The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [89]
As June gave way to July, the increasing heat left him wanting to do little more than watch the sweat form on his arms and evaporate in the twilight. He found it impossible to concentrate on anything but the audition, and any earlier convictions about his performance gave way to new doubts and forgotten details, along with an inability to determine whether they were real or imagined. He could almost hear his voice wavering where it most certainly had not, and it seemed that Wagner had been less impressed than chagrined that Lucien—a detestable Frenchman—would dare to sing his work.
“Why haven’t they written?” he asked Eduard in a panic after most of July had passed—almost twice the length of time Bülow had initially indicated Lucien should expect to wait—and he had yet to hear a thing.
“Because they’ve completely forgotten you,” responded Eduard. “Didn’t you see the newspaper today? They cast someone else—another Parisian, I think?”
Lucien ignored him. “Do you think I should write?”
“Of course not,” Eduard said more earnestly as he shook his head. “I think they’re both very busy and perhaps have one or two other things to finish before they confirm that you’re the singer they want—”
“I’m tired of waiting!”
Eduard laughed—they had discussed this many times—and he pushed the rest of his strudel toward Lucien. “Here—eat this and you’ll feel better. I promise.”
“That would be nice.” Lucien sighed, but accepted the proffered remedy.
When he finally received word from Bülow in mid-August offering him the role, with rehearsals slated to begin in October, it didn’t quite meet Lucien’s expectations. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel a certain ecstasy or validation, or that he didn’t enjoy the party Eduard threw on his behalf, but he found himself worrying about leaving Eduard for so many months and about whether the Bavarian cuisine would make him sick; he perversely wondered if his audition had perhaps been too good, so that Wagner and Bülow would be disappointed when they discovered his German was not as flawless as he had led them to believe, or his upper range not as uniformly consistent as the piece required.
WHEN HE RETURNED to Munich, the theater was already a beehive of construction. Ships, castles, and costumes needed to be built or sewn, and then rebuilt or resewn when they inevitably fell short of the maestro’s expectations, and with increasingly extravagant materials, including African mahogany, Mesopotamian lapis, Chinese silk, and the finest wigs from Italy. Although such expenditures were known to raise eyebrows among the king’s advisers, Lucien was pleased that his own fee was on par with those of leading singers in Paris and Vienna. Besides, his attention was fully occupied by the music and the staging, either of which could be maddening given that Wagner’s ideas for every word, gesture, and glance seemed to change on a daily basis. Lucien was regularly put under the microscope and was often left weeping—or seething—with frustration after having failed to deliver exactly what the maestro wanted.
“Do you want to know what your problem is?” asked his Isolde—a Berliner named Pelagie Gluck (who, despite sharing a surname, claimed no relation to the famous composer)—one day after a particularly grueling rehearsal.
“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Lucien said as he removed a towel from his head. In contrast to him, she managed to make perfectly clear when she had been through a scene enough times, informing the maestro that he would have to wait until the next rehearsal if he didn’t want her to go insane.
“You believe in it too much,” she said, as she retied her black hair in a ribbon behind her head.
“And you don’t?”
“I’m here to sing, no more and no less,