Books & Java

Vienna Nocturne

 

by Vivien Shotwell

 

Synopsis:

In late-eighteenth-century London, a young girl takes her first singing lessons with a mysterious castrato in exile. Her life is forever changed. Having learned everything he can teach her, Anna leaves behind all the security and familiarity of home and journeys to Naples and Venice to struggle and triumph in Italy’s greatest opera houses. Only sixteen, she finds herself in an intoxicating world of theaters, nobility, and vice, overwhelmed by her newfound freedom and fame. Her first bitter experience of love and heartbreak inevitably follow.

Within a few years, Anna is invited to sing in Vienna, the City of Music, by the emperor himself. There, in a teasing game of theft and play, Anna first meets Mozart, a young virtuoso pianist and striving, prodigiously talented composer. They are matched in intellect and talent, and an immediate and undeniable charge forms between the two, despite both being married to others.

As her star rises in Vienna and her personal life deteriorates, Anna experiences an ultimate crisis. During this trying time, her only light is Mozart: his energy, his determination in her, and his art. She, in turn, becomes his hope and inspiration, and his joy, as he writes for her some of his most exquisite and enduring arias—music that will live on as his masterworks.

Rich in historical detail and beautifully wrought by Vivien Shotwell, an author who is herself an opera singer, Vienna Nocturne is a dramatic tour de force of a woman’s struggle to find love and fame in an eighteenth-century world that controls and limits her at every turn.

My Review:

Fantastic story about the English Opera singer Anna Storace rumored in the Opera world as having been an inspiration and lover to Mozart. Her story was fun to read with just the right amount of drama and humor combined. Anna was one of those people who perhaps were far ahead of the time in which they existed. She was a strong and talented woman during a time when both of those characteristics threatened and offended many. She began her career as a very young girl in England who was chosen by the most famous castrato of the time to be educated in her craft. Once she was beyond the guidance he could offer, he send her and her family off to Italy to study with grand masters. It is in Italy, during the time when castrati was going out of style and Opera buffa was coming into popularity that she was able to shine, as not only did she have a natural gift in music performance but she was quite funny and a good actress to boot. She then expands to Vienna where she becomes the top paid performer for the Emperor himself (the same royal who funds Mozart). She falls in love (unrequited) with her self-important, egotistical, non-committal and much older co-star and after many secretive encounters she becomes pregnant with his child. She hides the pregnancy as best as possible to avoid the end of her lucrative career and equal popularity with the high society fans she has amassed. In order to save her reputation she finds herself forced to marry an English compatriot who although much too old for her will save her reputation and allow her to continue prospering in her career. It is at this time that she becomes acquainted with the much talked about Mozart and develops an adversarial relationship with him that ultimately (according to this version of the story but much debated in others) blossoms into a love affair.

This version of the story is such a great read because of the story, the characters and the wonderfully overly dramatic dialog (this is not a bad thing as it really captures the time).