The Figaro Murders

January 12, 2015
Ably evoking the vital, music-obsessed Vienna of 1786, Lebow’s debut finds theater poet Lorenzo Da Ponte working with Mozart to finish the libretto for The Marriage of Figaro. When an attempt to save a friend from debtor’s prison takes Da Ponte to the home of politician Christof Gabler, he has a contentious encounter with Gabler’s young page, Florian Auerstein. After Florian is pushed from a window to his death hours later, Da Ponte is arrested. The police offer him a choice: face certain conviction, or live in the Palais Gabler to unmask the murderer. Once in residence at the Palais as a poetry teacher, he falls in love with Gabler’s beguiling wife, Caroline. Threats and assaults don’t deter his investigations into the household’s many intrigues. Meanwhile, rivals sabotage his career as a librettist, and inquiries for his bankrupt friend uncover dark secrets. The likable Da Ponte offers an insider’s perspective on a fascinating world, though overelaborate subplots muddle the main story line. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune Agency.

January 15, 2015
A librettist-turned-reluctant detective sees the characters of his latest opera come to life and just as quickly die.Although Lorenzo Da Ponte enjoys the goodwill of the Emperor Joseph II and has earned some fame in Vienna as the Court Theater poet, he lives in exile from his beloved Venice. Scraping by on commissions and counting every florin, he longs for enough success in his collaboration with Wolfgang Mozart on The Marriage of Figaro to be able to buy a decent dress suit. When his barber, Johann Vogel, asks for his help, the kindly poet agrees to visit the palais of Baron Gabler, Vogel's former employer, to find out something about Vogel's birth mother. Vogel is convinced that she was a noblewoman and that somehow the family connection will help him pay off his debt to Gabler's coldhearted housekeeper so that he can be released from prison and marry Baroness Gabler's pretty young maid. The situation becomes more complicated when the baron's impudent page, Florian Auerstein, is pushed out a window and killed. Florian, the only son of a prince, was being groomed for an important diplomatic mission with the baron, and Emperor Joseph's minister of police forces Da Ponte to pose as Baroness Gabler's poetry instructor-on pain of being tried for Florian's murder himself-to ferret out a spy within the household. At the same time Da Ponte is trying to finish the Figaro libretto, link a medallion to the mystery of Vogel's birth, and make sense of a cryptic notebook of Florian's, he falls in love with the lovely, unhappy wife of the womanizing baron. As secrets come to light, including one or two of Da Ponte's, the librettist finds himself no closer to an answer but very much a target for a killer. A brisk tempo, a sympathetic hero and a plot as complicated as the beloved opera bouffe it parallels will make Lebow's debut resonate with opera lovers and lay readers alike.

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March 1, 2015
Lorenzo Da Ponte, court librettist for the Italian theater in Vienna in 1786, is an unlikely detective. But when he offers to help his barber, who is being thrown into debtor's prison, he finds himself in the midst of a murder investigation. Just after Da Ponte visits his barber's fiancee, who is a maidservant in the home of a baron, the baron's protege, a teenage prince serving as a page in the household, is found dead. To avoid being charged with the boy's murder himself, Da Ponte must find the real killer. At the same time, Da Ponte is working with Mozart on adapting Figaro into an opera and meeting resistance from those who envy his position. Another murder adds to the puzzle and leaves the librettist deeply saddened. Debut novelist Lebow adds romanceas Da Ponte becomes besotted with the beautiful baronessto a background of court and political intrigue in this first of a projected series of mysteries based on Mozart's operas. A solid historical mystery of particular interest to opera lovers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)