Oshkosh Public Library

Vienna nocturne, Vivien Shotwell

eng

no index present

fiction

Vienna nocturne

861677639

Vivien Shotwell

Thorndike Press large print peer picks

In late-eighteenth-century London, young Anna Storace takes her first singing lessons with a mysterious castrato in exile. Having learned everything he can teach her, Anna then 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. Within a few years, Anna is invited to Vienna 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