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"Enough! I am exhausted. I am surrounded by incompetents,” Carlotta announces. “I am going on vacation.”
Debienne and Poligny beg and plead and do everything but prostrate themselves at her feet. The chorus director goes the extra mile and even does that. None of it is any good. Carlotta is not threatening to leave, she is merely announcing her intentions. Piangi backs her up, tells her the opera house can do without her for a while. This half-offends her, but she knows he means it well, and also that it’s true. The opera house won’t burn down in her absence. She deserves a vacation and she is taking it.
She is going to Perros Guirec.
Perros Guirec, a town by the sea. It is not quite warm enough yet for the swimming to be really good, but Carlotta’s fine with that. Swimming is not her favorite hobby anyhow. She does like walking on the beach. Likes it more with a lover, but all her lovers in Paris were giving her too much ennui to invite them along—she could have brought Piangi, she supposes, as he’s never as tiresome as the others, but he liked his current role and she didn’t want to steal him from it—and so she walks the beach alone. A little sad but hardly a tragedy. It is nice to look out on the waves, by day or by night…
She walks alone until one day she sees a woman sitting atop one of the high, red rocks. A woman—no, a girl, really—with windswept blonde hair, a blue dress, and no shoes on. Her ankles are showing, and although Carlotta knows that’s likely more because no one else is around and this is the countryside than because of any tendency to impropriety, she feels an odd stirring of kinship which leads her to call out in greeting.
On hearing her, the girl scrambles down the rock and drops down beside her. She curtseys ever so slightly. “Good morning, madame. My name is Christine Daae. I live nearby, with my father.”
“Daae?” Carlotta raises an eyebrow. “An odd name to hear out here. There is a master musician by that name, you know—he was even something of a composer—well, never mind, dear. I suppose my instinct is always…”
“If you mean Gustave Daae, he is my father. As I said, we both live nearby.”
“Oh! Is he indeed?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Well, he is… a fine man, from what I have heard.” Carlotta is a little taken aback. To be honest, she came to Perros Guirec with the intention of leaving all thoughts of Paris, opera, music, behind, yet it pursues her. Well, if she had kept her mouth shut…
“He’ll be glad to hear you say so,” Christine says. “Will you come to dinner?”
Carlotta purses her lips.
“We always love visitors who know about music. You are Carlotta Giudicelli, aren’t you?”
Indeed she has done a very poor job of escaping her profession, it seems. Or her reputation. “Well, yes.” This girl can never have seen her before, surely.
“We had heard you were in town. People talk about you. Of course we get all sort of news about music—Papa’s known in town—so when a great singer arrived in town…”
“Well, it is certainly flattering to know I have such acclaim,” Carlotta says. “I don’t know if I would call myself great, necessarily—certainly I devote myself to precision and technique, and I am gratified if I receive any recognition. My audience has always been very kind.” Delicately she adds, “Of course I have received some rather nice roles lately. Sita in La roi de Lahore this season, for example…”
“And Pierette last season,” Christine says.
Carlotta is, again, taken aback. “That is correct.”
Christine flushes a little, at last seeming to realize that she is being a bit over-enthusiastic. “Papa and I keep track of the operas running in Paris, even though we do not often attend. But I did see you once last year.”
She chatters on for a while about how much she admired Carlotta’s performance at the time. How she herself wants to be an opera singer someday, though as yet she has only a little training. Carlotta is a little nonplussed, but also a little charmed. Well, she’ll never reject a fan’s admiration. Even if she had not expected to find a fan here.
She accepts the dinner invitation when it is proffered again—walking on the beach and eating alone and resting has become rather boring. Christine is delighted. “Papa will be so glad. I’m happy we met. I’ve seen you walking so often, but I never dared to come over.”
“If you intend to be a singer, you will need more gumption than that,” Carlotta says severely. “You must learn to speak to people, to approach people! Otherwise you’ll never get anyone’s attention.”
Scolded, Christine blushes. “Of course. I’ll try harder.”
Really she is quite charmingly innocent, Carlotta thinks.
Gustave Daae is an excellent conversationalist and an excellent pianist. Carlotta, however, will forever be cursed with thinking of him as “Papa Daae” for the rest of her life, not that he’s likely to come up that often, because that is how even he refers to himself in his home. And he is very paternal. In Paris, she knows many of the performers, directors, managers, have children, but they still maintain an intellectual attitude, even in said children’s presence. It is the expectation. Papa Daae is far more warm and casual, both towards Christine and towards Carlotta. He asks Carlotta about her accomplishments in Paris less as one musician to another than as if he is talking to a friend his daughter has brought home.
This seems to be Christine’s attitude as well. Half the time she answers Papa Daae’s questions for Carlotta, which makes Carlotta feel a little piqued. Still, one cannot discourage a teenager’s enthusiasm, she supposes. For, as it turns out, Christine is only seventeen. Though very accomplished as a singer already, Papa Daae says, in that boastful parental manner. Carlotta feels oddly jealous. When she was that age—eight years ago now—she had left her family already, moved to the city to pursue her career. Her parents told her she shouldn’t come back, not if she was off to become a whore. Not a whore, she told them, a singer. To them it was all the same. She was a stain on the family name.
Papa Daae’s attitude is very different.
After dinner—the first night, and nights after, for she finds herself coming back time and time again during her brief little vacation—Christine plays the piano and sings. Sometimes classical songs Carlotta has heard before, or operas. Sometimes odd songs from Sweden or from Perros Guirec itself. She does have a good voice. An accomplishment for a young lady, only most are not expected to make a career of it. Papa Daae is critical. He tells Christine where she might improve. Carlotta thinks his advice is good, though she herself utters nothing but praise. She’s no tutor, and she likes how eagerly Christine responds to flattery.
“Marvelous, my dear,” she tells her. “Your voice is like that of an angel.”
“Like the Angel of Music?” Christine asks with a laugh.
“I’ve never heard of such an angel, but I suppose so.”
And then Christine tells her a story of an angel who visits all truly good musicians and singers, to turn “good” into “great”. Carlotta listens indulgently. “Well,” she says, when Christine is done, “very nice, but I certainly have never been visited by an angel.”
Christine colors. “Perhaps you don’t remember it.”
Astonished, Carlotta realizes Christine actually believes the fairy story she’s told. And thinks somehow that if Carlotta hasn’t been visited by the angel, she can’t be truly great. But Carlotta is great—so Christine thinks, and such is the fact—so she must be wrong, somehow, there must be a flaw in the logic, but not in the story. Christine takes everything from Papa Daae much too literally, and Papa Daae himself is a little superstitious.
But, “Perhaps,” she says indulgently. “Perhaps, my dear.”
She is always very indulgent of Christine, who is such an odd girl, and somewhat sensitive, too. The night before she leaves, for example, when Christine goes out walking with her by the beach again, she can tell that Christine is working through something in her mind, and favors her with only a little light chatter and mostly silence.
Whatever it is Christine is working through (and Carlotta can take a guess), it manifests itself only very slightly at the end of the walk. “I will miss you very much,” she says to Carlotta. “Your being here—you’re everything I dreamed you might be.”
Carlotta says, “I’m flattered.”
“Will you… as a mark of my love… friendship, I mean, and admiration… I bought you something.” She pulls out a small box and offers it to Carlotta. Inside is a small locket.
“I hope I’m not being presumptuous,” Christine says, flustered.
“Not at all. It’s charming. I’ll wear it to a gala sometime.” And she indulges Christine with a kiss to the forehead. Nothing further—Christine is young and innocent; this may well be her first infatuation with a woman. Carlotta, of course, never had any real innocent infatuations that she can remember, but she thinks about what Papa Daae might think, and she holds back, offers just enough that Christine may keep her as a fond memory and nothing more.
It must be lovely, being so innocent. She half hopes Christine will never come to Paris and ruin herself.
So of course the next time she sees Christine, she catches her in flagrante delicto. Or close to it, anyhow. It’s been four years, and she’s practically forgotten Christine exists. Then she’s going back to one of the ballerinas’ dressing rooms to see if she can hunt down Madame Giry and she finds young Meg, instead, with a blonde woman pressed to the wall, and the blonde woman is Christine fucking Daae.
Carlotta’s eyebrows arch on pure instinct.
Christine flushes, but less than one might expect. Her collar is in disarray, dress pulled off one shoulder, and Meg Giry’s mouth is on her neck, and she blushes at Carlotta but meets her eyes, and a small laugh escapes her lips.
Carlotta says, “I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?”
She says this partly because it seems Meg still hasn’t even noticed she’s there, and she isn’t the sort to flee a philandering couple just because they happen to be philandering. One must have some dignity.
Meg pulls off Christine lazily, and sends Carlotta a highly amused grin. “Carlotta! Actually, your timing is perfect. I’ve been trying to get Christine to say hello to you for weeks, and she keeps on saying she’s sure you’re busy. Are you busy?”
“Not very,” Carlotta says. “Well, I was looking for your mother… Christine, I didn’t know you were in Paris.”
“I arrived a month ago,” Christine says. “I’m training with the chorus. I’ll be in the next show.”
Meg snickers. “I guess you just haven’t been at that many rehearsals lately, Carlotta.”
The young Giry is always obnoxious. “I’ve been busy,” Carlotta says crossly.
“Yes, of course.” Christine elbows Meg in the ribs. Their amorous moment has clearly come to an end. “You’re a prima donna, of course you’re busy.”
Her confidence also seems to have fled the vicinity. She pulls the shoulder of her dress up, and plays with her hair, trying to make it more orderly. Carlotta has rarely seen that hair neat, though. At Perros Guirec, it was the wind and disregard, and here…
“Come to dinner,” Carlotta says after some idle chitchat. “I’d love to hear how you and your father have been.”
Christine’s smile is like a wince, a scream. “My father died some months ago.”
“Oh.”
“Illness,” Christine hastens to say. “It was… peaceful enough.”
“Oh.” Death is not something that comes up often in the opera house. Comforting the grieving is not within Carlotta’s repertoire. Eventually she says, brightly, “Well, we’ll have a lot to talk about. You will come to dinner?”
Carlotta could try to hold back for Christine even now, she supposes.
She could keep conversation over dinner on topics either professional or depressing—death and taxes. She could bring a chaperone to the dinner, even—even Piangi would work for those purposes, because even though she’s seduced people in front of him before she doesn’t think she could do such a thing with Christine. She could, at the very least, not ask Christine back to her room after dinner, or pretend she meant something else by the invitation when Christine puts a hand on her cheek, eyes wide and daring, and kisses her mouth.
But they’re both four years older and Paris is not Perros Guirec, and Christine clearly isn’t a child anymore (maybe she wasn’t one even when Carlotta met her, maybe Carlotta’s a fool) so Carlotta’s not going to treat her like one. She’s bedded people she liked far less. She’s bedded people she loved more, too. It’s easy to seduce Christine—Christine does half the seducing for her—so easy, too easy, as easy as any other seduction, far too cheap.
Carlotta feels like she, if anyone, has been deflowered. But she doesn’t show it. Christine expects her to be sophisticated about this, so she is.
(She was much the same when she really was deflowered, though that was long ago, and she thinks these days she’s somewhat a better liar, better at hiding any sentimentality. People go to the opera for sentimentality, but that’s not why they go backstage. Carlotta knows this well by now.)
So now they’re friends, for the opera house definition of friends. And everything that entails… The ballerinas are in giggles around Carlotta for weeks, until La Sorelli does something even more scandalous and their attention veers away. Carlotta’s pretty sure Christine’s still seeing Meg sometimes, but Meg doesn’t seem to be the jealous type and Carlotta isn’t either, so that won’t cause any problems.
(Carlotta, not the jealous type. Ha! She has to hold back a scowl every time she sees Meg and Christine talking to each other. But it is what it is. She won’t make a fool of herself.)
As for Christine, she is completely puffed up with her importance as Carlotta’s new close friend. She comes to sit with Carlotta during breaks, somehow coaxes Carlotta into taking her to parties, smiles insinuatingly at Carlotta’s gentleman friends, which some of them think is a come-on, driving Carlotta crazy. She is exactly as smug as an ingénue who’s been given an important role, and not nearly as infatuated as Carlotta might have hoped. Though she still blushes when Carlotta says nice things to her, and she still pays Carlotta plenty of compliments back.
On the other hand, she doesn’t spend as much time with Carlotta as Carlotta sometimes wants. Apart from a few evenings, she largely insists on going back to Mamma Valerius’s by herself most nights. There, she says, she practices her singing for hours every evening.
“It can’t be that important. La, skip one of your practice sessions for once. For a chorus girl you are progressing very nicely.” And her ambition is a little annoying. Admirable, Carlotta supposes, but… you put in your time, you don’t expect to be given lead roles and solos and all that right from the start.
Carlotta actually had a lot of luck right from the start, but she was sleeping with a director at the time. Christine’s just sleeping with Carlotta.
Christine lowers her eyes. “…Carlotta… remember how I once told you about the Angel of Music?”
“How could I forget? You were so charming back then,” Carlotta says wistfully. Not that Christine isn’t charming now.
“Well, I have been visited by the Angel of Music,” Christine says. “It is… a huge honor. He was sent by my father. I have to practice for him, to become better. I can’t fail him.”
It’s the most pretentious way Carlotta has ever heard someone speak of their own talent and passion, but it’s also so Christine. And if Christine’s practicing hard for Papa Daae’s memory, Carlotta can respect that.
“All right then. Home by ten,” Carlotta says. She kisses Christine’s forehead. “Shall we make use of the time?”
They always do.
She walks Christine home when she can. Romantic to walk in the evenings, for one thing, and reminiscent of the old days on the beach, but also, Paris can be a dangerous city, and Christine, precocious as she may be, doesn’t know how to defend herself, or what neighborhoods to avoid. She needs someone older and wiser to watch after her, and since Carlotta seems to have been given the job, she takes it somewhat seriously.
When Christine replaces her in Hannibal after she throws a fit, she tries not to show her jealousy. Christine had a right to audition for the part, there being no understudy yet assigned. And Carlotta had thoroughly meant her resignation from the show. Christine might as well benefit.
So she hopes she shows Christine only curiosity and encouragement. She half pretends it was her intention to toss the opportunity out there all along, though that is nowhere near the truth.
“If it’s such a good chance for you, perhaps I’ll leave for the rest of the year,” she says. “Take another long vacation. They can do without me. And the crowds will miss me more.”
Christine is in her arms, and she shivers. “You won’t really do that.”
“Psh. I’m always saying I will—I ought to sometimes follow through on my threats.”
“You won’t, will you?” Christine peers up at her anxiously. “Please don’t leave, Carlotta. I can’t—I can’t do this without you.”
She sounds honestly frightened.
Doubtless wondering how she would maneuver the opera house without her sophisticated lover. Carlotta is her status symbol; for all she knows, her connection to Carlotta turned the managers’ opinion and got her the job. But still, she is sweet. Carlotta hugs her. “Very well, I suppose I won’t leave. Since you ask me so sweetly, my dear.”
But she won’t be leaving Christine in the spotlight for long. It’s about time she returned to her proper throne; any longer of a break and the Phantom—or whoever the recent saboteur is—will think he’s frightened her. He hasn’t. She’s just biding her time. She only hopes Christine will take her return gracefully. The dear needs to learn some patience. Still, Carlotta expects there won’t be too much trouble. There’s a world of difference between a prima donna and an ingénue, and Christine knows that just as well as she does. She might be great someday, but not yet. No matter what she says about her Angel of Music. She is still on her way, and her real guide in all of this is, after all, Carlotta herself.