Interrupted Aria [Large Print] [Paperback]

Beverle Graves Myers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2004

The dazzling city on the lagoon is sailing toward the ruin of her maritime empire, determined to go down in a maelstrom of pleasure, music, and masquerade.
Venice, 1731. Opera is the popular entertainment of the day and the castrati are its reigning divas. Tito Amato, mutilated as a boy to preserve his enchanting soprano voice, returns to the city of his birth with his friend Felice, a castrato whose voice has failed.
Disaster strikes Tito's opera premier when the singer loses one beloved friend to poison and another to unjust accusation and arrest. Alarmed that the merchant-aristocrat who owns the theater is pressing the authorities to close the case, Tito races the executioner to find the real killer. The possible suspects could people the cast of one of his operas: a libertine nobleman and his spurned wife, a jealous soprano, an ambitious composer, and a patrician family bent on the theater's ruin.
With carnival gaiety swirling around him and rousing Venetian passions to an ominous crescendo, Tito finds that the most astonishing secrets lurk behind the masks of his own family and friends.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Myers's absorbing first novel, a historical set in 18th-century Italy, introduces a most unusual hero, Tito Amato, who was sold as a child to be castrated and taught to be an opera singer. In late 1731, Tito and fellow castrato Felice Ravello leave Naples for Tito's native Venice to sing with an opera company owned by a wealthy and powerful family. Myers recreates the opera seria of the time in fascinating detail, from the special stage effects to the vocal pyrotechnics. All Venetians attended the opera and sang the principal arias as popular songs; the narrative was less important and came primarily in spoken recitatifs. During one performance, the prima donna is poisoned, and Felice, who's been working as an instrumentalist since his voice became unstable, is jailed as the chief suspect. Tito is determined to clear his friend and scours the Republic of Venice for evidence of his innocence. Readers familiar with Venice will delight in following Tito through the calli and campi where masked revelers celebrate the Carnivale. (One patrician lady uses a seduction technique that might be useful today.) The complicated plot has twists enough for a 19th-century opera, but Myers neatly ties all the pieces together by the end.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

On a chilly day in 1731, two young men arrive in the Italian city of Venice--as besieged then by nature and human frailties as the present-day version so well-chronicled by such mystery writers as Edward Sklepowich and Donna Leon.

Both of the men are castrati--singers who paid the terrible price of sexual mutilation in order to maintain their perfect child soprano voices. One of
them, Tito Amato, returning to his native city after many years in Naples at the famed Conservatorio San Remo, where he perfected his art, is about to become a star. The other, his best friend, Felice Ravello, is a sadder figure: Despite the operation, his voice has cracked and thickened, and he must develop other musical skills to survive.

"Castrati are famous for having the small, delicately formed larynx of a woman and the prodigious lung capacity of a man," says Tito, who is proud of his art but resentful at the price he has paid for it. "I had once witnessed a virtuoso performance by the great Farnelli in Naples. During his arias, all eyes were glued to his face and gestures...Some of the women, and even a few of the men, seemed transported by sensation...They appeared nothing short of enraptured."

The best thing about Beverle Graves Myers' riveting first mystery, which involves the poisoning of a beautiful, aging opera star and the charging of
Ravello with the crime, is how quickly we slip into the world she has so expertly re-created, despite its distance and initial oddness. It's a world where castrati-bashing by gangs of louts on the street (and verbal insults by solid citizens behind closed doors) is a fact of life, where a government would rather have fast action than slowtruth, where a powerful businessman buys and sells people along with his other trade goods. Sound like any place you know? -- Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune (3.21.04)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 585 pages
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590581253
• ISBN-13: 978-1590581254
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,170,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Beverle Graves Myers fell in love with opera at a marionette production of Rigoletto when she was nine years old. Around the same time, she discovered Agatha Christie and hasn't stopped reading mysteries since. Now, Bev enjoys mixing murder, music and intrigue in writing her Baroque Mystery series from Poisoned Pen Press. Set in dazzling, decadent 18th-century Venice, her novels feature Tito Amato, an opera singer with a stellar talent for sleuthing. Bev also writes short fiction set in a variety of times and places. Her stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Futures, Woman's World, and numerous anthologies. Bev's work has been nominated for the Macavity, Derringer, Kentucky Literary Awards. A retired psychiatrist, Bev now writes full time from her home in Louisville, Kentucky. Visit her website at www.beverlegravesmyers.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an excellent debut, April 15, 2004

By 

tregatt (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Interrupted Aria (Baroque Mystery) (Hardcover)

I enjoyed Beverle Graves Myers' debut mystery novel immensely -- lush, vivid and very, very absorbing, "Interrupted Aria" turned out to be the kind of mystery novel that both intrigued and entertained, and that was very good read.

In eighteenth century Europe, the castrati (male singers who, for the sake of their beautiful voices, were castrated as boys) occupy contradictory positions in society: on the one hand they are much sought after and feted; but on the other hand they are also, privately, often viewed with disgust and embarrassment by the very ones who prize their talents. For Tito Amato, a young castrato, having to cope with both the scorn and the adulation is taxing and confusing -- for while he enjoys singing and the effect that his amazing voice has on his listeners, he also loathes the fact that it was this mutilation to his manhood that has made him so sought after. Which makes his return to Venice all the more bittersweet. How will his family greet him? Will they embrace after so many years of separation, or will they, too like others, be repulsed and embarrassed by his condition? And on top of it all there are his suspicions about the so-called accident that resulted in his castration...

But most of this fades into the background as Tito finds himself emersed in the goings on at the Teatro San Stefano -- the strange accidents that are plaguing the company and the rivalry between the company's likable and talented star, Adelina Belluna (who also happens to be the mistress of the company's patron, Domenico Viviani), and Caterina Testi, her testy rival. And when on opening night, the Adelina keels over and dies just before the second act, everyone suspects poison. Was Adelina poisoned by enemies the rich and powerful Domenico Viviani, or by her jealous rival, Caterina? And when Tito's friend, a fellow castrati who disliked Adelina immensely, is arrested for the crime, Tito realizes that it will be up to him to discover who killed Adelina and why. Will Tito be able to uncover the truth in time to prevent the execution of an innocent man? Or will more powerful and corrupt forces put a halt to his investigations?

Smoothly paced and told in an engaging and vividly descriptive narrative style, "Interrupted Aria" was a treat to read. The authour's depth of knowledge and love for her subject matter was readily apparent, and made reading this mystery novel all the more fun. Also adding to the complexity of the novel is the private anguish and bitterness that Tito feels about being a castrato, and his fear that his castration didn't come about because of an accident, but because of something more venal. So that while the mystery at hand was not all that suspenseful (very few plot twists), all the intrigue and complex relationships that the characters had with each other, made "Interrupted Aria" a very compelling and engrossing read indeed. All in all, an excellent 4 star read.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating!, April 10, 2005

By 

L. J. Roberts (Oakland, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Interrupted Aria (Baroque Mystery) (Hardcover)

Filled with lush description of Venice during Carnivale, its political and social structure, the inner workings of the opera company and Tito's relationships with his family, friends, colleagues and himself, this is a rich, wonderful book. I also found it a good mystery with a couple of twists and some good suspense. This is a series I shall definitely follow.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Read, January 25, 2005

By 

A. Lee - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Interrupted Aria (Baroque Mystery) (Hardcover)

Interrupted Aria concerns a Venetian castrato struggling to solve a murder mystery while uncovering secrets about his own past. The story begins with Tito Amato returning to Venice after many years of training at a music conservatory. Felice, his friend who is agonizing over the loss of his voice, tags along. Before the close of Tito's opera debut, a prima donna is murdered and Felice is arrested. There are several red herrings in this densely plotted mystery, and it won't give anything away to say that, in the detecting phase of the story, all Tito's sinister family secrets come tumbling out of the closet. This book is based on a piece of history that is seldom mentioned, but the characters, especially Tito are so intriguing that it all comes beautifully alive. I look forward to a sequel.