baroque

The Queen of the Night and Alejo Carpentier’s French Accent
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The Queen of the Night and Alejo Carpentier’s French Accent

In the first chapter of Alexander Chee’s long-awaited new novel The Queen of the Night, the opera-singer protagonist surprises party-goers at a Paris ball by bursting into an aria from Gounod’s Faust. The scene has a scandalous, erotic backstory (too complicated to recount here, but it involves two brothers with a saber fetish) explaining why…