Ratings2
Average rating3
"Naples, the 19th Century. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, holy music has power. Under the auspices of the Church, the Sung Mass can bring about actual miracles like healing the sick or raising the dead. But some believe that the musicodramma of grand opera can also work magic by channeling powerful emotions into something sublime. Now the Prince's Men, a secret society, hope to stage their own black opera to empower the Devil himself - and change Creation for the better! Conrad Scalese is a struggling librettist whose latest opera has landed him in trouble with the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Rescued by King Ferdinand II, Conrad finds himself recruited to write and stage a counter opera that will, hopefully, cancel out the apocalyptic threat of the black opera, provided the Prince's Men, and their spies and saboteurs, don't get to him first. And he only has six weeks to do it."--Page 4 of cover.
Reviews with the most likes.
An acquaintance described this book, in analogy with “horse opera” and “space opera” as “opera opera”, and that's a pretty good description. Conrad Scalese is strong-armed into writing the libretto of an opera under an impossibly tight deadline, working with a composer he has reason to hate (and not just because Conrad is the librettist and Roberto is the composer, which is usually sufficient...)
Volcanoes, secret societies, Napoleonic politics, personal intrigue, betrayal, lust, love, hatred... opera at it's best.
I found the style a tad flat and the plot verging on over-dense, but those are decidedly personal preferences. The long climax is extremely well-paced and the ultimate resolution operatically satisfying.