Book description
Venice, 1742. Tito Amato has regained his zest for performing and is
once again singing lead roles at the Teatro San Marco. On opening night,
the famous castrato has the en-tire audience entranced-except for one
box with its scarlet curtains stubbornly drawn. Annoyed at being
ignored, Tito aims the full force of his golden throat at the
fourth-tier box. He is astounded when the curtains part and a woman
tumbles over the railing. The victim is Zulietta Giardino, a mischievous
courtesan involved with a young glass maker. As Tito was the only one to
see the masked man who pushed Zulietta to her death, the chief of
Venice's rudimentary police force requests the singer's assistance. Did
a wager over a rival courtesan's jewels spell Zulietta's death? Or did
the motive involve sinister events in the glass factories of Murano?
Tito faces troubles of a different sort at home. His upstanding
neighbors regard his household as an immoral den of theatrical riffraff
and disdain his wife, Liya, as an apostate Jew. While Liya attempts to
reconcile with her disapproving family, Tito strives to be a good father
to his adopted son. The singer's difficulties collide when the masked
killer transfers his vengeance to Tito's loved ones. Venice's Teatro
San Marco opera house forms the dramatic backdrop for the start of
Myers's absorbing fifth historical to feature castrato Tito Amato (after
2008's The Iron Tongue of Midnight). On the opening night of Torani's
Armida, Tito has the audience in his thrall, except for the occupants of
a fourth-tier box with its scarlet curtains drawn. Keen to attract their
attention, Tito projects his voice in the direction of the closed box.
Suddenly, the curtains part, and he sees a masked man struggling with a
woman, later identified as Zulietta Giardino, a conniving courtesan.
Pushed by her assailant, Zulietta falls to her death into the orchestra
pit. Tito and his wife, Liya, who shares a similar background to
Zulietta, take a personal interest in her case. Encouraged by Tito, Liya
hesitantly returns to the Jewish ghetto of her childhood to investigate,
and unexpectedly begins to reconcile with the family that once shunned
her. As ever, Myers bring 18th-century Venice to vivid life. Beverle
Graves Myers fell in love with opera at age nine during a marionette
production of Rigoletto. A Kentucky native, she studied history at the
University of Louisville and went on to earn a degree in medicine. After
a career in psychiatry, she devoted herself to writing full-time.
Beverle is the author of the Baroque mystery series featuring Tito
Amato.
