His voice had gone, but he insisted that it had not. “I’m out of practice, that’s the trouble,” he would add. Whenever a new company arrived from Europe, he went to the impresario and revealed all the injustices under the sun; whereupon the impresario perpetrated another, and out he came railing against such iniquity. He still sported the moustaches of his stage roles. His gait, even though he was old, made it look as if he was paying court to a Babylonian princess. Sometimes, he hummed, without opening his mouth, a passage as old as himself or older: if you sing that way, you can still delude yourself you have a voice. He used to come here to dine with me sometimes. One night, after a lot of Chianti, he repeated the usual definition, and when I said to him that life might just as well be a sea voyage or a battle as an opera, he shook his head and replied:
“Life is an opera, and grand opera at that. The tenor and the baritone contend for the soprano, in the presence of the bass and the supporting cast, unless it’s the soprano and the contralto contending for the tenor, in the presence of the same bass and the same supporting cast. There are numerous choruses and ballets, the orchestration is excellent.…”
“But, my dear Marcolini …”
“What …?”
And, after taking a sip of liqueur, he set his glass down, and expounded the history of creation for me: here is a resumé of what he said.
God is the poet. The music is by Satan, a young and very promising composer, who was trained in the heavenly conservatory. A rival of Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, he resented the preference they enjoyed in the distribution of the prizes. It could also be that the over-sweet and mystical style of these other pupils was abhorrent to his essentially tragic genius. He plotted a rebellion which was discovered in time, and he was expelled from the conservatory. And that would have been that, if God had not written an opera libretto, which he had given up, being of the opinion that this type of recreation was inappropriate to His eternity. Satan took the manuscript with him to hell. With the aim of showing that he was better than the others—and perhaps of seeking a reconciliation with heaven—he composed the score, and as soon as he had finished it took it to the Heavenly Father.
“Lord, I have not forgotten the lessons I have learned,” he said. “Here is the score, listen to it, have it played, and if you think it worthy of the heavenly heights, admit me with it to sit at your feet …”
“No,” replied the Lord, “I don’t want to hear a thing.”
“But, Lord …”
Satan went on pleading, with no greater success, until God, tired and full of mercy, gave His consent for the opera to be performed, but outside heaven. He created a special theater, this planet, and invented a whole company, with all the principal and minor roles, the choruses and the dancers.
“Come and listen to some of the rehearsals!”
“No, I don’t want to know about it. I’ve done enough, composing the libretto; I’ll consent to sharing the royalties with you.”
This refusal was perhaps unfortunate; the result was some awkward passages which a previous run-through and friendly collaboration might have avoided. And indeed, there are places where the words go one way, and the music another. There are people who maintain that that is precisely where the beauty of the composition lies, in its avoidance of monotony: such is the explanation of the Eden trio, Abel’s aria, and the choruses of the guillotine and slavery. Not infrequently, the same situations occur more than once, without sufficient justification. Certain motifs, indeed, weary the listener by overmuch repetition. Also, there are passages that are obscure; the composer uses the massed choruses too much, causing confusion and concealing the true meaning. The orchestral parts, however, are treated with great skill. Such is the opinion of impartial observers.
The composer’s friends assert that such a perfect work is not easily to be found. Some admit to a few blemishes and the odd thing missing, but it is probable that, as the opera proceeds, these latter will be filled in or explained, and the blemishes will disappear altogether: the composer has not discarded the idea of amending the work wherever he finds that it does not correspond completely to the poet’s sublime conception. But the poet’s friends do not agree. They maintain that the libretto has been sacrificed, that the music has distorted the meaning of the words, and though it may be beautiful in parts, and skilfully put together in others, it is completely different from the drama, even at variance with it. The element of the grotesque, for example, is not to be found in the poet’s text: it is an excrescence, put there to imitate The Merry Wives of Windsor. This point is contested by the satanists, with every appearance of reason. They say that, at the time when the young Satan composed his opera, neither Shakespeare nor his farce had been born. They go as far as to affirm that the English poet’s only genius was to transcribe the words of the opera, with such skill and so faithfully that he seems to be the author of the composition; but of course he is a plagiarist.
“This work,” the old tenor concluded, “will last as long as the theater does, it being impossible to calculate when it will be destroyed as a matter of astronomic convenience. Its success is growing by the day. The poet and the composer get their royalties on time, though they are different, to accord with the words of the Scripture: ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ God is paid in gold, Satan in paper money.”
“It’s amusing …”
“Amusing?” he shouted furiously, but then he calmed down, and replied: “My dear Santiago, I am not amusing: I detest amusement. What I’m saying is the pure and absolute truth. One day, when all the books have become useless and been burnt, there will be someone, maybe a tenor—perhaps Italian—to teach this truth to mankind. Everything is music, my friend. In the beginning was do, then from do came re, etc. This glass—as he filled it once more—this glass is a tiny refrain. You can’t hear it? Neither do you hear sticks or stones, but they all have their part in the opera …”