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La Rivale

 

“Maria Callas? You wait, she’ll soon have sunk into obscurity...”

Who said that? A certain Carlotta Berlumi. The name of this mysterious old woman means nothing to anyone, and yet she insists she had her moment of fame at La Scala and that she was Maria Callas’ greatest rival. She’d have us believe that the Greek diva used ruse and wiles to suppress her, but Berlumi got her own back and hastened her downfall.

Does Carlotta take her desires for reality? Did she, in Callas, find the scapegoat for her failures, the magic answer for her disappointments and frustrations?

Taking as his starting point this quirky, unforgettable character, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt brings his peerless wit and sense of mischief to fill out the portrait of a little-known Maria Callas. And, as an expert on music and the intricacies of the soul, he invites us backstage to discover the secrets of the opera house and the human heart.

The Challenge of Jerusalem

 

Walking where it all began

In Night of Fire, Eric-Emmanuel described his mystical experience in the Ahaggar Desert. Now, he returns to first origins, with a memoir of his trip to the Holy Land, a territory indelibly marked by the imprint of History. Bethlehem, Nazareth, Caesarea: intense and cosmopolitan places which he captures on the instant, at the same time deepening his spiritual experience and prompting new questions, reflections, sensations and wonderment, until the final surprise in Jerusalem and an unexpected encounter with a man he calls “The Enigma”.

Crossing Time, Volume III – The Sun Goes Down

 

Publication date: 2 November 2022

Continuing his journey through the history of humankind, Noam wakes up from a long sleep on the banks of the Nile in 1650 BC and launches into an exhilarating tour of Memphis, the capital of the two kingdoms of Egypt. Times have certainly changed. From brothels to the house of the dead and from Hebrew districts to the Pharoah’s palace, he discovers an extraordinary civilisation handed down on rolls of papyrus; a civilisation that worships the River Nile from which it arose, that mummifies the dead, invents the afterlife and builds temples and pyramids to gain access to eternity. But Noam’s heart is raging, his mind occupied by one idea: to get even with his enemy and at last find contented immortality with his beloved Noura.

In Volume III of Crossing Time, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt takes readers to Ancient Egypt, a civilisation that will flourish for more than three thousand years. Replete with surprises, The Sun Goes Down reconstructs the full vibrancy of this world, whose traces our modern world has preserved but which has nevertheless remained an interlude, sublime and enigmatic in equal measure, in the History of humankind.