Tenor of Love Book

A NOVEL OF PASSION AND BETRAYAL, ART AND AMBITION BASED ON THE LIFE OF ONE OF THE GREATEST OPERA SINGERS OF ALL TIME

One summer day in 1897, a young singer, Enrico Caruso, arrives at the home of the Giachetti family. He has come to Livorno to sing on the summer stage with Ada Giachetti, a famous and beautiful soprano. Ada's mother offers him a spare room, and before Ada herself has a chance to meet the unknown tenor, her younger sister, Rina, arrives home from the market and falls fatefully in love.

With the help of singing lessons from Ada, Caruso wins the leading role in Puccini's new opera La Bohème. Although Caruso loves Rina, it is Ada he adores, and they soon become lovers. Heartbroken, Rina becomes an opera singer too, hoping to take her sister's place. For decades, the two sisters are locked in a struggle to be the star on Caruso's stage and in his bed, while Caruso's voice grows more and more unimaginably beautiful.

But as his relations with the two sisters break down in scandal and tragedy, the now world-famous Caruso builds a new life for himself as the star of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. There, far from the drama and passion of Caruso's Tuscan life, a shy young American woman will win his heart and, taking the greatest leap of faith of all, supplant Ada and Rina as his one true love.

Publishers Weekly

The legendary tenor Enrico Caruso is the center of the romantic universe for three women in this sensually written but occasionally overwrought novel. The young opera singer is 24 when he comes to Livorno, Italy, in 1897, and finds lodging with the Giachetti family. Sixteen-year-old Rina is instantly enamored of "Rico," but it is her older, married sister, Ada-a fellow singer, vain but talented and liberated-whom Enrico idolizes. Soon the sisters are competing for his attentions, sparking a decades-long feud that ends in heartbreak for both. Meanwhile, Enrico's fame burgeons in New York City, where he is the star of the Metropolitan Opera house and the toast of Manhattan. There, in 1917, he meets bookish, gentle Dorothy, who yearns to escape her wealthy, tyrannical father. The story chronicles her brief but loving marriage to Enrico, which is cut short after three years by the tenor's death. The writing is often lyrical and vivid, and di Michele proves especially skilled at capturing the vistas of Italy and the bustling environs of New York City. What is less convincing is the alleged charm of Enrico himself. Despite constant narrative reminders of his charisma and talent, Enrico is often loutish and self-serving, and his responses to his own misdeeds become wearingly self-pitying. Ada, Rina and Dorothy may have loved blindly, but readers will likely find it hard to follow suit. Agent, Jackie Kaiser. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.