Helmut Krausser, THE SMALL GARDENS OF MAESTRO PUCCINI

Dumont - Novel - Hardcover - August 2007 - 382 pages

Giacomo Puccini was one of the greatest opera composers. But he could only write passionate music if he himself had fallen for a passion. His flirtations, the tragedies he caused, were in no way inferior to his operatic material.
Helmut Krausser tells in his novel how the love of three women grew into three operas, how seductive power, genuine love and deadly desperation have become unforgettable arias and melodies to this day.

• "Three Puccini affairs have been combined by the music enthusiast Helmut Krausser into a carefully researched and entertaining novel. [...] With Krausser, the tragic story reads like an intimate play. His Puccini novel is more than a Chronique scandaleuse. In his Puccini affairs he reflects the vitality and inner conflict of a man whose life and loves were as melodramatic as his operas, these power stations of emotions." - Welt am Sonntag

• "With the bias of the aficinado, the furor of the enlightener and the accuracy of the archivist, Krausser undertakes an open-heart operation on the man who knew how to affect the emotional balance of the modern opera audience like no other. The fact that this does not turn into a biographical-romantic slush is due to Krausser's literary competence." - FAZ

• "The fact that opera enthusiast Krausser succeeded in revealing the hitherto dubious identity of his lover Camilla in years of research may be a small sensation for Puccini research. The normal reader, on the other hand, may be interested in a pleasant musician's book. [...] But when someone like Helmut Krausser takes on documentary fiction, the two go together: Art and quality. - Curtain closed, applause!" - Tageszeitung München

• "[...] light-footed, talkative, unsentimental, brilliant. The novel is highly entertaining and therefore captivating. A direct hit." - Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger

Rights sold to:
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