toward the back of the stage, little wings, I noticed as she turned, dangled from her back comically. A bow rested against her thigh.

She glanced up into the boxes, as if to take attendance; and noticing my companion, she offered him a sly wink and a wave that made the audience laugh. He smiled back at her and blew her a kiss. And then she sang her song, looking directly at him for the first bars and notching her bow before turning to regard the crowd.

The crowd was silent as she sang, as if speaking might obstruct the view; and her plaintive, off-key voice struggled through its few bars.

She was dreadful, but not one of them laughed. She was the most powerful woman in Paris in that instant.