A Song for Summer

Calling in at his favourite travel agency, one which specialised in Cultural Tours, he spoke to a helpful girl who showed him the programme for the Staatsoper and there, on 12 July, after the end of the official season, Kendrick found a cultural gem that no one could resist: Brigitta Seefeld, Vienna's reigning diva, was singing in Rosenkavalier.

"I'm not sure if I'll be able to get tickets," said the girl. "And if I can they'll be terribly expensive. It's a gala and they always put up the prices for them."

But Kendrick, imagining himself beside his beloved as Seefeld renounced her young lover and sent him into the arms of a foolish young girl, said boldly that money was no object. She was to get tickets at any price and let him know. For the truth was that even if Ellen might prefer to investigate Demels patisserie or the Nash Markt, he himself would do anything to hear Brigitta Seefeld sing. And he would be able to tell Ellen more about the inspiring relationship between the diva and Marcus Altenburg, for he had done a lot of research on the composer's life since he realised that he had been at school with one of the most highly regarded musicians of the day.

He would not raise Ellen's hopes at once: he'd just say he hoped to get tickets for the opera. Or should he say nothing about it at all and give her a wonderful surprise?

Standing on the pavement, jostled by the passers-by, Kendrick sighed with anticipation, and blushed, for he had just remembered that the prelude of Rosenkavalier was supposed to depict, in music, the act of love.

Was this something he should explain--but very delicately of course--to Ellen? She listened so nicely when he told her things, her head on one side, her lids drooping a little over her gentle eyes. Sometimes he felt that that was what he had been born for--explaining things to the girl he loved so much.

The Viennese afternoon was warm and mellow. The sun shone down on the green and golden roofs of the churches, warmed the stone archdukes and marble composers in the parks; touched the courtyards of the Hofburg, which had once been the home of emperors and now housed government ministries, Lipizzaner horses, and a few selected citizens who had been given grace-and-favour apartments by the state.

Among whom was Vienna's favourite diva, Brigitta Seefeld, who now woke in her famous Swan Bed, stretched her plump arms and demanded (but in a whisper for she never spoke on the day of a performance), "Where are my eggs?"'

Ufra shrugged. Her eggs were where they always were, in a bowl on the dressing table, fresh that morning from the market. An ugly black-haired Armenian in her fifties, she had worked for Brigitta for fifteen years and knew that today there would be trouble. Brigitta was singing Mimi in La Boh@eme and they had brought in a new Musetta from Hamburg who was said to be both excellent and young. And tonight too Benny Feldmann was due back from America, and if he hadn't found Marcus von Altenburg, thought Ufra, God help us all.

Brigitta rose, put on her peignoir and descended from her dais. On the walls of her bedroom, as on all the walls of her sumptuous apartment, with its inlaid floors and porcelain stoves, hung portraits of her in her most famous roles: as the Countess in Figaro ... as Violetta in La Traviata ... as a pig-tailed Marguerite in Gounod's

Faust.

Reaching the dressing table, she broke the first egg and tipped it down her throat. A second egg followed; then came the exercises. "Mi, mi, mi," sang Brigitta, her hand on her diaphragm--and outside in the street, the porters looked up and grinned and the grooms leading the Lipizzaners to their stables nodded to each other, for Brigitta Seefeld's voice exercises were as much a part of Vienna as the bells of St Stephen's or the cooing of the pigeons on the roofs.

At four-thirty, Ufra admitted the masseuse and after her came Herr K@oenig, the leader of Brigitta's claque.

Marcus had disapproved of claques. "You don't need them," he'd raged. "It lowers you, paying for applause."

How idealistic he'd been, that wild boy who'd come to her dressing room with an entire tree, and into her life. But what did he know about anything, with his tempestuous youth and his talent? It was all very well for him; he could afford to go slumming in the suburbs, conducting working men's choirs and writing pieces for tubercular schoolchildren to play. He wasn't dependent on an arbitrary collection of cords and tendons which could fail at any moment. A head cold, a chest infection, an impending nodule on her larynx would leave her defenceless, a prey to her rivals, her status threatened. No wonder she found it necessary to cultivate those who could help her.

Herr K@oenig came forward to kiss her plump, soft hand--possibly the most kissed hand in Vienna--and was informed that Brigitta expected not less than twelve curtain calls, and for herself alone--not the beanpole from Hamburg who was singing Musetta.