Opera in Gold

I. A Dangerous Wish

It was during the intermission of Hippolyte et Aricie that Raoul, Count d'Argentile, sat back in the velvet cushioning of his private box and surveyed the opera house below him. His evening program was tossed to the side and his opera glass no longer at his gray eyes. The air hummed with the soft murmuring of the audience as people animatedly conversed in their balconies or parterre about the Greek myth whose first half they had witnessed. Those who cared nothing for the story of Phédre and her illicit love for her stepson Hippolyte spoke of the singers, the scenery, or the costumes. Hyacinthe Apollet was the dashing tenor, a handsome, young native of Lyons. The prima donna was a fair-haired, blue-eyed, Dutch diva named Gilda Van Lentin after a seventeenth century ancestor of the Scarlet Pimpernel who was the constant plague of the revolutionary government. Dressed in a white chiton, she was the object of supreme jealousy of Phédre or the equally charming mezzo soprano Chrysanthile Borges, distinguished by a golden circlet studded with artificial diamonds and amethysts. Before the curtains closed on the stage, Raoul, like many of the men in the audience, had directed his gaze to the beautiful women of the opera.

"Give me my program there, l'Ontage," he requested of his friend who sat beside him.

"Bored already?" said Olivier, the Viscount de l'Ontage, presenting the count with the velvet sheath.

"Certainly not. I'm merely curious about the singers. I like to know to whom I'm listening," Raoul explained flippantly.

"Or you like to know the names of the sopranos because you listen to no one else," Olivier quipped.

"That is a lie, l'Ontage," Raoul said at the same time he located the entry on Gilda Van Lentin. "I also listen to the mezzo sopranos and altos."

Olivier smirked knowingly. "So what can you tell me about your newest infatuation? Is her name Gilda, by chance?"

"Either she or Chrysanthile. Borges is quite pretty and a Parisienne," Raoul mused, fingering the edge of his program.

"Raoul, you're a mercurial one," Olivier remarked. "Last month it wasNereilles. Last week it was Vermillierre and here are two more."

"Whom to choose though?" d'Argentile half lamented.

"Why, choose them both," Olivier suggested.

Raoul arched an eyebrow at his friend. "Now, do you think that either one will take me seriously if I'm seeing someone else at the same time?" he inquired, skimming the entry on Chrysanthile Borges.

"Of course. You're very good at seeing other women even though you still sleep with your wife," l'Ontage observed.

"That is different, l'Ontage," the count explained. "She has her lovers, and I have my mistresses."

"How curious. I should get married then," Olivier thought aloud to which Raoul laughed.

The count's chuckles were drowned out amidst the applause which accompanied the raising of the red curtain, signaling the commencement of the last half of the opera. The scene opened to a green and sacred grove of Diane's near the sea which sparkled in golden radience amidst an azure background. Hippolyte and Aricie, promising their love in exile, stood together as the chorus and the emerging sea serpent lingered in the amber foam. Raoul took up his opera glass and focused it on Gilda while Olivier inspected the ocean front scenery. When the hero was consumed in orange-yellow flames after fighting with the awful progeny of Poseidon, a distraught Phédre came on stage, blaming herself for Hippolyte's death. By the end of the act, both women were stricken with sorrow and bent by grief. The count found it difficult to concentrate more on Gilda or Chrysanthile's languishing forms.

"Choose them both?" Raoul muttered at the closing of the curtain. Olivier eyed him. "I would if I were sure it wouldn't matter."

Olivier coaxed, "Well?"

"Well ... I can only wish that every woman in the Paris Opera House would madly and unconditionally fall in love with me. Anytime I look into her eyes, she would forget her arias or dance routine and sing only for me. She would be at my very whim and fancy, in the very hollow of my hand," Raoul dreamed.

"A dangerous wish, that," Olivier cautioned.

"But a tantalizing one," the count replied.

They watched the last act of the opera in silence and applauded the happy ending when it came. Phédre lay dead after committing suicide on the sea shore, convinced she had killed her stepson. Her husband Thésée vanished from the scene when Diane alerted him to the truth of his son's fate. Amidst general rejoicing, Hippolyte and Aricie were the only ones left on stage, singing a duet in an Italian forest. The curtain fell and rose again, revealing Hyacinthe and Gilda, still dressed in Grecian garb, waving to the enthusiastic crowd. Chrysanthile and the other singers soon joined the pair, each actor taking a bow.

A small bouquet of fresh, red roses rested on top of Raoul's program. While the theater resounded with "Bravo!" or "Encore! Encore!", the count untied the silken ribbon which held the flowers together and airily threw one down to the soprano. It landed at Gilda's feet and, for a brief moment, she smiled up at Raoul in his private box. Seeing this, all the other counts and viscounts, hoping to attract the soprano or mezzo, sent a volley of red and white blossoms to the stage. The count smirked as he launched another rose aimed toward Chrysanthile.

"It's very hard to do something in an opera house and not be observed," Raoul stated, offhandedly referring to the now continuous barrage of roses and gardenias tossed to the singers.

"Yet the highest form of flattery is imitation," Olivier supplied.

"If that is so," Raoul began, "then there are a lot of sycophants in the world."

"They're sycophants only when they get what they want. They're idiots if they imitate the wrong thing," Olivier clarified. The count laughed again at his friend's quip before throwing his last rose to a pretty countess in the balcony below his, scattering stray petals over the bobbing and nodding heads of the theater.