What is hidden behind the portrait of a mysterious lady?

What do the loves and marriages of an elegant and crafty lady have to do - able to design a treatment center called Clinica del Vento only to make money - with the French years of Gioacchino Rossini and the discovery of a letter from him to a harassing lover? Apparently nothing or very much as Stefano Jacini recounts in the lively La dama di Rue de Vaugirard (Bompiani, 2021, Euro 16, pp. 240. Ebook too), a novel whose narrative rhythm seems to have absorbed much of the well-known Rossini verve. But let's start from the beginning: everything happens or is evoked in Paris, a step away from the Luxembourg Gardens, where the owner of a crêperie is the custodian of the gossip and historical memories of the neighborhood, once the domain of the Three Musketeers - precisely those of Dumas -, now frequented by an aspiring writer, a meddlesome doorman, a delightful auburn-haired art historian and a loafer convinced that the souls of the dead end up dying inside the living.

Thanks to them and to Jacini's narrative vein, an ironic yellow plot takes shape, page after page, to which the theft of a sword that seems to be that of Athos contributes, a carpet that perhaps hides a treasure map in the drawings , the portrait of a mysterious traveler who for some reason had the painter's signature cut off and a couple of crimes solved by an invisible pipe-smoker commissioner. Thus, each element, each character finds its raison d'etre in the pleasure of free-wheeling, of sowing winks for the sole purpose of inviting a smile to human comedy. In short, a real saraband in the form of a novel that leads us to ask Stefano Jacini how real and how imaginative there is in his story: “There are some real facts that have conditioned the structure of the novel. It was a bit of a challenge to be able to connect them together. The first is the purchase at an auction of the painting that appears on the cover. I then discovered that the flap at the bottom right had been cut as if someone had wanted to erase the painter's signature; moreover, behind the lady appears (in my opinion) the Luxembourg palace in Paris, in front of which I have a house. So I got it into my head that the lady wanted to get back around. Now the painting hangs in front of a window overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens. I had been wondering for some time who he was, his presence (when I am in Paris) continued to stimulate questions to which I was forced to answer ".

And how did Rossini come out?

“To justify the protagonist's stay in Paris, I made up my mind that he wanted to research Rossini's French years, from the Journey to Reims to William Tell , to his famous musical salon where composers and writers came together. In order not to write nonsense, I contacted the Rossini Foundation in Pesaro to ask me to suggest a reading with which to document myself. The advice was clear: consult the biography of Rossini written by Giuseppe Radiciotti (early twentieth century), which I was able to find with some difficulty from a London antiquarian. Inside the first volume I then by chance found the original autograph of a letter from Rossini to this mademoiselle Cardillac, an uncomfortable mistress who did not want to return the key to the garsonnière where the two met. Also in this case I made up my mind that Rossini wanted to thank me for writing about him in Paris, with the wit that was his own. When I finished writing the novel, I donated the letter to the Rossini Foundation ”.

How important were your personal passions for Rossini's music or for the Three Musketeers?

“As for Rossini, he is one of the composers I listen to with pleasure: it's like listening to an old friend with his tics, his obsessions, his repetitions. As for the Three Musketeers , it is a reading that marked my adolescence, because I remember reading it lying on the floor in my room after the eighth grade exams with a sense of great freedom. Then I discovered that Dumas had placed all four of them in the neighborhood where I live in Paris, between the Luxembourg gardens and place Saint Sulpice, so it was natural to bring them back to life in the memory of the lady of the crêperie who really exists under my house ".

The impression given by reading the novel is that you had a lot of fun writing it.

“I particularly enjoyed inventing the Clinica del Vento that that rogue woman Antea organized on the Strait of Bonifacio. The greatest fun, however, was to go back and forth in time, with a pinch of omnipotence in maneuvering the characters like pieces of a chessboard ”.