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slferg 's review for:
Death at La Fenice
by Donna Leon
A rather engrossing mystery. Commissario Guido Brunetti is called in to investigate the death of a famous and genius conducter, Wellauer. He is found dead in his dressing room after the second act - a cup of coffee laced with cyanide spilled in the floor. He has been behaving oddly, distracted and according to several people, one of them having played a performance with him before, his old brilliance and fire are gone. The orchestra for the opera La Traviata is off - the music is not holding together and keeping in line with the singing. His soprano La Petrelli has had a fight with him and several others have had "disagreements". But Brunetti is convinced that the answer lies in the past. If he can only talk to the right people or dig far enough back. His wife, Paola, puts him in touch with some of tkhe right people - people who know things - people she went to school with. They direct him back to an old singer who refused to sing before Mussolini and never sang again. She holds the key though she doesn't want to talk to him about it. The truth begins to dawn when he talks to the doctor he finds in the Wellauer's appointment book and learns that he was suffering permanent hearing loss....which for a musician and conductor was terrible.