AN: This is set in Venice during the mid 1700s. Venice was one of the places where there would be a major audience for opera and where Jews and blacks were relatively integrated. (And where Mercedes would practically be worshiped as a goddess.)

Some names will be Italianized, others won't be because it just wouldn't work.

Please note that while I have tried to be relatively faithful to 18th century Venice culture, as far as music history is concerned, this is painfully, obscenely, AU. Gesualdo and the young Mozart are contemporaries, for example.

Slightly truncated prompt: "A Castrato!Kurt...Years later, enter Blaine, who comes from a rich family, who is spoiled since birth, excels in anything he does, and falls in love with the boy singing in an opera.
Since castrati `came in for a great amount of scurrilous and unkind abuse, and as their fame increased, so did the hatred of them. They were often castigated as malign creatures who lured men into homosexuality` I want...

1. Angst about how Blaine's parents blame Kurt for their 'perfect' son's condition
2. Hummel family angst
3. How Blaine and Kurt face challenges about their relationship.

BONUS point for:

1. Casts of New Directions+McKinley High and The Warbler's appearance!
2. Happy ending, please
3. No significant alteration to Kurt's appearance."


"I tell you, he moved me to tears! Noah the Jew was in the box next to mine, and he was weeping even more than I." David put his cup down in emphasis.

"Noah weeping at a song is no rare thing." Wesley smiled, as the Jewish bravo's softness for music was as known as the hardness of his steel. Rumor, which he never refuted, praised the hardness and readiness of his weapon in love as well as war.

"But my tears are." He raised his voice as he saw their friend Blaine. "Come over, slugabed, I must tell you of Radamisto and of Hummel's triumph."

"Did his performance meet his reputation? Wes says such a thing would be impossible."

"That and more. Range, power, beauty, and a face and figure most would find fetching. Our Wes must experience this voice for himself."

"I fear that the drama of his story gives his singing more glory than it merits, that is all."

"I know nothing of his story, so tell us all." Blaine sat down and signaled for coffee.

"He was the son of a widowed carriage maker near Napoli. The Duca di Mantua heard him singing when he was still only twelve years or so. The Duca had him stolen, leaving some gold in compensation, and the boy was castrated." Wes paused to swallow more of his coffee and let the suspense build.

"So it was involuntary, poor boy. Stolen from his home."

"They say that after the operation, he caught fever,as they often do, and was near to death. The mad Englishwoman Susanna Sylvester passed the school where he had been taken and heard his cries for his father as he lay raving. They were so plaintive that they moved herheart and she found the father, who had already come to Mantua in search of his son. She forced the Duca to reunite them and let the boy live with his father."

"La Sylvester? The same virago who runs the school for dancers here in Venice?" David stared.

"The same. The father would have killed the Duca, regardless of the consequences to himself, but she prevented him while he was even still planning, telling him his son would suffer even more greatly. The boy finished music school and made his debut in Hasse's Artaserse. His fame grew and his father married again. Hummel's new brother, himself a fine singer, overheard the Duca in his cups laughing that even when the knife cut him, his very shrieks were pure and clear and beautiful. His brother challenged him for mocking Hummel's agony and killed him."

"So Hummel lost his brother as well?" Blaine leaned forward, his eyes dark with pity.

Wes shook his head. "No, that is the first story that makes fools claim that Hummel is the modern Orpheus. The stories say that before his brother was to be condemned, Hummel went to the judge and pleaded. He sang Antigone's aria of the love for a brother and the judge was so moved that instead of death, he exiled the entire family from Mantua, which was hardly a penalty. Cynics say that Hummel offered more than song, that he offered gold and his own fair body, which no man or woman had touched before, and it was these that succeeded, but the story is that it was the song."

Blaine nodded firmly. "I prefer the story as you first told it. A corrupt judge is no marvel, but a voice that can save a brother from death itself, that is truly extraordinary."

"The family went to Rome where he first sang for Handel and then followed him to Venice. He sang in a few concertos but only those in private homes, until last night at the opera, where he moved our David to tears."

David laughed. "I heard that he moved La Bella Mercedes to violence. He performed at a concert to which she was invited and they spent much time thereafter talking and singing. She professed her love, which he refused, and she hurled a brick through his window in her rage, that the woman that Venetians all but worship would reject her."

"Now that I refuse to believe," Wesley laughed. "A man, whole or no, who would reject her must either be mad or dedicate his love to Adonis instead of Venus."

"Nobody knows which it is with him. They say he is proud and cold with all save his family and La Bella Mercedes, whose friendship he regained, but whom he has yet to love."

"It would be difficult to blame him, poor man."

"Poor man?" David chuckled shortly at Blaine's pitying face. "He has fame and wealth now and legions of admirers."

"But never to be a whole man, to be taunted and mocked as much as he is admired, always to have laughter ringing in his ears as much as applause, and for some clerics to call condemnation on him for what was done against his will. Perhaps he would have been happier as a carriage maker in his turn after his father, singing only for his own pleasure."

"Oh, our Blaine is permitting himself a few dreams about Hummel, I see. Well, perhaps we will be able to see him again, if he remains in Venice."

Blaine smiled at Wesley's last comment. "I pleaded with my father when I heard Hummel would be singing in Orfeo. I have three tickets, my friends."


At the opera house, fashionable visits and chatter lasted through the first recitatives, a fact which never varied or ever failed to annoy the three friends sitting in their box. Even though composers took this into account in their writing and rarely wasted any remarkable passages on the opening scenes, that was no reason not to give the composers of genius one's full attention.

When Hummel entered, though, the house fell silent. Blaine was instantly mesmerized by his presence before he even sang a note. In playing the grief-stricken hero Orpheus, he kept his movements spare and despairing and appeared to be mourning in silence until even the silence was too great for him to bear and his emotions could only express themselves in song. The first notes were as crystalline as a flute, but swelling in volume as no flute ever could, and he shaped the phrases of the lament as gracefully and mournfully as if he were placing mourning wreaths on the dead Eurydice's tomb. As the passages became more florid, though, and the vocal line was barely discernible among the ornamentation of trills, sudden leaps of octaves and tenths, and high notes, Blaine looked at his friends in confusion. Hummel seemed to be flinging the music at the audience, his eyes wandering across the boxes where the wealthy patrons sat. He seemed almost indifferent, as bored and unimpressed as a farmer scattering corn to chickens. Nonetheless, the audience was captivated and for Blaine himself, the precision of his notes and beauty and power of his voice was something he had never encountered before. The house exploded into applause when he had finished, but he stood still, not acknowledging it with even a nod.

At the intermission, David grinned at Wes. "Having heard him, do you admit that the stories are justified?"

"Gladly. He must have sustained that trill for more than half a minute, and the run across the three octaves must have been written for him. Could any other, except possibly Cesti, have taken it with that speed and accuracy?"

"Perhaps, but now our Blaine is deep in thought. Are you composing songs already for that voice or has he captivated you with that dainty face, perhaps?"

Blaine answered, slowly. "He is astonishing. It would be an undertaking, though, to write for such a voice, to do it justice. His acting, too, is remarkable. The gestures of mourning, of resolve, as he prepares to go to Hades to seek his wife. All seem from the heart, yet noble and simple, as though the spirit of Greek statuary possessed him. I admire him greatly, yet as he is only our age, what he has done abashes me."

"Those schools are not for the weak. Our music masters taught us enough to be able to read music and entertain ourselves or a company, and it was you who drew us together to do more. And yet from a young age, he has done nothing but study and sing and study again," David answered.

The door to their box opened and several other men their age entered, including Noah, Taddeo, Arturo, Nicolai, and Jeffrey. Noah was finishing a ribald comment, "A married woman often prefers a cannon with no powder, these share an advantage that we men do not."

"To think that Noah would envy a eunuch!" Arturo laughed. Noah good naturedly laughed, "Only the eunuchs who guard the Turkish serail, where he may pick from a thousand flowers of flesh, with the sultan none the wiser. But for fewer than a thousand women, no, since that is what I can satisfy in a week." He laughed, then said, "But his voice is beautiful and I would believe this Orpheus' songs could move stones."

"And his mezza di voce could move Faustina Bordoni to rage. Hers, alas, sounds more like a goose trying to honk softly and giving up halfway," Taddeo joked, trying to provoke Nicolai, who admired the diva greatly.

"While that of your adored Cuzzoni cracks in the middle like a sheet of ice," he retorted.

The bell rang to announce the coming end of intermission, although only the serious music lovers moved to return to their seats. Blaine, who had allowed himself to become lost in his thoughts, determined one thing, that he would call upon Hummel the next day, if the singer would receive him. The castrato was more than an artist; he was rapidly becoming a mystery.