So Faithful a Heart: The Love Story of Nancy Storace & Wolfgang Mozart

I have only just self-published this "historical fiction" novel on Lulu.com. I chose to write it as an historical fiction rather than a book about past life memory/reincarnation for many reasons, not the least being that I wanted to appeal to a wider audience as well as the fact that the story is so beautiful that it simply wrote itself. It told me what to write. It is based on both historical fact (10 years of research), my memories of my life as Nancy Storace, as well as Steph's as Mozart. Here is the link to the promo website where you will find an "Orders" link that will take you to the marketing page on Lulu.com where it can be purchased: http://www.allabreve.org/storace/book

I'm super excited to read it! Hopefully my historical fiction novel on the memoirs of Catarina Cavalieri will come out some day, but it needs more research. I had a little dream about you when I was initially writing it last year:

We were all at Laxenburg and Salieri was rowing me around in a little boat on the wee lake. I really wanted to row the boat but he wouldn't let me (perhaps a metaphor for our relationship?) We saw you and Mozart picnicking on the grass and I sang out to you, "La ra la ra la..." from Salieri's new opera "La Grotta di Trofonio." You giggled and sang it back.

Povera Ofelia! One last happy summer before the scheisse hit the fan. I'm glad you've found happiness in this life.

I can't wait to read your novel, I have a few research questions for you on my own novel which I hope to ask you if you don't mind.

BTW, have you heard the recording of "La Grotta di Trofonio"? It's pretty darn good, definitely my favorite of the Salieri operas I've heard.

Tchuss,
Lulu

OMG, Lulu! You have just validated a memory that Steph and I have ALWAYS had and which I wrote about in my book. When you read it you will know exactly what I'm talking about. This absolutely amazing!

Woah! Funny how some of our most important memories can be so seemingly trivial. That cute little moment is in my book too. Now I want to see how much of it I can get done before reading yours to see if there's anything else we both remember.

Too weird!

I didn't remember that particular incident, but the way that you described the "wee lake" with you and Salieri in the boat and then your seeing us picnicking on the lawn. I have a scene in the book at Laxenburg where Nancy and Wolfgang are picnicking on the lawn near the lake and she's looking out over the lake and watching the couples going by in the boats. She can overhear their conversations because their voices carry across the water. It's amazing how my description of that scene supports what happened in your dream. And you had that dream a year ago??? Wow!

And yes, that was our summer of bliss and after that the shit did hit the fan. It all went downhill from there. I can't wait now, for you to read the book!

No, I have never heard the entire opera of La Grotto di Trofonio but I have sung "La Ra La". It's one of Steph's favorite Salieri pieces. We have Bartoli's Salieri album where she sings it, as well as a CD called "The Divas of Mozart's Day" with Patrice Michaels singing it. We actually like Michaels' version of it best. We both giggle every time we hear it. I think that Wolfgang and I must have joked about it a lot.

Here's the passage from my book:

After they took a short carriage ride to an outer section of the estate, they got out and walked a short distance and found the perfect spot underneath a clump of chestnut trees. Not far from them was a large pond on which several small rowboats with couples in them drifted lazily by. The bright green manicured lawn was strewn with thousands of tiny white daisies and, along the paths and walkways, there were manicured gardens laden with colorful blossoms, fountains, arched trellises and green hedges. It was a lover’s paradise, a land of beauty and indulgence where many a clandestine love affair took place, where the cares and burdens of life in the city were shut out and forgotten if only for the moment.

They unrolled the linen cloth which the cook placed in the basket with the food, and laid it on the ground. Mozart set the basket aside, pulled out one of the bottles of wine and searched for the corkscrew which was packed somewhere in the bottom. As he went about the business of opening the wine, she sat and gazed across the pond, watching the lovers pass by in white row boats, their amorous conversations and playful giggles unknowingly amplified, wafting to her ears by the gentle breeze.
This was her heaven, the only place on earth where she and her lover could exist without the pressures and influence of the outside world staring down upon them, judging their love as illicit, impure, or illegitimate, where they could love one another openly and completely with total abandon, with no fear of consequence or reprisal.

Yeah, I like Patrice Michael's version better too. Bartoli just keeps over acting more and more with each album, often to the extent of not sounding pretty, which is not very in keeping with the 18th century style. I would be curious if there is some joke attached to the "tra la la la" song, it sounds quite likely.

I finished your book! I just ate it up in a couple days, it's very engrossing! Such a sad story, but I loved how you filled in the mysterious gaps in Mozart's and Storace's biographies. That's my favorite part about "historical fiction", when gaps in the historical record are filled in plausibly, yet with new surprises.

I totally felt with Nancy's plight of not feeling at home discussing "women's things" with other women as she had a man's education and interests. I believe Catarina felt the same way as I don't remember having any female friends, though I think I became quite close to my maid. Salieri was one of the most well read composers of the time and Catarina had to have more depth to her than the typical opera singer in order to keep him around for over 15 years, I think. Afterall, her dad was a schoolteacher.

Nice choice to write it in a more omniscient point of view, it was very interesting to read back and forth from Nancy's point of view to Wolfgang's, it made for a fuller picture. My book is all in the first person and it gets very hard to write about certain things that a good woman of the time wouldn't write about but would make the story more interesting.

Maybe you could answer this question. I know that in London in the 18th century women weren't allowed to attend concerts alone, but was it the same case in Vienna? I seem to remember going to concerts alone, but I don't know if that was a special privilege reserved for performing personnel, or if women had different rights there than in other parts of Europe. I can't believe how hard it is to find information on this!

Great book! You should be very proud of your acheivement, it makes a worthy addition to the Mozart literature.

Lulu

I can't tell you how thrilled I am that you enjoyed reading my book! I would like to ask you a favor. In the next week or so, "So Faithful a Heart" will be available for purchase on Amazon.com so I am asking some of my first readers to be the first to post reviews. Would you be willing to do that? I would like for the first reviews to come from intelligent, knowledgeable people like yourself, and of course I want the first reviews to be positive. I know that once this book gets out to some of Steph's and my detractors (of which we have many), there are bound to be some less-than-favorable, even scathing ones. I will let you know as soon as the Amazon.com page is up.

I really want to pick your brain about that life, Lulu. I know that we each must have memories that collaborate the other one's. We knew one another, we knew the same people, and although I don't recall that we spent a tremendous amount of time socially with one another, we most certainly attended the same events, parties, concerts, and soirees. We MUST talk!

I'll totally put up a review on Amazon, and a good one too! Sorry you have so many detractors. I guess that's what happens when you go public with the controversial story the two of you have, which is unfortunate, but I applaud your bravery! Don't those silly folks have better things to do than to attack two innocent people for their beliefs?

Feel free to pick my brain as much as you like. I don't know how helpful I can be, but I can generally come up with an answer to questions about my former lives that feels right, even if I'm uncertain how historically valid the answer is. It would be great if we could help eachother out since, as you said, we did know the same people and attended the same events.

This may be a question for a different post, but do you find that your research into your past life is a help or a hindrance to your remembering it? I've always been very reluctant to research my past, as I wanted to keep my memories pure, and now that I've done some research I find it very hard to go through a successful regression, or at least I can't trust what I see anymore. But at the same time my feelings inspire my research, so I have a direction in which to look.

My boyfriend said last night, "you sure have an awful lot of books on Mozart," and I said, "and I've only read about three of them." That may sound like a lot of research to some people, but when you're trying to write a book about it it's not nearly enough, as you know, and reading about Mozart's life isn't very helpful to me trying to write about my own life at the time. With Cavalieri, there is very little information out there on her, so almost all I have is what I seem to remember, but verifying any of it is strangely difficult.

Even Salieri says nothing about her in any of his notes for his biographer, a deafening silence which perhaps speaks volumes? So, yes, we must talk indeed!

Well, of course a gentleman would never dream of discussing his mistress with anyone, except in only the vaguest terms and even that would only be with a trusted friend.

We were just discussing last night how we want to meet you (again!) so that we can talk about what we remember about thise years in Vienna.

Cherubino wrote:Well, of course a gentleman would never dream of discussing his mistress with anyone, except in only the vaguest terms and even that would only be with a trusted friend.

Ah! The eternal plight of the "other woman". We may very well have been the most important women in our men's lives, but we will never be given the credit for it in history. (Except for a very few like Emma Hamilton, the famous mistress of Lord Admiral Nelson.)

I am NOW on Amazon.com!!! Please go and post your review here!http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00328RM8K

I certainly appreciate it!

Glückwünsche meine Liebe!

Our story has finally been told, my love. Ich liebe dich!