Stradella

by F. Marion Crawford

Excerpt from Stradella
The Senator Michele Pignaver, being a childless widower of several years' standing and a personage of wealth and worth in Venice, made up his mind one day that he would marry his niece Ortensia, as soon as her education was completed. For he was a man of culture and of refined tastes, fond of music, much given to writing sonnets and to reading the works of the elegant Politian, as well as to composing sentimental airs for the voice and lute. He patronised arts and letters with vast credit and secret economy; for he never gave anything more than a supper and a recommendation to the poets, musicians, and artists who paid their court to him and dedicated to him their choicest productions. The supper was generally a frugal affair, but his reputation in aesthetic matters was so great that a word from him to a leader of fashion, or a letter of introduction to a Venetian Ambassador abroad, often proved to be worth more than the gold he abstained from giving. He spoke Latin, he could read Greek, and his taste in poetry was so highly cultivated that he called Dante's verse rough, uncouth, and vulgar - precisely as Horace Walpole, seventy or eighty years later, could not conceive how any one could prefer Shakespeare's rude lines to the elegant verses of Mr. Pope.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction

446 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Francis Marion Crawford (1854-1909) was an American writer noted for his many novels. He was born at Bagni di Lucca, Italy. In 1879 he went to India, where he studied Sanskrit and edited the Allahabad Indian Herald. Returning to America he continued to study Sanskrit at Harvard University for a year, contributed to various periodicals, and in 1882 produced his first novel, Mr Isaacs. This book had an immediate success, and its author's promise was confirmed by the publication of Doctor Claudius: A True Story (1883). After a brief residence in New York and Boston, in 1883 he returned to Italy, where he made his permanent home. He also published the historical works, Ave Roma Immortalis (1898), Rulers of the South (1900) renamed Sicily, Calabria and Malta in 1904, and Gleanings from Venetian History (1905). The Saracinesca series is perhaps known to be his best work, with the third in the series, Don Orsino, set against the background of a real estate bubble, told with effective concision. A fourth book in the series, Corleone, was the first major treatment of the Mafia in literature.

Reviews

[The Idle Woman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A charming romantic novel, first published in 1909, which follows the adventures of the musician and singer Alessandro Stradella in 17th-century Venice and Rome. Employed by a Venetian patrician to tutor his niece, Stradella falls in love with the girl and they elope to Ferrara - and thence to Rome - pursued by the vengeance of the Venetian and (more pertinently) by two dangerous bravi on Stradella's tail. The book has the shortcomings of its period, in that Ortensia is a perfect heroine - beautiful, faithful, pure and innocent beyond compare - and Stradella the ideal lover - restrained, thoughtful and devoted to his young bride. Despite this, it has an unexpected liveliness, largely thanks to the two bravi, Gambardella and Trombin, who turn out to have the best lines in the book and to embody a kind of world-weary cynicism that I didn't quite expect in a book of this date. I could happily read another novel simply about them. This is perfect light reading, ideal for travels or holiday - easy to dip into, and thoroughly enjoyable, if a little over-flowery now and then for our modern age. But it's highly recommended to those who like such things. I'll be looking out for other historical Italian novels by Crawford, and as the ebook is free, there's nothing to lose and much to gain in trying this.

For a longer review and for posts on other books and films, please see my blog:
http://theidlewoman.blogspot.co.uk/20...

[Michelle Arostegui · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazon review..."From some ancient Venetian chronicles Mr. Crawford gleaned material that bore upon the life of Stradella, a great musician of the seventeenth century. Out of these fragments he has constructed his story which is rich in its Italian setting. The love of Stradella for a dowerless niece of a pompous, self-sufficient Senator who intended to marry the girl himself, furnishes the key to the difficult situations that crowd one upon another along the course of their experience."

[Italo Italophiles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stradella is a love story that starts in Venice and the ends with the lovers in Rome. It is a highly romanticized account of real-life composer/musician/singer Alessandro Stradella's courtship of a Venetian senator's ward.

Please see my full and illustrated review at Italophile Book Reviews
http://italophilebookreviews.blogspot...