Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

She demonstrated, the sound much as I’d heard her sing privately the day before.

Your voice is quite fine, but you have not really been singing, she said to me, after a few of these exercises. Your voice has simply been misused. It is like a horse that was allowed to run wherever and whenever it liked, and then was found by someone who enjoyed it that way, and somehow it has not lamed itself, she said. Though there could, I think, be some secret wound not quite audible to us. For now we will proceed. For our purposes, I want you to begin as if you have never sung before and do all I tell you.

She handed me a book that looked like a score to an operetta in which one only sang the letter A. This was a lesson book, she explained, a program carefully constructed over the years to train her singers.

Each day I was to begin at the piano, and to begin with my posture at the piano — I was to sit erect, head slightly lifted. Once the posture was correct, I would begin not by singing but by playing the notes to the lesson on the piano until I knew the music well enough to begin — unfamiliar music, she explained, was a danger to the voice, like running through an unfamiliar landscape. A singer’s voice could trip on too fast a change, especially if untrained.

As I played the notes without singing, I was to practice breathing through my nose only, practicing for when I began to sing. As I did this, I was also to soften my tongue so that it would not go rigid. When I was ready to sing, I was to use my practice in inhaling through my nose to take a breath this way first, and then hold the breath for a moment, before releasing the note in as natural a way as possible. I was to sing only that letter A and never change the vowel sound during the lesson.

When I began to sing, I was to sing slowly at first, legato and moderato, and then faster and faster. A mirror sat on the piano so I could watch my mouth’s movements and modulate myself accordingly. Once I knew the lesson comfortably from memory, I would then stand and sing it unaccompanied. There were instructions for standing as well, of course — I was to stand in second position from ballet, one foot in front, the other in back, so there could be no unseemly slouching or swaying or any extra movement whatsoever. The back was arched ever so slightly backward, the head slightly raised, as if I were maintaining my stance in the face of a great wind and I would not ever lose my ground.

I was to practice fifteen minutes at a time and then rest and do this only when my concentration was greatest. I was never to force, never to slide toward a note, but instead launch it boldly, precisely, never loud when I was to be soft or soft when I was to be loud. If I sensed a mistake or a problem, I was to stop at once and begin again, but only once a natural softness had returned to the throat. The plus marks over or under the notes were warnings as to where the voice was most likely to go sharp (over) or flat (under).

I cannot play so well, I told her, anxious not to fail at even this.

She pointed at the keys. So, your playing will improve first, she said, and then your singing. Now begin, and I will return at your first break to speak to you some more. She picked up an hourglass timer, turned it over, and left.

Hesitantly, my fingers found the notes. I’d had no instruction in the piano previously. I pecked in the manner of all who cannot play, first slowly and then more quickly. I resisted the impulse to hum.

She returned. My child, you did not tell me you could not play at all.

And so she became my piano teacher also.

In several weeks’ time I was ready to sing the lesson. The voice felt made new after the long rest, stronger, surer, as if it were rooted the more deeply somehow. The noise of it was thrilling. Here in the lessons were the ways to attempt the vocal flourishes, the trills and diminuendos and crescendos I had only heard and never understood. Only when I was ready to stand did I realize how I had been raised up very slowly by degrees. Until I was singing in that position in which I would not ever lose my ground.

I made my way like this through that first winter into the spring in Weimar and Karlsruhe until we returned to Baden-Baden. By the summer, Natalya had moved on, and when the opera was performed, I replaced her onstage as Prince Lelio, singing of love to Maxine, who was still in the role of Stella. This amused the tenor to no end. Especially when I decided, with a flourish, to use that ruby rose gift from the Emperor, the one he had kept for me, as the flower the Queen gives Lelio to pass invisibly through the night.

§

At this distance, these lessons with her are, to me, her autobiography written in musical instruction. At the least, as I sat and learned to play beside her, they were a mirror to the story of a girl who had watched her older brother and sister both break very publicly — her sister singing herself to death after a horseback-riding accident, her brother losing his voice very young — and she, all the while, their talented much younger sister, who loved the piano more than she loved singing, picking out the notes before she sang. Doing as her father and mother said.

And if it was not her autobiography, it was at the least the door by which one could enter a life like hers.

At Madame Viardot’s school, her many successes were confided to us mostly by either of her two greatest admirers: Louis, who’d once managed an opera house in Paris, or Turgenev, who fell in love with her during her triumphant first season in Saint Petersburg. They spoke of her enormous capacity for memorization and her ability to keep many roles in her repertoire at the same time, even within a single opera, and in several languages. Once, in Berlin, during a performance of Robert le Diable , she replaced another singer as she also continued singing her own role. Later, in London, in Les Huguenots, she found herself tricked by a rival into performing the lead in Norma in Italian — but her tenor that night was going to sing his part in French. She taught herself the French as the opera began, in the wings, and her Norma was also French halfway through the performance. To the audience, Louis said, as he paused with a rare wit in his eye, it was as if the druidess had cast a spell on her own throat.

These were not lectures but they acted as such: We were to be as ruthless in the pursuit of a performance and as able. I soon inquired about learning other languages, and learning my parts, when I was allowed to, each in several languages, all of which pleased Pauline — and all of which she could teach. I began the practice of learning the other major roles of opera. I wanted to prepare for a life of sudden transformations, of enemies singing at you across the stage dressed in the costume of a lover.

I was consumed by my apprenticeship and paid little attention to the tenor’s affairs. At first, on our return to Baden-Baden, he enjoyed himself at the casinos and baths as if he were on some extended vacation, and he was a hit at Pauline’s many dinners and events, sometimes even singing at the Haustheater , much as she’d suggested. Soon he was excusing himself to go on trips, at first for a few days and nights and then increasingly for longer — a week, a fortnight. But he would always return for the Haustheater events, as if they were to him a regular engagement at any other theater. The proximity of Baden-Baden to the major capitals and its strange role as both a sanitarium and a casino to the rich meant a variety of notables passed through, and all of them sought a place either in her audience or on her stage.

Each time the tenor returned from his trips, he found me further along in my education and praised me. He brought gifts, always. He kept an apartment in the town I rarely saw; it was impractical for me to live so far from the house. Each time he returned, some part of me was surprised to think I had not fled, but that part became smaller and smaller as time went on. I was content with my situation, happy to see him, happy to be with him.