Fire from the Sun

by

John Derbyshire

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For Rosie

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Author’s Note

Names of the principals:

“Weilin” is pronounced “way-leen.”

“Yuezhu” is “ü-e-jwoo.” The “ü” is done with a pout, as in German Glück or French lune. The “e” is a shortAmerican “e” as in “get.”

Opera singing, like any other line of work, has its own jargon, taken mainly from Italian and German. Though I did not want to cumber my novel with these terms of art, it has proved impossible to avoid them altogether. Because they are not defined well—often not defined at all—in standard dictionaries, I have put them in a glossary at the end of this story. Also included in this glossary are the names of all operas, arias and composers mentioned in the text, with brief descriptions (where the text has not already supplied them).

For the convenience of my plot I have taken serious liberties with some of the realities of opera life, training and performance. I ask opera lovers to forgive me these transgressions (and one or two absurdities), and beg them not to write me angry letters pointing out that, for example, the Ravenna festival only began in 1990.

Similar remarks apply to the world of high finance as I have portrayed it. I know very well, and do not need to be told, that the Bosco and Mosco are not possible objects (though the latter bears a passing resemblance to the Collateralized Mortgage Obligation, invented in 1983 by Lew Ranieri and Bob Dall). Novelists, like opera composers, are very ruthless people, as our acquaintances will tell you, and the material world is our slave, not our master.

The “lady pop singer lately turned movie star” named Jennifer (Chapter 56 et seq.) is an invention. When I was writing the novel in the mid-1990s there were no major Jennifers in show business. Some Jennifers have since come up, but my character is not based on any of them. If, as some readers have suggested, my Jennifer resembles a prominent non-Jennifer of the previous showbiz generation, the resemblance is perfectly accidental …

In building my sets for this story I have been helped by friends and relatives who know much more than I do about opera, finance, and life in China during the 1970s and 1980s. I am deeply grateful to: my wife Rosie, Wally Fekula, Bing Ma, Liz Kotlyarevsky, Yanbin Wang, Liz Funghini, Carl Leaman, Paul Micio, and Kitty Brush.