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By Victoria Hammond
In 1590, the good and tormented composer Carlo Gesualdo murdered his attractive spouse Maria d'Avalos and her aristocratic lover. Gesualdo was once a personality of Shakespearian proportions: nobleman, musical genius, and—for the final sixteen years of his life—an alleged madman. With the chilling calculation of a hunter, he staged the violent and bloody homicide of the enthusiasts like an opera. but faraway from finishing his torment, the homicide prompted Gesualdo’s next years to more and more be crammed by means of demons and dementia. encouraged by means of those haunting occasions, this lush and sensual novel vividly imagines the lifetime of the mysterious and seductive Maria, her tormented marriage to Carlo, and her affair with Fabrizio Carafa, the main good-looking and finished nobleman in Naples.
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Extra info for The Devil and Maria d'Avalos
Sample text
It had begun as an eerily lucid vision of Palazzo Gioeni, perched high on the amphitheatre formed by encircling Mount Pelortani. The palace glittered white in the bright sun, its golden interiors visible through its many open windows. Then the sun was eclipsed, and the interiors darkened. Wispy white ghosts of the dead appeared at the windows. All of them, her four babies, all dead, and then Alfonso, too. But there had been something else, something even more dreadful that had caused her to wake with sobbing screams.
Where have you come from, my sweetness? ’ ‘What a charming curtsey. Let me hug you. ’ Beatrice felt her face pressed to a velvet bodice that smelled of roses. She looked up and smiled into the shrewd eyes of her aunt’s small heart-shaped face. ‘And here’s your darling mother. I’ve done nothing but pray you’d both arrive safely, and here you are. What joy! ’ She held out her arms to Maria’s ascending figure. ‘Home at last, Maria. We must never allow ourselves to be parted for so long again. ’ Maria’s father, Prince Gaetano, embraced them warmly and with a large gesture swept them into the salon.
She had always been Maria’s dearest friend, the relative closest to her in spirit and temperament. There was evidently a delay of some sort in the marriage negotiations. Maria wished her aunt had been more specific. ’ ‘Yes, Beatrice,’ said Maria, moving to the bed. indd 33 33 27/6/07 11:37:45 AM ‘When we hear from Grandpapa, which will be very soon. ’ ‘Beatrice. Look into my eyes. ’ Maria had been told so often that her eyes were mesmerising, she had almost come to believe in their power. ‘You’re very brave, Beatrice,’ she said softly, stroking the little face.