A Night at the Opera Ray Smith What a night it would be! The small German city of Waltherrott is inaugurating its upgraded transit system. In honour of this great event, the Burgermeister and other dignitaries are attending a performance of Carl Maria von Stumpf's masterpiece, Der Hosenkavalier. This poignant and bittersweet comedy perfectly expresses the spirit, the humour, the gaiety of the city--Yes, what a night it would be (And what a book it is!)

But one small thing goes awry. Cascades of cruel and unexpected laughter send Herr Einzelturm, the transit director, on a search into von Stumpf's last year of life, 1848, the year of revolutions. And beyond him back tot he story of Graf Walther von Faß), the legendary founder of Waltherrott in the fourteenth century. Back to the Black Death to Saints Adalbert abd Irmtraud and their gruesome martyrdom.

A Night at the Opera is a startling comedy, a tour de force of the unexpected, the bizarre, the serendipitous. It is a delightful cavalcade of fools and knaves, grouches and maniacs, frumps and tarts, heroes and clowns.

And through it all drifts the captivating music of Carl Maria von Stumpf, the most brilliant, yet most shamefully neglected composer of that most preposterous of art forms--the opera.

"Readers who love high style and wit, combined with a sense of imagination that extends the possibilities of conventional fiction and transforms them into something wonderful and strange. have been waiting 12 years for a new book from Ray Smith." Douglas Barber, The Edmonton Journal.

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