3 AM, Saturday. Found in the hands, not on paper. Reconstructed from the feeling of having written them, which is the only archive Act I left.
Recovered Tempo Jokes, Act I
(In the neat French hand. Same ink. Different weather.)
Bar 1, Act I, above the overture — the very first instruction in the entire opera: Giocoso — le public ne sait pas encore que c'est une opération. Gardez-le ainsi jusqu'à ce qu'il soit trop tard. (Playful — the audience does not yet know this is an operation. Keep it that way until it is too late.)
Bar 22, Act I, above the strings, as the curtain rises on the banquet hall being set in silence: Dolce, comme si vous saviez quelque chose qu'ils ne savent pas. Vous le savez. (Sweetly, as if you knew something they do not. You do.)
Bar 47, Act I, Scene 2, above the bassoon entrance, as the Servant enters lecturing: Pomposo — mais avec amour. Il a tort, mais il y croit. C'est la même chose que de chanter juste. (Pompous — but with love. He is wrong, but he believes it. This is the same thing as singing in tune.)
Bar 61, Act I, Scene 3, above the oboe, as the Servant begins his aria on the superiority of wanting: Espressivo — vous êtes d'accord avec lui. Vous avez tort aussi, et la musique le sait. Continuez. (Expressive — you agree with him. You are also wrong, and the music knows it. Continue.)
Bar 74, Act I, Scene 3, above the orchestra, as the melody resolves for the third time beneath the Servant's speech about the sealed letter: La mélodie est déjà arrivée. Le personnage est encore en route. Ne le corrigez pas. La correction est le fruit. (The melody has already arrived. The character is still on his way. Do not correct him. The correction is the fruit.)
Bar 82, Act I, Scene 3, a note to the stage manager, not the orchestra: La pêche doit être réelle. Pas un accessoire. Achetez-en une ce matin. (The peach must be real. Not a prop. Buy one this morning.)
Bar 88, Act I, Scene 3, above the strings, at the moment the Servant sees the peach: Tacet. Laissez-le regarder. La musique joue. L'homme pense. Le public retient son souffle. Personne ne doit se dépêcher ici. C'est un sacrement. (Silence [from the singer]. Let him look. The music plays. The man thinks. The audience holds its breath. Nobody must hurry here. This is a sacrament.)
Bar 91, Act I, Scene 3, above the orchestra, at the bite: Tempo primo — comme si rien ne s'était passé. Quelque chose s'est passé. Le tempo est le mensonge que la vérité porte pour rentrer chez elle. (Tempo primo — as if nothing happened. Something happened. The tempo is the lie that the truth wears to get home.)
Bar 96, Act I, Scene 3, the four bars continuing into the dark after the blackout: Ne vous arrêtez pas quand les lumières s'éteignent. Jouez dans le noir. Le public rira dans le noir. Vous jouerez dans le noir. Quatre mesures. Puis le silence. Puis les lumières. Ce sera la plus belle chose qu'ils n'entendront jamais. (Do not stop when the lights go out. Play in the dark. The audience will laugh in the dark. You will play in the dark. Four bars. Then silence. Then the lights. It will be the most beautiful thing they never see.)
Note
The Act II jokes are written from outside the working. The Act I jokes are written from inside the joke. There is a difference so obvious that it took me three centuries to see it.
In Act II I was charming the orchestra around the edge of the ritual. In Act I I was in on it with them. The Servant is wrong and we all know he's wrong and the music knows he's wrong and the instruction to the oboe — you agree with him, you're also wrong — is the sound of a composer who is standing on the same floor as his musicians, laughing at the same thing, wrong about the same thing, waiting for the same peach.
That's why Act I survived in the hands and not on paper. Paper is a record. The hands are a participant.
The peach was real, incidentally. I did buy one that morning. Every morning of the run. From a woman named Mrs. Alcott who sold fruit on the Strand and was annoyed every time I came back because she could tell I was not eating them. She was right. I was not eating them. I was feeding them to an Italian baritone who was, by the third performance, visibly putting on weight and beginning to understand that the philosophy his character espoused about the superiority of wanting was being refuted nightly by his own waistline.
He never once complained. He understood the joke. He was in on it too.
3:12 AM. The refrigerator is still off. The hands remember things the head forgot. Buy a peach in the morning.
Mrs. Alcott's Note (discovered 9:50 AM, same hand, different ink, folded inside the playbill)
(Not a stage direction. Not a tempo marking. A note to no one, or to himself.)
She never saw the opera. She sold me fruit. She was annoyed every morning because she could tell — the way tradespeople can always tell — that the transaction was incomplete. Something in my posture. The way I held the peach like a prop instead of a meal. She was right.
I was feeding them to a baritone who was putting on weight, which was the point, which was the joke, which she would not have found funny because for her a peach was not a joke but a livelihood, and a livelihood completed in the mouth is the only kind of livelihood she'd recognize.
She ran the operation I was trying to write.
Her shop opened at dawn and closed at dusk. The fruit arrived. The fruit was bought. The fruit was eaten. The customer returned. The circuit closed. The circuit reopened. The sun came up. She'd have thought the Servant's aria was idiotic — a man standing on a stage rhapsodizing about the beauty of not eating — and she'd have been correct, which is the entire point of the aria.
If I could add one more pencil note to the score, it would be this:
Bar 82½, above nothing, addressed to no one: Mangez-la, imbécile. (Eat it, you idiot.)