2018/77: Black Opera -- Mary Gentle

"...I don't deny that, by the singing of Mass, the sick are healed, daily, and ghosts are laid to rest, and the walking dead appeased. I've seen this... I do deny that this has anything to do with a Deity! Nothing about it demands a god in explanation." [p. 41]

Black Opera might as well have been written for me: alternate history, bel canto opera, atheists amid miracles, strong female characters (some of them passing as men), complex emotional and sexual relationships, heretics, friendships between members of different social classes ... Yet it has taken me five years to finish reading this book. I read half of it on a rather unhappy holiday, then set it aside. Before I restarted it, I thought this was because I had simply been distracted, or had wanted to forget the context in which I'd read it. Now I've finally finished it, I think it's in part a problem with the space between my hopes and reality.

The novel's set in the 1830s, in Naples, though there is a prequel set in Indonesia in 1815. Conrad Scalese is a librettist whose latest opera, Il Terrore di Parigi, ossia la morte di Dio, has been a rousing success. Unfortunately it has also attracted the wrong kind of attention, in that the theatre in which it premiered was struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. Since this is a world where miracles are commonplace, the destruction of the theatre is regarded as confirmation of Conrad's heresy, and he's arrested -- objecting vociferously that he is an atheist, and that science and philosophy can explain everything.

Explain this, says Ferdinand, King of the Two Sicilies, and tells Conrad about a group of Manichean heretics who are producing an opera with the intention of freeing 'the Prince of this world' -- Satan. Conrad suddenly has a new commission, the creation of a counter-opera: and then discovers that the composer with whom he'll be working is Roberto, Comte d'Argente and the husband of Conrad's lost love, Leonora. Who turns out to be in an interesting condition.

Add an opera plot about conquistadors, Aztecs and Amazons; an opera company replete with colourful individuals; a subversive sub-plot concerning Napoleon Bonaparte (who had a narrow victory at Waterloo); at least one cross-dressing character; at least one trans characters; two types of ghost; vulcanism ...

And yet, and yet. The first half of the novel takes place over six weeks or so, and spends a lot of time discussing the minutae of opera composition: changes to the plot, the characterisation, the music. (There is much more happening but Conrad's focus is on his commission. Otherwise he might notice how repetitive his thoughts were becoming.) The second half of the novel, by contrast, takes place on a single apocalyptic afternoon. The change of pace is jarring, and it took me a while to adjust: and then, as the story winds down, everything after felt a bit rushed.

On one level Black Opera is absolutely fascinating and very enjoyable, and I would probably have adored it if I had liked Conrad more. On another level, it feels like a Baroque opera rather than bel canto: too much filler, not enough dramatic passion.