Not an insignificant part, but not the primo uomo role of the title. I had been cast as a nefarious Egyptian prince, the brother of Cleopatra. Those seven days had passed at the cadence of a funeral march. We’d been deep in rehearsal for Cesare in Egitto for the past week. Torani was planning to dazzle Venice, and her foreign visitors, with an unprecedented display of vocal fireworks and spectacular stage effects. The subject of the nuptial opera was the great Roman general Julius Caesar’s adventures with Cleopatra Queen of Egypt. Our director, Maestro Rinaldo Torani, had chosen to rework the score of a minor composer who had long since disappeared into obscurity in one of the more unpronounceable German states. To celebrate the upcoming marriage of the Doge’s eldest daughter, the Savio alla Cultura had commissioned an opera filled to the brim with pomp and pageantry.

Morning sunlight streamed in a high window, glinting off the gold-threaded costume hanging on the wardrobe door behind me. I was alone in my dressing room at the Teatro San Marco, addressing my image in the oval mirror flanked by unlit oil lamps. “Sometimes it takes another fool to show you the error of your ways.”

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Painted Veil by Beverle Graves Myers