
S-Recommended for senior high school students. The contents are particular interest to young adolescents and their teachers. J-Recommended for junior high school students. Fortunately for readers, Angelica is determined, beautiful, and charismatic enough to attract the love and protection of the right kind of people and, ultimately, she not only survives but prevails. In real life, a girl like Angelica would have to be a ruthless politician at the level of Lyndon Johnson to successfully navigate the treacherous waters in which she tries to swim. In spite of plot improbabilities and anachronistic opinions held by various characters, this tale is an interesting look at a time when girls were confined by law and marketed like cattle. She pours out her soul in arias sung behind barely opened bedroom shutters so her fans (and her beloved) can gather in the street and enjoy her voice from afar. Further, Angelica falls improbably in love with a penniless sculptor (their communications are exclusively by third party but somehow true love blossoms). Based on a true story, The Queen’s Soprano tells the story of seventeen-year-old Angelica Voglia, who must flee to the court of. This set of circumstances makes it hard for a girl to just sing her song. Also, unfortunately, a girl's worth in those days is measured by how wealthy a nobleman she can snag into marriage so that the rest of her working-class family can live the rest of their lives in comfort. Seventeen-year-old Angelica is blessed with the voice of a Renee Fleming, but she, unfortunately, lives in Rome in the late 1600s, and Pope Innocent XI decrees that women will not sing in public. Fortunately for authors, enough cold, hard facts about the real-life heroine's life are lost so that the protagonist can be far more outspoken, brave, educated, and likeable than her prototype might have been.


JSįans of historical fiction featuring plucky heroines in peril will enjoy this novel.
