- Mass Market Paperback: 566 pages
- Publisher: Ballantine Books Inc.; Reprint edition (May 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0345396936
- ISBN-13: 978-0345396938
- Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 3 x 17.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 938,686 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
In this mesmerizing novel, the acclaimed author of THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES and the LIVES OF THE MAYFAIR WITCHES makes real for us the exquisite and otherworldly society of the eighteenth-century castrati, the delicate and alluring male sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices brought them the adulation of the royal courts and grand opera houses of Europe, men who lived as idols, concealing their pain as they were adored as angels, yet shunned as half-men.
As we are drawn into their dark and luminous story, as the crowds of Venetians, Neopolitans, and Romans, noblemen and peasants, musicians, prelates, princes, saints, and intriguers swirl around them, Anne Rice brings us into the sweep of eighteenth-century Italian life, into the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. It is a novel that only Anne Rice could have written, taking us into a heartbreaking and enchanting moment in history, a time of great ambition and great suffering--a tale that challenges our deepest images of the masculine and the feminine.
"To read Anne Rice is to become giddy as if spinning through the mind of time."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"Dazzling in its darkness...Spellbinding."
--The New York Times
As we are drawn into their dark and luminous story, as the crowds of Venetians, Neopolitans, and Romans, noblemen and peasants, musicians, prelates, princes, saints, and intriguers swirl around them, Anne Rice brings us into the sweep of eighteenth-century Italian life, into the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. It is a novel that only Anne Rice could have written, taking us into a heartbreaking and enchanting moment in history, a time of great ambition and great suffering--a tale that challenges our deepest images of the masculine and the feminine.
"To read Anne Rice is to become giddy as if spinning through the mind of time."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"Dazzling in its darkness...Spellbinding."
--The New York Times
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
GUIDO MAFFEO was castrated when he was six years old and sent to study with the finest singing masters in Naples. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
GUIDO MAFFEO was castrated when he was six years old and sent to study with the finest singing masters in Naples. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was my first Anne Rice book and I was not disapointed, the incredible amount of research and detail that has gone into writing this book go to show just good she is at this!
The plot is a little confusing to start with but as it progresses the strands come together to make a complicated plot of family life, social life and art within 18th century Italy.
The depth of emotions and feelings portraited are amazing and the book becomes incredibly hard to put down once you get into it.
I would recomend this book to everyone with an interest in history, especially Italian, whether they are an Anne Rice fan or not.
The plot is a little confusing to start with but as it progresses the strands come together to make a complicated plot of family life, social life and art within 18th century Italy.
The depth of emotions and feelings portraited are amazing and the book becomes incredibly hard to put down once you get into it.
I would recomend this book to everyone with an interest in history, especially Italian, whether they are an Anne Rice fan or not.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Cry to heaven is one of the best books I have ever read. I read about 50 books a year. Anne Rice writes so visually that I felt like a fly on the wall in voluptously over-ripe Venice witnessing the agonies and ecstacies of the characters. If this were made into a film it would be filmed with red and orange tints which could only begin to paint it in the richness that it deserves. Read it but make sure that you have nothing else scheduled because you will not put it down!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A sensitive and compassionate look at the long vanished world of the castrati. Anne Rice evokes the Italy of the high opera with the same care and attention to detail that she has demonstrated in her other novels. Her finely crafted characters come to life with such vigour that you can almost hear the fragile soprano voices echoing out from the cathedrals and stages of europe. I could not put this book down.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Cry to Heaven - Excellent Book
Cry to Heaven. This is an excellent book with an intriguing story. I first read this book a few years ago and was mesmerised by it. I then moved house and lost the book. Read more
Published 13 months ago by JeannieB
Superbly told story of triumph over adversity
Tonio Treschi is the young son of an aging Venetian, the Grand Counsellor, he lives in his father's great palazzo with his young mother, not knowing other children to play with. Read more
Published on 14 Jan 2009 by Benjamin
Superbly told story of triumph over adversity
Tonio Treschi is the young son of an aging Venetian, the Grand Counsellor, he lives in his father's great palazzo with his young mother, not knowing other children to play with. Read more
Published on 14 Jan 2009 by Benjamin
Tiresome, rescued only by some skilful music history inclusions.
To be quite candid, I thought this book was homosexual/bisexual soft-porn, given a thin veil of respectability by throwing in relatively well-researched references to music and... Read more
Published on 24 July 2006 by Amanda
Good, but not great
Like many others, I turned to this book after reading Rice's more famous Vampire Chronicles. Becoming a little disillusioned with the later novels (and some of the earlier ones) I... Read more
Published on 15 May 2006 by Night
Not a typical Anne Rice - and yet...
I started reading books in English (outside of school) because I could not get all of Anne Rice's books in a Danish translation - 'Cry to Heaven' was one of them. Read more
Published on 1 July 2003 by Eva Rosenbæk
breath taking, amazing and in a world of its own.
anne rice's beautiful prose always amazes me, this one more than most, the thoroughness of her research shows thoughout all of her works and the descriptions, ending and wonerful... Read more
Published on 26 Mar 2001
Neither too boring nor interesting enough
I am a great fan of Anne Rice, and absolutely adore the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches series, but I think this book doesn't grip you the same way others do. Read more
Published on 10 Jan 2001
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