The Virtuoso Paperback - 2002

by Margriet de Moor

In Margriet de Moor's prizewinning novel a strange and extraordinary love story unfolds amid the carriages, churches, and shadowed harbors of eighteenth-century Naples. For one entire opera season, Carlotta, a Neapolitan duchess, sits in her candle-lit box captive to her passion for Gasparo, the tantalizing castrato with whom she has been smitten since their childhood together in a small Italian village. De Moor recreates the world of Italian music and Naples' fashionable aristocracy with a sensuality that takes the breath away.

First published in Holland, and since translated into thirteen languages, this unusual tale of song and sensuality has seduced readers around the world. A novel of sweeping gestures with delicate grace notes, The Virtuoso is a story of an exceptional place and and exceptional passion.

"Resplendent." (The New York Times Book Review)

"An intelligent, passionate, beautifully wrought object of pure pleasure." (The News and Observer, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina)

"A colorful, passionate story...with many rapturous passages musing philosophically and poetically about love, beauty, and form." (Publishers Weekly)