Things seem to be reconciling. But no longer has he begun a reprise of “Ah! veglia, o donna” than your father hears something and charges out into the street—”Always new suspicions,” you say. After a moment he returns, with a new and frightening line of questioning for Giovanna: Has no one ever followed you home from church?—Never.—Beware! If anyone should knock, do not open!—Except for the Duke . . . —Not to him, above all! Your father has intuited the very secret you are keeping! And while flatly lying on your behalf, for some reason Giovanna has brought mention of the Duke in from his world, of which you know nothing! What is this about? Again the sense that a mysterious something is coming to a head, and as you are attempting to conceal your processing of this disturbing development, your father picks up on his “Veglia, o donna” repeat. And now your comforting solo about your guardian angel mother becomes the upper line, almost a descant, in another duet passage. And this time it is sung very softly, as if in your father’s ear, yet very pointedly, with serial accents and staccatos that were not there the first time around, and two phrases that glance off the top C. Your words are the same, but your music an intriguing variation. Are you at once being highly reassuring in an intimate but definite tone, yet also tremblingly holding something back? How would you capture that in your voice?
The duet passage comes to a warm close. This is the closest you’ve ever felt to your father. But now he bids you goodbye, and you join him, at first continuing the soft, sweet mode, then with an outburst—”Addio!” And why is he leaving? Where is he going? Back out whence he came, wherever that was? In the middle of the night? You have confirmed something about your mother, and your father’s inconsolability, but otherwise your precarious yet persistent queries have brought as many questions as answers. Your life is still in a limbo, an entrapment, and somehow on a precipice, too. And at the moment, full of remorse. Giovanna? Why did you keep silent about the young man who’s followed us home? But she teasingly asks you to ‘fess up: does he really displease you? Oh, no—he’s handsome and exudes love (“spira amore“). He also seems magnanimous, says Giovanna, and highborn. You demur at this—you’d love him more easily, you sing to a prancing, childlike figure, if he were poor. And now you go on, allowing your emotions to spill out: dreaming or waking, you’re always calling to him and (your music sweeping up and over) your soul is saying “I love you.”(I)
Footnotes
| ↑I | Assignments: 1) Get specific about your understanding with Giovanna. In the absence of your mother, it is she to whom you turn for instruction on becoming a woman, and who may see herself as responsible for matchmaking. (Think of Juliette, another role you probably sing, whose nurse is surrogate mother and co-conspirator, although the mother is on the scene. Of course, there’s a wide class difference between these households, but the distribution of functions is comparable.) This has implications for your autobiography: even given the social norms of time and place, if you’ve known Giovanna for only three months, how much trust has developed? And how has it developed? Imagine specific moments, exchanges. 2) Obviously, when you say that you love the “troppo bello” giovin from church, this “love” is mostly adolescent fantasy; you’ve watched him, seen him pray and converse with others, noted his manners, seen that he has sometimes glanced your way, perhaps with a ravishing smile—but not yet met him. Now that he’s actually following you home, a sense of thrill and danger has invaded you. It obviously embraces the prospect of sex, but that is wrapped in an aura of romantic idealization, possibly further sublimated by its confusion with religious eroticism, your other source of arousal. What can you call upon to engender wholehearted belief in this kind of “love at first sight?” |
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