''The City of Falling Angels'' (2005) is a non-fiction work by

John Berendt John Berendt (born December 5, 1939) is an American author, known for writing the best-selling non-fiction book ''Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'', which was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Biography Ber ...

. The book tells the story of some interesting inhabitants of

Venice, Italy Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The islan ...

, whom the author met while living there in the months following a fire which destroyed the historic

La Fenice Teatro La Fenice (, "The Phoenix") is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of "the most famous and renowned landmarks in the history of Italian theatre" and in the history of opera as a whole. Especially in the 19th century, La Fenice beca ...

opera house in 1996.

Synopsis

The book explores local reactions to the fire, from the American "Save Venice" Foundation to Venice's bureaucratic government. The opera house burned again while the second renovation was ongoing. Among those interviewed is Archimede Seguso, a renowned Venetian glassblower of the twentieth century. Seguso lived directly behind La Fenice and witnessed the fire. Soon afterwards he created glassworks dedicated to the memory of the fire, in his own rendition of how the opera house burned. The book also tells the story of many American and English expatriates who went to live in Venice, from Daniel Curtis, who owned Palazzo Barbaro where

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

and

John Singer Sargent John Singer Sargent (; January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American expatriate artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian-era luxury. He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more ...

were guests, to the poet

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

, who lived the last part of his life in Venice with his long-time mistress

Olga Rudge Olga Rudge (April 13, 1895 – March 15, 1996) was an American-born concert violinist, now mainly remembered as the long-time mistress of the poet Ezra Pound, by whom she had a daughter, Mary. A gifted concert violinist of international repu ...

Reception

Upon this book's release on September 27, 2005, it entered Amazon.com's Top Ten Bestsellers list and was number one on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller list. According to ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...

'', "Berendt does great justice to an exalted city that has rightly fascinated the likes of

Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settings ...

, and many filmmakers throughout the world."Kirkus Reviews
(1 August 2005)

References

External links

2005 non-fiction books History of Venice after 1797 {{Italy-hist-book-stub