Painted Veil
by Beverle Graves Myers
Summary
Venice, 1734. Singer Tito Amato has let fame go to his head. Neglecting rehearsals, Tito finds himself demoted and overshadowed by a visiting star. When the murder of scene painter Luca Cavalieri threatens to close the theater, Tito jumps at the chance to regain his worth by finding the killer.
Animosity between Venice’s Jews and Christians throws suspicion on a ghetto family connected with the theater, but a mysterious veil puts Tito on the trail of Dr. Palantinus, the masked leader of a secret society. Assisted by Englishman Gussie Rumbolt, Tito confronts centuries-old religious hatred to reveal the killer.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
“Sometimes it takes another fool to show you the error of your ways.”
I was alone in my dressing room at the Teatro San Marco, addressing my image in the oval mirror flanked by unlit oil lamps. Morning sunlight streamed in a high window, glinting off the gold-threaded costume hanging on the wardrobe door behind me. To celebrate the upcoming marriage of the Doge’s eldest daughter, the Savio alla Cultura had commissioned an opera filled to the brim with pomp and pageantry. Our director, Maestro Rinaldo Torani, had chosen to rework the score of a minor composer who had long since disappeared into obscurity in one of the more unpronounceable German states. The subject of the nuptial opera was the great Roman general Julius Caesar’s adventures with Cleopatra Queen of Egypt. Torani was planning to dazzle Venice, and her foreign visitors, with an unprecedented display of vocal fireworks and spectacular stage effects.
We’d been deep in rehearsal for Cesare in Egitto for the past week. Those seven days had passed at the cadence of a funeral march. My funeral, it seemed. I had been cast as a nefarious Egyptian prince, the brother of Cleopatra. Not an insignificant part, but not the primo uomo role of the title. That honor had gone to Francesco Florio--the vain, arrogant, impertinent fool who was goading me to take a serious look at my own sorry behavior.
Florio and I belonged to a class of men who inspired ecstasy in the audiences of the day. We were castrati--male sopranos--the rulers of the opera stage. I had made my professional debut in Venice three years earlier. Since then, I had sung the plum roles at the San Marco, Venice’s state theater, and been in demand for civic festivals and court entertainments all over the north of Italy.
I admit that I’d let the sweet wine of success go to my head. I had squandered too many hours of valuable practice time in dining with patricians who only wanted to parade Venice’s latest rage before their guests. Their fawning had only escalated my conceit. Eventually my tailor saw more of me than my family, and I noticed that old friends were avoiding me. I knew I was behaving like a fool, but I couldn’t seem to stop. The adulation enticed me like a drug.
I shook my head at the mirror. A pale face with smooth, boyish cheeks shook back. The shadowed eyes that had seen too many late nights forced me to be brutally honest. Maestro Torani’s casting decision was just. My voice had suffered from my dissipations; it no longer merited top billing.
I dropped my chin to fiddle with the grease paints littering the dressing table. Trying to evaluate my demotion in a calm fashion, I instead found my hands snapping a stick of bisque pink clean in two. Why Florio, for God’s sake? I could have stood losing my position to almost anyone but him.
Reviews
"A fascinating world of glamour, deceit, intrigue and passion. Bravo!" Booklist
"An insightful, tender look at...Venice." Publishers Weekly starred review
"Powerfully evokes a long-ago world.” Kirkus
Author's Biography
Beverle Graves Myers hails from Louisville, KY. Her Baroque Mystery series is set in the musical world of 18th-century Venice and features Tito Amato, an opera singer with a stellar talent for sleuthing. Bev also writes short fiction which has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and numerous anthologies.