Vivaldi in the Dark

Chapter 1 The baton came down, the bows came up, and the storm ended. The silence was as ringing as the strings, and rolled in like an angry tide to reclaim the stage, flooding over the orchestra until the very last memory of the tempest in Vivaldi’s Summer had been washed away. Mr. Weber lowered his arms slowly, with an air of grandeur, looking down his long nose at the boys as though they were not boys, but failures. “I suppose,” he pronounced heavily in the empty theatre, “that that will have to do.” They stared back at him, unblinking, waiting. “You are merely children,” he continued. “You do not know the power and rage behind such storms. You have not the ruthlessness of this energy. You only have playtime. Perhaps it is too soon to expect this of you.” Still they waited, used to their maestro’s moods. “You are dismissed,” he snapped, waving them off and turning away. “I do not need boys. I need men. Return when you are men.” He barely paused long enough to gather his bags before sweeping out of the empty theatre; the moment the door clanged shut behind him, the assembled orchestra rippled into subdued life, the tangled squeaks and wails of the strings clashing and protesting with their rough treatment at the hands of teenagers as they packed up the stands, returned the chairs, and zipped their instruments back into their bags. Over it all, the noisy hubbub of voices in various stages of breaking failed to harmonise, much like the violins in their dubiously executed storm. And as the noise swelled and ebbed from their assigned seats to the messy outpouring at the door, one hung back. “Catch you tomorrow, Peacemaker!” someone yelled, and then the door boomed shut for the second time, and a single figure remained centre-stage, lit by the bright halogens used in the absence of a performance. He would have cut a tragic figure, perhaps, had he remained and played the haunting solo on the empty stage to the empty hall. He would have echoed not only the genius of a long-dead composer, but the ghosts of all the heroes ever written and forgotten, had he simply stood and played. But defiant tragedy was not his style. He retreated, with the exquisitely designed violin, to a backroom beyond the stage, a back entrance for technical crew and minor actors, littered with dust, mouse droppings, and deep shadows impenetrable by the bright lights of the stage. There, he closed the door, flicked on a single bulb, and tugged the violin back to his shoulder. Without music, he played. With no primary violin, he played the distant echo of a concerto in A-major, the violin sounding detached and mournful in the absence of its leader, in the absence of its partner. Alone in the darkness, he played Vivaldi.