The Second Ending by Michelle Hoffman

Author:Michelle Hoffman [Hoffman, Michelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2023-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Hello, I Love You Won’t You Tell Me Your Name?

Alexei Petrov wanted to disappear. Two years at the Conservatoire and he was crushed by the heavy burden of expectation. One particularly grueling morning, he had been in his vocal accompaniment course with a vocalist who was performing “Quando M’en Vo’ Soletta,” an aria from La Bohème. Alexei loathed these accompaniment sessions as vocalists took liberties with the music, which Alexei thought unnecessary.

She had such power in her voice, the vocalist. She stood next to the piano as solid as marble. Her posture erect, feet shoulder-width apart, arms outstretched as if to pull someone into her grasp. Midway through the aria, she stopped singing and threw up her arms. “You play like a donkey!” she snapped at Alexei.

“This is Puccini,” the instructor said to him. “It is about passion! Desire!”

Puccini. Passion. Desire.

“Okay, right. We can start from the beginning,” Alexei said. But the vocalist stopped singing and, in the same spot, threw up her arms. But this time when she snapped at Alexei she did not call him a donkey. She called him an ass.

The instructor pointed to the notation above the measure that was causing all the fuss. He said, patiently, “Quasi ritardando, hold back a little. Make us feel Musetta’s desire for Marcello, her yearning for him. You are rushing. This is the gravitas of the opera. Picture slowly stretching a rubber band, slowly increasing the tension, Alexei. Quasi ritardando.”

Yearning. Desire. Tension.

“Got it.”

They began again. The same thing happened—again. The sequence was repeated several times, the instructor’s patience gradually dissolving into exasperation. When they finally came to the finale of the aria, the instructor said, “Alexei, what does morendo mean?”

“It means fade awa—”

“IT MEANS THAT YOU PLAY IT AS IF YOU ARE DYING! AS IF LIFE IS LEAVING YOUR BODY! AS IF YOU ARE DEPARTING FROM EARTH!”

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