For one entire opera season, Carlotta sits in her candle-lit boxheld in the spell of a world in which knowledge, beauty and lovecollide: music. She is falling in love with the castrati, Gasparo.Set in eighteenth-century Naples, a place of carriages, churchesvisited by criminals, and ships resting in dusky harbors, TheVirtuoso is the tale of an exceptional place and an exceptionalpassion.
A bestseller throughout Europe, The Virtuoso is both awonderfully romantic historical novel and a literary triumph. Withthis very unusual love story, her first publication in the UnitedStates, Margriet de Moor is sure to attract a great many Americanreaders.
"Margriet de Moor's virtuoso novel meets exactly the taste of ourown time for the bizarre made sympathetic, the beautiful seen asthe technical. . . De Moor--formerly a singer--describes Gasparo'ssinging, his swoony effect on his audiences and his lady's delightin his naked body with rhapsodically expert relish."--Sunday Times(London)