The Cloud Machinery

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 from northern lands, 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 thanks to the intervention of a retired castrato singer and an entire commedia dell'arte troupe.

Admirably suited to the alchemical talents of Christopher Whyte, The Cloud Machinery reads like a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann set to music by Mozart. Its brilliant and elegant surface cannot conceal disturbing psychological undertones which makes this a thoroughly contemporary novel.