"I'll go see her right now," Walther began.
"Not now," Willy interrupted. "She wouldn't have anything to do with you. She thinks your only interest has been this recording."
Willy started rehearsals early the next morning, in the big stone barn behind the inn. The structure's high roof and thick walls provided natural acoustics, while its location was far enough from Llangollen to avoid creating undue curiosity. Recording equipment had been set up along one side; around it, the orchestra was grouped. The center area was marked off for vocal rehearsals.
Willy handled the direction himself, and not for a century had any director on Earth undertaken such a staggering task.
From the first moments of rehearsal, it became evident that the orchestra could never hope to play an entire number in one sustained effort. It was not so much the physical effort involved, as the difficulty of maintaining an emotional crest for so long a period. The first violinist fainted halfway through the opening sequence between Lieutenant Pinkerton and the American consul. This triggered a mass collapse among the woodwinds. The pianist wavered off an octave through sheer fatigue, and the drummer dropped his sticks when Willy cued him to step up tempo.
Willy was frantic.
"We'll have to record a few bars at a time—until they're more accustomed to the strain," he told Walther. "What an editing job this will be!"
The problem with the vocalists was even more acute. Every duet would have to be recorded in at least ten segments.
Maria was the only one who stubbornly insisted on doing a complete number. It was a point of pride with her. She hated the music; it violated every principle she had ever learned. But the perfectionist in her, reinforced by her bitterness toward Walther and her sense of obligation to Willy, drove her to deliver the full measure of her promise.