Score!

Rannaldini was just sighing that he would love to help out financially but what with the wedding and tax bills looming… when Tristan took a deep breath — after all he had no dependants — and said as soon as the French lawyers stopped wrangling, Liberty Productions could have the bulk of the money Étienne had grudgingly left him. Then he suggested they economize by filming in modern dress, drawing parallels between the Spanish and the English royal families.

‘Grite, grite!’ cried Sexton in excitement. ‘Princess Di as Elisabetta — the Americans will go apeshit! And we can change Charles V’s ghost into the Queen Muvver.’

‘Don’t be fatuous, Sexton,’ snapped Rannaldini.

To Rannaldini’s delight, however, Tristan then proposed they film at Valhalla, which would be much cheaper. ‘You have mausoleum, dungeons, cloisters, and huge state rooms.’

‘And we can save on location fees, travel expenses and hotels by putting the cast up at Valhalla,’ said Rannaldini gleefully, envisaging unlimited extensions and redecorating on the budget. ‘Once recording’s over, we’ll recce Buckingham Palace to get the thing authentic.’

‘If the leaves are back on the trees by the time we start shooting,’ added Tristan, ‘we can always send a second unit to film the opening scenes in Romania where it’ll still be winter.’

‘Sounds expensive,’ said Rannaldini, not altogether playfully. ‘We’ll build in serious penalties if you don’t finish the movie on time.’

Meanwhile the cast were still not turning up at rehearsals but each night Tristan and Serena Westwood spent hours on the floor of Tristan’s flat, shuffling papers trying to schedule the recording. It was like wrestling with some massive seating plan, fitting in with singers’ availability and keeping the difficult ones apart.

‘Tricky when they’re all difficult,’ sighed Serena.

‘I suppose Rannaldini will have to turn up for the recording,’ said Tristan wearily.

Serena smirked because the Maestro was still finding time to take her to bed. But, to her irritation and despite heavy hints, Tristan still hadn’t made a move on her.

The recording itself was held in a huge assembly room attached to Wallsend Town Hall in north-east London. As the orchestra straggled in on the first day, in early January, the temperature plummeted below zero. Snow lay thickly over the regimented beds of wallflowers and pansies. Lengthening icicles glittered from the gutters in the morning sun. Inside the hall it was even colder: the central heating had been switched off in case gurgles and clicks were picked up on the tape.

‘It’s going to be breathe-in time for everyone,’ said a fat female member of the chorus, looking round the tiny gallery with disapproval. Down below technicians were trying to find room for all the orchestral chairs and music stands, and putting green bottles of water by every singer’s microphone.

The off-stage band had ill-advisedly been sent to play in the bar where an impromptu rehearsal for soloists, who had deigned to turn up, was also under way. Hearing screeching, Sexton, who was heroically trying to get into the jargon, remarked that Dame Hermione was ‘in fine voice’.

‘Chance would be a fine thing! That’s the chorus master,’ said Serena sourly.

‘Do you have a pass, sir?’ asked a man on the door, as Rannaldini stalked in, chocolate brown from skiing.

‘It’s Maestro Rannaldini!’ hissed the other doorman. ‘Where have you been? Outer space?’

Within seconds, Rannaldini was rowing with both Serena and Tristan, and changing everything. Half an hour later, Hermione swept in and started yelling that her dressing room was too small and too far from the stage, and she had nowhere to warm up.

‘How dare you send me yellow roses that are fully out when you know I only like buds?’ she then shouted at Christy Foxe, Serena’s PA, a little scrubbed-faced school-leaver, who had just staggered in with Hermione’s four suitcases. ‘And don’t forget I always have a glass of chilled champagne at eleven.’

‘No need to fucking chill it in this hall,’ muttered Christy, making his escape.

Rannaldini was now altering the schedule. No matter that the chorus, who had been booked for the day at vast expense, would be cooling their heels, he wished to kick off the recording with Hermione’s last duet with Franco. When Fat Franco didn’t show up, Rannaldini dragged him out of another recording studio in Rome and sacked him.

‘That’s a million saved for a start,’ he told Tristan gleefully, as he put down the telephone.

When Franco’s agent came on the line in apoplexy, Rannaldini countered suavely that the final contract had not been signed, again due to lawyers wrangling; and, if it had, Franco was in default for not having attended a single rehearsal or having lost a kilo of weight. ‘He hasn’t got a fat leg to stand on.’

‘How can you fire the finest tenor in the world?’

‘Pour encourager les autres.’