Alessandro Stradella was a composer who lived dangerously in an era when such recklessness could prove fatal. F. Marion Crawford's 1909 novel draws on the real historical figure, an Italian Baroque musician assassinated in Genoa at thirty-eight, whose legendary charm and scandals made him as many enemies as admirers. Set in the palatial world of 17th-century Venice, the novel centers on Ortensia, a wealthy senator's niece trapped in an unwanted marriage to her own uncle, the cultivated but ruthless Michele Pignaver. When the brilliant and reckless Stradella arrives, he ignites a passion that threatens to destroy everything the senator has built. What follows is a tale of artistic temperament and deadly rivalry, where love becomes a weapon and music conceals betrayal. Ortensia must choose between the suffocating safety of her position and a dangerous romance with a man whose greatest talent may be his gift for self-destruction. For readers who crave historical fiction that pulses with life, desire, and the dark glamour of Baroque Italy.
