by Laura Lebow
The city of Vienna is much changed since Mozart’s time. However, although the modern traveler must avoid the Ringstrasse—which was developed in the nineteenth century when the old city walls were torn down—and must turn away from the many bewigged salesmen in breeches and coats hawking tickets to Mozart/Strauss concerts, it is still possible to turn down a street or enter a courtyard and be transported back to the eighteenth century. All of the streets I have Da Ponte travel still exist today, and I have placed both librettist and composer in the homes it is known they lived in while writing Figaro. (Mozart’s apartment is now the Mozarthaus Vienna, a museum dedicated to the composer’s time in the city.) The theater where Mozart and Da Ponte worked was torn down in the early nineteenth century, but several paintings from the 1780s show it in the Michaelerplatz, to the right of the old wing of the Hofburg. I imagined office space in the old building for both Da Ponte and Rosenberg. The Palais Gabler is a pastiche of many architectural elements from various palaces near the Herrengasse—the façade from one, the courtyard windows from a second, the bubbling fountain from a third. There was no convent in 1786 named the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin, but there were many like it that were closed by Joseph II, and many nuns who lost their homes. I invented the custom of giving a medallion to each novice in the convent. And finally, because I had not yet visited Venice when I wrote this book, Da Ponte’s longings for his home are informed by Peter Ackroyd’s Venice: Pure City (Vintage Books, 2010).
The Viennese public did tire of Figaro soon after its premiere, and it was not performed in Vienna again until 1789, when it was revived with some changes to the arias. It was performed twenty-eight times after that until Mozart’s death, in 1791. During his lifetime, Da Ponte was better known for writing Una cosa rara than for any of the three operas he wrote with Mozart. Figaro was revived sporadically during the nineteenth century, but was generally unpopular with audiences who were attracted to operas of the bel canto and romantic styles. In the early twentieth century, several conductors began to perform Figaro again, and the opera became very popular after the end of World War II. It is now one of the most performed and beloved operas in the world. A current-day staging of Una cosa rara, on the other hand, is a rare thing indeed.
The academic and popular literature on Mozart, Da Ponte, and their operas is vast. For readers who want to learn more about Da Ponte, a good biography is Sheila Hodges’s Lorenzo Da Ponte: The Life and Times of Mozart’s Librettist (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002). Da Ponte’s memoirs, translated by Elisabeth Abbott, have been published by New York Review Books (2000). For Mozart, I recommend starting with his letters. The collection translated and edited by Robert Spaethling, Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life (W. W. Norton, 2000), is nicely annotated and allows the reader to encounter the composer in his own voice. A fine introduction to the operas themselves, including musical analysis, can be found in Andrew Steptoe’s The Mozart–Da Ponte Operas (Oxford University Press, 1988). Nicholas Till’s Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue, and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas (W. W. Norton, 1992) ties all of Mozart’s operas to the intellectual history of his era. A much longer list of sources I have consulted during the writing of this book may be found at my Web site, www.lauralebowbooks.com, or on my author page on Goodreads.
I hope that reading The Figaro Murders will encourage those who have never encountered the opera to do so. If you are new to opera and to Figaro in particular, I recommend that you begin with a video of a performance, since the opera’s plot is complex and best understood when seen onstage. Many excellent performances are available.
What is ahead for Lorenzo Da Ponte? As he mentions in the epilogue, Mozart and Constanze have left for Prague, where Figaro is a hit. They will return to Vienna with a commission to write an opera based on the Don Juan legend, and Mozart will again call upon his friend Da Ponte for a libretto. After a successful run for Don Giovanni in Prague, the emperor will order a performance for Vienna. And while librettist and composer are at work adapting the opera to the more sophisticated tastes of the Viennese audience, bodies will start turning up in the streets of the capital …
* * *
I am grateful to the following people for their assistance and support: my agent, John Talbot; Keith Kahla and Hannah Braaten at Minotaur; first readers Marjorie Smith and Joan Yesner; and my husband, Bill, without whom nothing I do is possible.
About the Author
LAURA LEBOW studied European history at Brandeis University, earned a master’s in City Planning from MIT, and after a career as an environmental policy analyst now writes full time. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and an ever-expanding collection of opera CDs. The Figaro Murders is her first novel.
Visit the author’s Web site at www.lauralebowbooks.com or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Part I: The Amorous Butterfly
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part II: A Little Song on the Breeze
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part III: The Ungrateful Heart
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part IV: Finale
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE FIGARO MURDERS. Copyright © 2015 by Laura Lebow. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover art © Leemage / Getty Images
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Lebow, Laura.
The Figaro Murders / Laura Lebow.—First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-250-05351-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-5619-6 (e-book)
1. Opera—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Vienna (Austria)—History—Fiction. 4. Austria—History—Joseph II, 1780–1790—Fiction. 5. Mystery fiction. 6. Historical fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.E28F54 2015
813'.6—dc23
2014040987
e-ISBN 9781466856196
First Edition: April 2015
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