Orfeo’s Last Act: A Novel in Two Parts

In seventeenth-century Mantua, the Gonzaga Duke objects to the violent ending of Monteverdi’s opera, Orfeo. With the help of Jewish composer, Salamone Rossi, Monteverdi supplies a new happy Act V. The original ending is lost. In twenty-first-century England, amateur musician, Emilia, discovers a faded musical manuscript in an East Anglian stately home. Turning detective, she reveals the truth behind a Golden Age: there is musical passion, secret loves, patronage, power, and academic skullduggery.  

Michelene Wandor combines imagination, scholarship and musical expertise to bring the magic of Mantua, Florence and Venice to life. Across the centuries, harmony and discord vie for resolution in a story which thrills and shocks. 

‘A well-researched and entertaining read.’ 

Sir Roger Norrington 

About the author: 

Michelene Wandor is an acclaimed playwright, poet, short-story writer, musician and cultural commentator. Her early music group, Siena, produced the first CD in the UK of Salamone Rossi’s secular and sacred music: Salamone Rossi Hebreo Mantovano. This is her first novel. 

No of Pages: 264pp 

ISBN: 978-1-910996-68-3