Dimensions
166 x 242 x 26mm
The theatre at St Hyginus, Venice's smallest parish, is about to reopen. It is Carnival time and Ansaldo Limentani, the charismatic impresario, plans a season of opera more splendid than anyone has seen before. But the events of the terrible night seven years ago, on which the theatre closed down when a Neapolitan princess disappeared in a column of fire and Alvise, last surviving member of the Contarini family, was brutally murdered, cannot be forgotten.
Two sinister visitors, Andreas Hofmeister and the Baroness Hedwiga, hover on the edge of the theatre company, determined to track the missing princess down. Domenico, the young musician hired as a conductor, discovers that the building has some unsuspected inhabitants. Because of them, an evil is unleashed on the opening night which can only be put to rest with the intervention of a retired castrato singer and an entire commedia dell-arte troupe.
