This week, we're pleased to welcome author Beverle Graves Myers with her latest novel, WHISPERS OF VIVALDI. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the story. The author will offer a free hardcover copy of Whispers of Vivaldi to a lucky blog visitor - this giveaway is open only in the continental U.S. Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's post or Sunday's author interview for a chance to win. Here's the blurb.
Venice,
1745—an age of reckless pleasures, playful artifice, and baroque excess.
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An
accident has reduced Tito Amato’s glorious singing voice to a husky croak. A
tragedy—but also an opportunity. Tito can reinvent himself as a director of his
beloved Teatro San Marco, staging operas to entertain the fickle Venetian
populace. With his theater losing subscribers to a rival company headed by an
unscrupulous impresario, the San Marco’s Maestro Torani charges Tito with
locating the perfect opera to fill the seats in time for the opening of
Carnival.
Surprisingly, a second-rate composer provides
the very thing—an opera so replete with gorgeous melodies it might well have
been written by Antonio Vivaldi, Venice’s greatest composer, dead these past
four years. “Perhaps the Red Priest did write the opera,” whispers the gossip
snaking through coffeehouses and cafés. Equally as disconcerting are the rumors
swirling around Angeletto, a male soprano that Tito imports from Naples to sing
the lead. Is this exquisite being truly a castrato? Or is he a female soprano
engaging in a daring but lucrative masquerade? More terrible: Maestro Torani
undergoes a series of increasingly vicious attacks ending in his murder. And
Tito is accused of killing the distinguished maestro so he can become the
principal director of the San Marco. Tito’s own life as well as the future of
Teatro San Marco now depends on his skills as a sleuth.
**An Excerpt from Whispers
of Vivaldi**
“You
must have been born under an unfortunate star, Tito. Your destiny appears to be
linked to murder. Don’t you realize that most men go through their lives
without once encountering an atrocity of this sort?” Andrea’s solemn words
filled the cabin of his luxurious gondola.
When I didn’t answer, his gaze left my face. He
parted the curtains with one gloved finger and stared outward. Even at this
late hour, the watery avenue of uninterrupted grandeur that is the Grand Canal
was alive with boat traffic and the songs of their boatmen. The yellow glow
from palazzo windows and the orange blaze of landing torches made shimmering
zigzags on the murky water.
Eventually, I voiced the remorse that had been
plaguing me for hours—ever since I’d burst into the San Marco’s corridors
shouting of murder and putting an end to any hope of resuming that night’s
performance. “If I’d only made it through that door to the stairwell more
quickly, you might have Tedi’s killer under arrest. And Maestro Torani’s, too.”
Andrea dropped his hand; the curtain whispered
shut. In the darkness, his face stood out as a pale oval. “Tito, I have nothing
to convince me that the murders were committed by the same hand.”
“Tedi was about to tell me what she believed
caused Torani’s death,” I protested.
“Yes, my friend, the deaths are related, but
secrets and motives abound. Just consider the complications. Torani and his
mistress were entangled in a desperate struggle to accomplish several
things—save the reckless old punter from his gambling habit, ensure that the
Teatro San Marco would continue as Venice’s flagship opera house, and retire to
the mainland with some shreds of their reputation and dignity remaining.”
I sat back and surveyed him with lifted brows.
He was correct, as usual.
“Besides, Tito. The murderer took one precise
shot and ran. He was well away in that maze of stairs and corridors before you
even crashed through the door.”
“You did search that area top to bottom.”
“As I told you—yes. My men found only empty
corridors and damp cellars filled with refuse and skittering with rats.”
“They didn’t find any forgotten gate or postern?
Any means of escape that the killer could have used without going back through
the gaming salon?”
“No.
Tito. That crumbling pile attached to the opera house contains no doors and the
few windows are merely slits. Whoever shot Tedi came through the main portion
of the theater building and left the same way.” He added in a conversational
tone, “Did you realize that your Teatro San Marco was built on the ruins of a
monastery?”
Though he probably couldn’t see it, I shot him a
scornful glance. “It is no longer my Teatro San Marco.”
“Perhaps not now.” His grave tone turned to a
chuckle. “You must wait, Tito, and cultivate patience. I predict that one day
you will rule the opera house just as Maestro Torani did.”
“How can you possibly believe that?” My voice
grated harshly. “And how dare you laugh in the face of Tedi’s death? Whatever
Devil’s bargain she made with Lorenzo Caprioli, she did it to find justice for
the man she loved. Both their lives were ripped away just when they should have
been resting on their well-earned laurels.”
A pale hand rose to wipe his forehead. His sigh
hovered between us. “The violence that men visit on each other has become a
constant in my life—such is the burden of a Messer Grande. If I didn’t allow
myself a laugh, I would soon sink into melancholia.”
“Of course. Forgive me.” I bowed my head. Fate
had brought my family so much grief that I should have understood that without
being told.
Beverle Graves Myers is the author of the
Tito Amato Mystery series and co-author (with Joanne Dobson) of Face of the Enemy,
a mystery set during World War II. More information can be found on her
website: www.beverlegravesmyers.com
She’s
also on Twitter and Facebook:
