An opera house stage was not merely a raised platform for performers to act upon.
Even nineteenth-century opera houses, despite lacking so many lighting effects, had sets and props—especially curtains. Their weight required several adult men to haul hard on ropes together, often using pulley systems.
Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts contained all sorts of transmission mechanisms, and not all of them had been meant to fulfill dreams such as flight.
Not much had been said about Leonardo da Vinci's childhood. Though there was a story about him painting eggs, it had become mixed up with too many half-true legends to verify.
Whether the legend was true or not, his father and family had not offered the young Leonardo da Vinci much help. For a time, he had needed to make a living by creating stage props and designing sets.
After Constantinople fell, many Platonists came to Florence. Plato had been a very romantic man. He believed that men and women had originally been one whole, later split into two halves, and that the purpose of men and women in this life was to find their other half, and so on.
Thus, such aesthetic topics were popular in Florence as well. The stage props Leonardo da Vinci helped design included Heavenly Feast, Orpheus, Danaë, and others. Of those, neither Heavenly Feast nor Danaë had achieved great success.
Orpheus had been both a member of the Argos crew that sought the Golden Fleece and, like Apollo, skilled at the lyre and singing, so he had been revered as a god of music. His singing could calm the sea and help sailors bewitched by the songs of the Sirens.
"Please, sit."
Julian Ouvrard pulled out the chair in the box the countess had reserved for Georgiana, as though doing so were an honor.