History

By the time Ottaviu and Maria Celetti welcomed their second child into the world, they were already well known on the cultural stage of Southern and Central Europe. Maria, especially, had enjoyed a relatively famous youth and her success had made it possible to carry her difficult pregnancy to term at her family home in Alicante where mother and daughters spent a couple of years until Maria recovered fully and the sickly baby Ippolita was deemed well enough to travel by both the physician and the midwife.

There are bits of memories from her childhood that Ippolita sometimes dwells on, but the ones that linger the most are the warm afternoons spent in their home in New York where Ottaviu and, eventually, Maria were offered the chance to perform frequently with their several opera companies. Bianca often spoke of the war, but Ippolita distinctly remembers both sisters were kept well away from such atrocities despite being in America for a good part of their childhood. Whenever Maria would not have a performance lined up, she would teach the girls to sing, train their voices for hours on end until Ippolita's throat would hurt, but it made the honeyed tea only sweeter.

By the age of eight, Maria had given up on Bianca, deeming her firstborn utterly talentless. In hindsight, Ippolita would never have given up on Bianca so easily - the girl had potential, although could be quite shy and was hardly assertive, but mother was often quick to judge and even quicker to anger. Cesare, born a few years after Ippolita, would enjoy the luxury of being born a boy and would often spend most of his time with Ottavio. When he was not, he was most adept at tormenting both his sisters (this never quite stopped, not even in the present).

After Bianca was deemed unworthy of a career in the opera, Maria focused all her efforts on Ippolita, an arduous process that the current prima donna of the Royal Italian Opera does not remember with particular fondness. Mother had been cruel, exceptionally strict with the routines: no sweets of any kind (at least not in her presence), no sour or overly salty foods, nothing too spicy, nothing that could cause any issues with Ippolita's voice whatsoever. After the age of fourteen, she was also kept on a strict diet, as to "not upset her delicate stomach", even though she'd never had an issue before.

"Imagine, mia cara," Mother used to say with her most disgusted expression, "to not fit in your dress. What would the people say? How embarrassing it must be."

It would become an obsession in her later years, after Ippolita's grand debut at only 16 years of age, a soubrette with a lovely face whose voice could move the world. And if everyone said it, then it must have been the absolute truth.

The following two years were full of back to back performances, the Celetti name was once more at the very height of fame and Ippolita was getting the attention of far too many pairs of eyes. Perhaps in an attempt to shield her from it all, Ottaviu decided to accept a performance in Covent Garden in Ippolita's name - it mattered little how much she cried and begged, feigning heartbreak at the very thought of leaving behind the handful of young gentlemen who were more than happy to do anything to earn her favor. It turned out to be a fantastic move on Ottaviu's part as her first performance on European soil cemented her position at the very top and her fame skyrocketed quickly to the point where she barely had time to do anything else other than travel around Europe for the majority of her twenties.

Paris, Rome, Vienna, Venice, St. Petersburg. To sing for generals and tsars and kings, to earn the undivided attention of the entire world - everything belonged to her by right and no one could ever convince her otherwise. Ignorant comments would be easily overlooked, gifts would be accepted under the guise of generous payments for her outstanding performances, she had everything in the palm of her hand and all she ever cared for was herself. She was merely twenty-one when she met The Marquess for the very first time and he had been the only one who never belonged to her, a being just as selfish and entitled as she had grown to be. It had been a scandal at the time, the young soprano and The Marquess eternally at odds with each other - utterly unacceptable to have any kind of negative rumors going about, mother said with her most disgusted expression, and it all calmed down when the young soprano and her brother were seen in the gracious company of The Marquess and his wife, a forced attempt to look like they were some kind of friends.

For many years, they wrote to each other. She was one of the few to know of his unhappy marriage and his troubles with money, he was the first she'd ever told of her aversion to eating and of her appointment as prima donna of the Royal Opera. They judged each other most cruelly because they cared the most for each other. It was an unspoken truth that neither would utter, not even when his wife would die in childbirth, taking their child with her to the heavens. And yet, he wrote to her of his grief. And yet, she wrote back to him immediately, most uncharacteristically kind.

With her parents' retirement and return to Sicily, Ippolita Celetti would finally no longer be in anyone's shadow. A dramatic soprano, Ippolita would continue to excel as Aida, Brünnhilde and Desdemona, her late twenties marking a clear transition to heart-wrenching tragedies in the role of heartbroken heroines. She's got it all, she figured, fame and wealth and friends in high places, but the fine lines on her skin and at the corners of her eyes bring forth the inevitable truth of her impending demise. Just as she'd overthrown her mother, just as she'd overthrown the former prima donna of the Royal Opera, soon it would be her turn, soon, soon, tomorrow-

It is an ever growing fear that makes no sense - she is still at the height of her career, has many, many years ahead of her, but the thought of losing everything brings her to the brink of desperation and she drowns her sorrows in her grief-stricken roles. She writes of it to her Marquess. He never answers, not this time.