Elly Uncomposed

A Novel Opera

Elizabeth Kirtenpepper prefers to watch the opera from the pit. Ah, the nice dark orchestra pit, seated comfortably in the shadows with her familiar piano, enjoying the show from a safe distance. But when a truly inconsiderate magical book sweeps her up into Mozart's eighteenth-century opera, The Marriage of Figaro, Elizabeth is plunged into the very-real (and smelly) depths of the Count Almaviva's scullery.

Stuffed into a corset and forced to wear impractical shoes, Elizabeth meets Figaro, Susanna, and the whole cast of memorable characters. But no one is sticking to their story! And a strange, hooded villain is running through the estate, unraveling every bar line of Mozart's score! To find her way back to the blessed land of air conditioning and hand sanitizer, Elizabeth must now face the music, step into the lights, summon her own inner diva, and take up her part in the story. With the help of new friendships, some eels, and a little adventurous romance, she vanquishes calamities from leprosy and sexual politics to revolutions in Spain, somehow discovering along the way, that everything she ever really needed to know. . . she learned it at the opera.