![]() ![]() ![]() “When you are a boy soprano, you’ve very aware your voice will leave,” Chee says. The question is not if she will lose her ability, but when.Ĭhee brings special insight to this inevitability as a former professional boy soprano. “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.”Īs Lilliet learns early in her training, the Falcon soprano-a dramatic soprano whose darker tone is particularly suited to tragic roles-is among the operatic world’s most fragile voices. ![]() “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,” Chee writes. In Alexander Chee’s sophomore novel, The Queen of the Night, the tragic soprano narrates her legendary life, beginning with two memorable entrances to the Sénat Bal at Luxembourg Palace, Paris, in the warm autumn of 1882. For all that is unknown of Lilliet Berne-her origins, her allegiances, her real name-there’s one indisputable fact: she has a once-in-a-generation voice. ![]()
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