Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
Torani asks Tito to find head scene artist Luca Cavalieri who has failed to come to work; he trusts the castrati to be discrete as he was during the INTERRUPTED ARIA affair. Seeing an opportunity to regain favor, Tito searches for the missing painter; Tito’s acquaintance, visiting Englishman Gussie Rumboldt, joins him on the quest. They soon find their target dead, which leaves the opera house in jeopardy since the scenes will probably not be ready on time and the cloud of a homicide places everyone under suspicion, Tito and Gussie continue to investigate hoping to identify the killer in time to save the production.
The second Baroque mystery is a delightful historical mystery that provides incredible insight into early eighteenth century Venice from mostly the perspective of the artists involved in an opera production. The story line is cleverly developed around Tito’s attempts to recover from his fall from grace by sleuthing as he sees cooperating through detection as a means to regain favor with Torani. The who-done-it plays second banana to Beverle Graves Myers’ aria that looks deep into opera circa 1734 Venice.