AN: I know little about what the conservatoire would have been like or even where it would stand, so that building is under artistic license. However, the Opera House itself is accurate to the best f my knowledge.
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"Ah, come back again as you were then, then when I gave you my heart, Ah, come back to me…" Bellini, Norma
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Chapter 3
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Ballet lessons began early. The corps de ballet often chose to rehearse in the attic of the Palais. The gorgeous large round windows pressed into bland white walls and bled the morning light into the studio with abandon.
There were other ballet rehearsal rooms within the theatre, but the company preferred the natural light and the undecorated openness of the attic.
The ballet rats, those not yet accepted into the Corps, got the plain rehearsal hall three blocks away.
Christine was still in her ballet ensemble as she followed the girls down to the first floor of the conservatoire for lunch. Lunch, gratefully, was always provided to them. For some, on the bad days, it was their sole meal.
Christine ate her meal in silence, as she always did, apart from the other girls, lost in her own head. She was pondering. Again. Madame Giry had approached her earlier and asked her to stay behind after the Faust rehearsal. She had asked why but the stoic woman had been tight-lipped.
Christine worried that she was in trouble. Great she thought, I manage to get kicked out after the first day.
After lunch was more training. Often these lessons focused more on how to act off of the stage rather than on. One had to be alluring- attractive in both manner and body to gain a patron who could sustain or elevate her carrier. The thought made Christine a little sick, but it was a necessary evil.
Finally, she was able to dress in her thread-bare grey dress and her woolen shawl and make her way to the theatre. Again, her heart soared as she was enveloped into the opera's beauty and opulence.
This rehearsal, unsurprisingly, went about as well as the last.
Then suddenly, it was evening. When the sky was black, everyone filed out of the theatre, happy to go home. It had been a long day, and they were exhausted and ready to go home. They did not notice the small woman in the worn dress lingering.
She'd cross by a portion of the wall with a small vent in it. As she walked by, she'd hear a voice: hollow, unearthly, all encompassing...As well as seductive. She wouldn't be able to comprehend it, but it was charismatic beyond her understanding.
"The practice room," it called out in its deep timber.
She furrowed her brow and looked around, finding no other living soul. She licked her lips and carefully began to walk again, ignoring the voice.
As she began to walk away from the practice room, she'd find that the doors to leave the stage area were locked. The only other way for her to leave would be through the dancers room behind the stage.
She exhaled, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. She wrapped her shawl more tightly around her and made her way through the golden dancer's foyer.
The grand room was empty, save for her.
"Practice room. Now." The ethereal voice echoed across the hall, this time not coming from a singular source at all but from all around her.
She swallowed audibly, eyes searching frantically. Slowly , she heeded to the voice, making her way to the room she had happened upon the other night.
When she entered it, she found the room empty. The piano cover was up, and on it was a piece of music. Upon inspection, it was the Jewel Song, from Faust...As if begging her to sing it.
Overall, Christine felt very blessed with her upbringing, lonesome and poverty-stricken as it was. Her father had taught her to read using hymnals and the odd libretto, so music notes were as familiar to her as the alphabet.
She paced a bit, reading the music, beginning to hum a bit. Then she began to sing. The key was higher than written, so her squeaks on the high notes did not sound particularly impressive to her ears, but her mind was fully wrapped around the beautiful notes.
As she worked on the aria, the sound of a piano began to echo through the room.
"Hum," an ethereal disembodied voice instructed her. The sound of the piano spelled out a major triad, starting on G, arpegiating upwards. The voice, as it seemed, was warming her up.
She startled and stared at the piano when the music began. The piano keys were still and silent, but the sound of scaling notes filled her ears.
She stood there, mouth open, with no sound coming out. Was this some joke? Was she being haunted? What was going on?
Again, the arpegiated triad sounded. "Humm. Sing for me." The voice was low, compelling, commanding.
Her mouth still agape, a small squeak exited her throat, before she did as was commanded of her. At first she was warbly and unsure, but her voice soon settled into the arpeggio and soared, the act of singing soothing her unease like a balm.
The sound began to ascend in the scale. That exercise would blend into another, and another; moving from closed lip hums to lip trills to open mouthed vocalizes. They started low and went lower- or began in her middle voice and ascended. All the while she heard the strange voice around her; inside her head, as it were, giving the smallest instructions, the slightest modifications to her sound
"Good. Now do not drop your jaw so much next time."
"What vowel are you singing? That. Yes, I thought so."
"That vowel. Don't move your jaw so much. Move your tongue to the dental ridge. Yes. Like that."
She felt like she was being prodded by a house doctor! Even with no physical force touching her body, she was moved and manipulated like a marionette. During the lip trills, she stopped and laughed. Surely this was some gag! But the weighted, serious silence that followed sobered her and she tried to ignore the tickling of her lips as she proceeded to blow air through them.
It was a good twenty minutes of this. "Yes. Like that. Good." All positive feedback. The vocalizing took her from the softest of tones to the loudest; and moments of triumph would be confirmed by adoring praise from her ethereal tutor.
"Yes. That. What a glorious sound. Now then, we are ready. Sing, vowels only."
He sang to demonstrate it; moving through the piece; gliding from one vowel to the next; skipping the consonants. The effect was an incredibly smooth feel to the piece, allowing her to feel how each vowel connected to each other, the concept of legato singing being demonstrated to her. His voice was an elegant tenor; darker than most she would hear on this stage, yet highly trained.
Finally, after a surprising amount of work, he began to play the accompaniment of the Jewel Song.
She almost didn't come in. That voice! It was like nothing she had ever heard! It was barely human! Surely, it must be some ethereal creature!
As she began singin, she heard demands for little modifications. Keep her head level with the floor, release her tongue forward, engage with her abdominals more. The result would be a sound which she didn't know she was capable of producing.
She had no idea it could feel like this- singing. She had fond memories of laying in the hay on a summers day and singing to the sound of her father's violin. It had felt special. But this! This felt completely different and she felt like she was drowning in feeling.
As the song ended, the voice resonated once more through the room. "Excellent work today...I am...interested to see you progress."
"Um.. thank you... ah," she bit her lip, "...who... are you?"
"Your tutor," he replied. Although she couldn't see it, behind the mask he wore, a dark smile graced his features.
"My what?" She was not a dim girl, but her brain felt like cotton as she tried to process all of this. "Um... do you... have a body?"
"Be back here. Tomorrow. Following rehearsal." With that, he would be silent.
"Alright then," she said in a small voice to the empty space. She haltingly put the sheet music on the table and exited the rehearsal hall.
It was very late as she stepped outside in the cool Parisian air and shivered, more at the eeriness of the abandoned streets than the cold. Her footsteps were quick returning to her dorm.
