CESAR AND AUGUSTA

by Ronald Harwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 12, 1980

Harwood (The Girl in Melanie Klein, All the Same Shadows) sculpts a waxworks of fin-de-siècle musical Paris--where Saint-Saens is all the rage and Chabrier and D'Indy detest each other and where CÉsar Franck, henpecked, bourgeois, sexually-repressed, and fearful that he's run dry creatively, occupies general regard as the best composition teacher in France. Augusta Holmes, daughter of an Irish general (some said her real father was Alfred de Vigny, the poet) and a French mother, is a dramatic soprano yearning to study with ""Father"" Franck but repeatedly rebuffed by the old man. She finally disguises herself as a young male Wagner-acolyte in order to get Franck to look at her music; and Franck, fooled but charmed, takes her on. He falls in love with her, too--as has Saint-Saens--but Augusta had her mind only on being a great composer. Even so, with Franck, alone, she finds it hard to keep her sexuality out of her strategy to win his approval. And CÉsar, meanwhile, having been unstoppered by Augusta's animal loveliness, writes his Piano Quintet for her and regains a fresh artistic flow. All this is utterly faithful to time and place--a bohemian day-outing to Fontainebleu by the Paris composers is as vivid as a Manet painting. And, with a more than superficial understanding of the creative process, Harwood sails ahead to make a not-terribly-original but often verifiable fable of the artistic life: men artists using love to further their art, whereas poor Augusta (feeling, at the end, cast-off by Franck, merely used) ""was never prepared to sacrifice anyone except myself."" Enjoyable, daguerreotype-like fiction, eccentrically narrow but rich in harmonies.

Pub Date: May 12, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION