The Figaro Murders

In full compliance with FTC Guidelines, I received this ebook for free in exchange for a fair and honest review. I was in no way compensated for this post as a reviewer, and the thoughts are my own.

The Figaro Murders by Laura Leboew Publication date: March 31, 2015 At St Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books Pages: 336 ISBN: 978-1250053510 Available as hardcover and ebookGenre: Historical Fiction/Historical Mystery Received from the publisher via Netgalley for review     Buy the book

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MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

Loving both historical mysteries and opera, I jumped on the opportunity to read The Figaro Murders. It has the unique advantage of focusing not so much on Mozart as on the opera librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, well known though sometimes left in the shadows.

I read an interesting historical mystery on Mozart’s last days, entitled Mozart’s Last Aria. In this present novel, we meet Mozart as a young man, his wife and two young children.
Both novels feature the complex socio-political situation of Vienna in the 1780’s, with the strife between Protestants and Catholics, plus hatred against the Jews, as well as the looming shadow of Frederick, King of Prussia, over Austria and its emperor Joseph II. Laura Lebow does a fantastic job at recreating this background, and that’s definitely a high point of her work.

It is also a transitional and difficult time for composers and musicians. Even though the emperor is enlightened and a great champion of the arts, it is not easy  earning one’s life with music. There’s the constant pressure of finishing your commissioned work on time, of following the strict rules of the time (for instance here the issue of introducing ballets in operas, a “French custom” far from being accepted by all at the time), and extreme rivalries, here mostly pictured between Da Ponte, the court theater librettist, Casti, and Salieri, the court composer. With the economic and political situation, added to competition, blackmailing is flourishing, and we have a lot of this in the novel.

When the book opens, Lorenzo Da Ponte, originally a Jew from Venice, has been living in Vienna for 5 years. Despite his origin, he received actually a Christian education and prepared for priesthood. But he does not officiate as a priest, just enjoying the level of culture his formation gave him, to be a writer and a poet.

When he goes to his usual barber, Vogel, he discovers this man is on his way to the debtor’s prison, because he can’t reimburse the loan from Rosa Hahn, housekeeper at the Palais Gabler, a famous Baron. Thinking his real mother, whom he does not know, was actually rich, Vogel asks Lorenzo to try to find her. To help, he sends him to the Palais, where his fiancée Marianne Haiml works. When Lorenzo visits, he meets young Florian Auerstein, page to the Baron. After his visit though, Florian is discovered dead: someones seems to have pushed him off a window sill where he enjoyed sitting.
It looks like the murder may have involved some people concerned with high level of foreign policy. Did Frederick plant a spy at the Palais, and did the boy know who it was? So they ask Lorenzo to go as a poetry teacher to find who the spy might be. If he refuses the deal, Lorenzo will be accused of murdering the boy.

The story is complex like a play or an opera, with a double plot going on and criss-crossing, with both the identification of Vogel’s mother and the possible spy. Is there a connection between them? Can Lorenzo clearly discover who’s who between these two leads? If there’s blackmailing, who is blackmailing whom? For what reason? Lorenzo is going from possible lead to lead, and grows confused, as anyone seems to be a possible spy and or murderer.
The final revelation of Vogel’s mother was a bit too easy, but totally in agreement in how mysteries are resolved in operas. In fact, another beauty of the book is that all the characters, not in names but in roles, are the characters of The Marriage of Figaro! The titles of the parts of the book also come from the opera.

Poetry plays also an important part inf the book, and Lorenzo often quotes his favorite poet Petrarch. I really enjoyed his poems to Laura when I was a teen, so that was nice to meet him again!
We also see Lorenzo working on his libretto for Martín y Soler’s A Rare Thing. Even though it is mostly unknown these days, at the time, it was actually much more successful than the Marriage of Figaro, which was well-received but quickly forgotten (until after WWII!).

Be sure to visit the author’s website with great references on Da Ponte and Mozart. She did a great job at reading her sources and smartly turning them into a very enjoyable work. I’m glad to know more historical mysteries focused on Mozart’s operas are coming from her! I’m especially curious to see what she will do with The Magic Flute and its possible Freemason hidden message!

VERDICT: If you enjoy both the world of operas and historical mysteries, The Figaro Murders is a must for you. Built on very serious background work and using the characters of the opera itself, it offers a very suspenseful, entertaining, and insightful view of late 18th century Vienna in which lived famous librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte.

Laura Lebow:

“I majored in European history at Brandeis University and earned a Master in City Planning from MIT.
After a career as an environmental policy analyst and software developer,
I decided to have some fun and combine my love of opera and murder mysteries.
The result is The Figaro Murders, a mystery set in Mozart’s Vienna,
which will be published in March, 2015 by Minotaur Books.
It’s the first in a series of mysteries based on Mozart’s operas.

I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts with my husband, a lot of books about Mozart, and many opera CDs.” [from Goodreads]

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
What’s your favorite historical fiction
focusing on a composer ?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE

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