The queen of the night

Review by New York Times Review

IN OPERA, VOICE is everything. The narrator of "The Queen of the Night," Lilliet Berne, is a star of the Paris Opera. She possesses a rare and delicate Falcon soprano range, named for Marie-Cornélie Falcon, whose voice famously shattered in the middle of a performance and never recovered. Lilliet's world is one of silence and sound, of risk and fragility, and the balance between vocal power and expression. Voice is everything in historical fiction, too: One of the novelist's critical creative decisions is how to present the voices and world views of people in the past, while making them accessible for modern readers. Many authors of popular historical novels attempt something that simply sounds a bit old-fashioned, in an attempt to create a sense of authenticity, as if that were actually possible. But what is assumed to be "authenticity" is a genre convention that owes more to the influence of early historical fiction than to genuine speech patterns of ancient Rome or the real pirates of the Caribbean. There are other approaches, such as the vaulting ventriloquism of Sarah Waters or Peter Carey, or the postmodern voice showcased in Jeanette Winterson's "The Passion." In "Wolf Hall," Hilary Mantel mastered the transparent voice; subtly reflecting Tudor speech and language, without us tripping over a single "prithee" or "gadzook" - while in "The Luminaries," Eleanor Catton reproduced a syntax and vocabulary reminiscent of Dickens. Whatever the author's particular spin, the characters' voices, especially in first-person narration, create an imagined past for the reader, and need to sing in tune. "The Queen of the Night," Alexander Chee's salute to the music and literature of the 19th century, is also all about voice. The rags-to-riches plot is an intentionally improbable picaresque featuring all the glorious elements of great operas of the era: love at first sight, disguise, intrigue, grief, betrayal, secrets, scheming aristocrats, a besotted tenor, dramatic escapes, grand settings, fabulous costumes, murder, fallen women, sacrifice - the follies of humans at the mercy of Fate. "Victory, defeat, victory, defeat, victory, defeat" is a refrain. Lilliet's story begins at a masked ball, naturally, before her memories take us from childhood on a bleak Minnesota farm to a circus, from a Paris brothel to the stage, and finally back to the world of the traveling circus. At different stages she performs as a daughter, acrobat, prisoner, servant, friend, courtesan, spy and celebrity - an astonishing arc that circles back when she is invited to appear in a new opera based on her own secret life story. ONE OF HER roles is Amina, the sleep-walker in Bellini's "La Sonnambula," who "is grieving, raging at her fate, in love, ultimately despairing of all hope, unaware she is in terrible danger until she wakes to her rescue, exultant." Like Amina, Lilliet moves through her many incarnations and settings as if from scene to scene, character to character. She finds little joy in singing and is beyond the audience's reach, behind makeup and costume. She tells us that she too is grieving, raging and exultant, but she has been trained to use her face and her voice as a mask, to "give and never give anything away." At times Lilliet loses, or pretends to lose, or refuses to use her speaking voice, seeking refuge in silence, another "mask of a kind," she says. "It let me be whatever or whomever they needed me to be." While the novel is infused with an operatic sensibility, it doesn't feel like an opera - there's little transcendental magic or soaring tragedy. Lilliet's passive narration has a distant, formal tone, seemingly meant as a re-creation of 19th-century voice, but executed without the mastery of a Catton or Waters, dulling the drama, even at the most theatrical moments. Flat notes and stilted phrasing create a "performance of alienation" that positions the reader as a spectator viewing a world produced by exposition, flashbacks and jump cuts between memories, illusory subplots and red herrings. An abundance of detail and a chorus of historical personalities lead to a few plot inconsistencies and diversions and also slow the pace. But the story and the murky mystery within it take off in the fourth act, in a dark and hungry city devastated during the siege of Paris and the Commune. Here, the narrator's dissociated voice is more suited to her horror at the corpses in the streets, the blood in the fountains. Always a survivor, Lilliet transforms herself from the girl to whom things happen into a diva defying fate while her voice lasts. Her fictional life intertwines with those of real women of the era: Empress Eugénie, regent during the war; the composer Pauline Viardot-Garcia, who finally provides the training Lilliet's voice needs; the Comtesse de Castiglione, who wove intrigue across Europe - it is she, in a masquerade costume, who adorns the book's cover in a remarkable early photograph. Even George Sand has a cameo role, looking like "an old elf." "The Queen of the Night" is a celebration of these women of creativity, ingenuity, endurance, mastery and grace - a gala in their honor. We may feel like we are watching the action from the dress circle, but their voices reach us still. The plot features all the elements of grand opera: intrigue, betrayal, murder. KELLY GARDINER'S latest novel is "Goddess," based on the life of the opera singer and swordswoman Julie d'Aubigny.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 21, 2016]

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Review by Booklist Review

When renowned soprano Lilliet Berne, the toast of Belle Epoque Paris, is offered the role of a lifetime in an original opera, she is shocked to realize that the libretto seems to be based on her own life. After reinventing herself and carefully shrouding the secrets of her early years, she believed she had moved away from the scandal, shame, and intrigue of her youth forever. Reaching back into time, she recalls her Minnesota childhood, her escape to Paris, her adventures as a hippodrome rider, her career as a courtesan, her stint as a spy, and her meteoric rise through the cutthroat ranks of the opera world. In order to unravel the mystery of who has betrayed her, she reviews her entire entangled history, recalling the twists and turns of her own life as well as the sweeping history of an era along the way. Peppering the unfolding plot with real-life events and figures, Chee provides a suitably operatic backdrop for the mesmerizing novel.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2015 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Chee's lush and sweeping second novel uses a strikingly different setting from Edinburgh, his accomplished debut, but shares its musical themes and boldness. In 1882 Paris, the soprano known as Lilliet Berne is a celebrated opera star with an unforgettable but vulnerable voice. When a stranger offers her the chance to originate a new opera's leading role, she discovers that the work retells her scandalous hidden history. As she attempts to discover which of four individuals from her past revealed her secrets, she recalls the circus troupe in which she first performed, her days as a servant to France's Empress Eugénie, and her time as a prostitute. Chee memorably depicts the shifting fortunes of France and historical figures including Napoleon III-whose wife, Eugénie, and her rival, the Countess di Castiglione, play pivotal roles in Lilliet's story-and George Sand. But opera as much as history shapes the novel, with nods to The Magic Flute among other works. Though the momentum flags in the book's lengthy central sections, Chee's voice, at once dreamy and dramatic, never falters; Lilliet's cycle of reinventions is a moving meditation on the transformative power of fate, art, time, and sheer survival. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Chee's (Edinburgh) latest is a well-researched fictional look at the world of opera in 19th-century Europe. The story is about Lilliet Berne, a celebrated opera singer with a dark and secret past that is soon to be revealed. Via flashbacks listeners learns of Lilliet's early life in Minnesota, her journey to Europe, and the various previous careers and chapters of her life. Though the characters are not especially sympathetic, the book pays great attention to detail within an intricate plot. Classically trained opera singer and narrator Lisa Flanagan brings the story to vivid life. VERDICT Will be of interest to fans of opera and historical fiction. ["A completely engrossing work that should appeal to the widest range of readers, especially those with a taste for historical fiction": LJ 1/16 starred review of the Houghton Harcourt hc.]--Denise Garafalo, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Life as opera: the intrigues and passions of a star soprano in 19th-century Paris. She was the last surviving member of a Minnesota farm family swept away by fever; "Lilliet Berne" is a name she borrowed off a gravestone by the East River on her way to board a ship to Europe in search of her mother's people. That mission is eventually abandoned as her original identity is buried under a succession of new incarnations and schemes for survival. She becomes a circus equestrienne, a high-level courtesan, a maid to the empress of France, a spy, and, ultimately, a "Falcon," the rarest breed of sopranobut double dealings, false steps, and bad bargains mark the way. When she is at the pinnacle of her fame, a writer brings her a book he plans to transform into an opera, hoping she will create the central role in its premiere. Reading it, she realizes with horror that the main character is her and that whoever has written it knows all her secrets. To find out who that is, she unfurls the whole of her complicated history and its characters, among them a tenor who's obsessed with her, a comtesse who uses her, her one real friend, and her only love. The story goes through the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, and the Third Republic, with cameos by Verdi, Bizet, P.T. Barnum, George Sand, and others. If the plot of Chee's (Edinburgh, 2002) second novel is overly elaborate, the voice he has created for his female protagonist never falters. Always holding a few cards close to her chest, Lilliet Berne commands the power of "the ridiculous and beloved thief that is operathe singer who sneaks into the palace of your heart and somehow enters singing aloud the secret hope or love or grief you hoped would always stay secret, disguised as melodrama; and you are so happy you have lived to see it done." Richly researched, ornately plotted, this story demands, and repays, close attention. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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One   When it began, it began as an opera would begin, in a palace, at a ball, in an encounter with a stranger who, you discover, has your fate in his hands. He is perhaps a demon or a god in disguise, offering you a chance at either the fulfillment of a dream or a trap for the soul. A comic element ?-- ?the soprano arrives in the wrong dress ?-- ?and it decides her fate.     The year was 1882. The palace was the Luxembourg Palace; the ball, the Sénat Bal, held at the beginning of autumn. It was still warm, and so the garden was used as well. I was the soprano.     I was Lilliet Berne.   The dress was a Worth creation of pink taffeta and gold silk, three pink flounces that belled out from a bodice embroidered in a pattern of gold wings. A net of gold-ribbon bows covered the skirt and held the flounces up at the hem. The fichu seemed to clasp me from behind as if alive ?-- ?how had I not noticed? At home it had not seemed so garish. I nearly tore it off and threw it to the floor.     I'd paid little attention as I'd dressed that evening, unusual for me, and so I now paused as I entered, for the mirror at the entrance showed to me a woman I knew well, but in a hideous dress. As if it had changed as I'd sat in the carriage, transforming from what I had thought I'd put on into this.     In the light of my apartment I had thought the pink was darker; the gold more bronze; the bows smaller, softer; the effect more Italian. It was not, though, and here in the ancient mirrors of the Luxembourg Palace, under the blazing chandeliers, I saw the truth.     There were a few of us who had our own dressmaker's forms at Worth's for fitting us when we were not in Paris, and I was one, but perhaps he had forgotten me, confused me with someone else or her daughter. It would have been a very beautiful dress, say, for a very young girl from the Loire. Golden hair and rosy cheeks, pink lipped and fair. Come to Paris and I will get you a dress, her Parisian uncle might have said. And then we will go to a ball. It was that sort of dress.     Everything not of the dress was correct. The woman in the mirror was youthful but not a girl, dark hair parted and combed close to the head, figure good, posture straight, and waist slim. My skin had become very pale during the Siege of Paris some years before and never changed back, but this had become chic somehow, and I always tried to be grateful for it.     My carriage had already driven off to wait for me, the next guests arriving. If I called for my driver, the wait to leave would be as long as the wait to arrive, perhaps longer, and I would be there at the entrance, compelled to greet everyone arriving, which would be an agony. A footman by the door saw my hesitation at the mirror and tilted his head toward me, as if to ask after my trouble. I decided the better, quicker escape for now was to enter and hide in the garden until I could leave, and so I only smiled at him and made my way into the hall as he nodded proudly and shouted my name to announce me.     Lilliet Berne, La Générale!     Cheers rang out and all across the room heads turned; the music stopped and then began again, the orchestra now performing the refrain from the Jewel Song aria from Faust to honor my recent performances in the role of Marguerite. I looked over to see the director salute to me, bowing deeply before turning back to continue. The crowd began to applaud, and so I paused and curtsied to them even as I hoped to move on out of the circle of their agonizing scrutiny.     At any other time, I would have welcomed this. Instead, I nearly groaned into my awful dress.     The applause deepened, and as they began to cheer again, I stayed a moment longer. For I was their creature. Lilliet Berne, La Générale, newly returned to Paris after a year spent away, the Falcon soprano whose voice was so delicate it was rumored she endangered it even by speaking, her silences as famous as her performances. This voice was said to turn arias into spells, hymns into love songs, simple requests into commands, my suitors driven to despair in every country I visited, but perhaps especially here.     In the Paris press, they wrote stories of me constantly. I was receiving and rejecting gifts of incomprehensible splendor; men were leaving their wives to follow me; princes were arriving bearing ancient family jewels, keys to secret apartments, secret estates. I was unbearably kind or unbelievably cruel, more beautiful than a woman could be or secretly hideous, supernaturally pale or secretly mulatto, or both, the truth hidden under a plaster of powder. I was innocent or I was the devil unleashed, I had nearly caused wars, I had kept them from happening. I was never in love, I had never loved, I was always in love. Each performance could be my last, each performance had been my last, the voice was true, the voice was a fraud.     The voice, at least, was true.     In my year away, the theaters that had once thrilled me, La Scala in Milan, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Mariinsky in Saint Petersburg, no longer excited me as they once did. I stayed always in the apartments given over to the company singers, and soon it seemed as if the rooms were a single place that stretched the length of Europe and opened onto its various capitals.     The details of my roles had become the only details of my life. Onstage, I was the druidic priestess, the Hebrew slave in Egypt, the Parisian courtesan dying of consumption, the beautiful orphan who sang as she walked in her sleep, falling into and out of trouble and never waking up until the end. Offstage, I felt dim, shuttered, a prop, the stick under the puppet. I seemed a stranger to myself, a changeling placed here in my life at some point I couldn't remember, and the glass of the mirror at the entrance to the palace seemed made from the same amber of the dream that surrounded me, a life that was not life, and which I could not seem to escape no matter where I went or where I sang.     And so their celebration of me that night at the ball, sincere as it was, felt as if it were happening in the life neighboring mine, visible through a glass.     I tell you I was distracted, but it was much more than that. For I was also focused intensely, waiting for one thing and one thing only, my attention turned toward something I couldn't quite see but was sure was there, coming for me through the days ahead. I'd had a premonition in accepting the role of Marguerite that, in returning to Paris this time, I would be here for a meeting with my destiny. Here I would find what would transform me, what would return me to life and make this life the paradise I was so sure it should be.     I had been back in Paris for a little more than a month now, though, and my hopes for this had not yet come true, and so I waited with an increasingly dull vigilance, still sure my appointed hour was ahead of me, and yet I did not know what it was or where it would be.     It was here, of course. I rose finally from a third curtsy and was halfway to the doors to the terrace when I noticed a man crossing the floor quickly, dressed in a beautiful new evening suit. He was ruddy against the white of his shirt and tie, if handsomely so. His hair was neatly swept back from his face, his blond moustache and whiskers clean and trim, his eyes clear. I nodded as he came to stand before me. He bowed gravely, even ostentatiously.     Forgive me this intrusion! he said, as he stood upright. The diva who throws her suitors' diamonds in the trash. The beggars of Paris must salute as you walk by before they carry your garbage shoulder high.     I made to walk past him, though I smiled to think of his greeting. I had, in fact, thrown diamonds in the garbage twice, a feint each time. My maid knew to retrieve them. I did it once to make sure the story would be told in the press, the second time for the story to be believed. I was trying to teach my princes to buy me dresses instead of jewels ?-- ?jewels had become ostentatious in the new Paris, with many reformed libertines now critical of the Empire's extravagance, and there was little point to a jewel you couldn't wear. Excerpted from The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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