The nearly forgotten names of nineteenth-century Europe's greatest cultural icons come to life in this historical novel: George Sand, Pauline Viardot, Alphonse Daudet, Prosper Merimee, Eugene Delacroix, and Giacomo Meyerbeer leap from the pages in a three-dimensional tale, in which fantasy and historical facts are intricately interwoven by the eloquent pen of a retired stockbroker and would-be composer, Jacob Hippolyte Rodrigues. Born in 1812 to one of the most respected Jewish families in Bordeaux, he witnessed two emperors abdicate and three kings leave their thrones in just the first sixty years of his long life, but even the volatile politics of the times could not distract him from his passion for music and art. Rodrigues takes the reader on a magical tour of the salons of nineteenth-century Paris, the undisputed cultural capital of Europe. Through his eyes we witness the birth, growth, and decline of a typical French art form, the Grand Opera, and delve into the creative processes behind Bizet's Carmen and Berlioz's Les Troyens. Rodrigues, the composer of the most famous opera never performed, reveals intimate details of this era that you'll savor for years Shlomo Hed was born in Berlin in 1932. In 1938 the family escaped from Germany to Belgium. That is where the war caught up with them and where the author lived in hiding during the Nazi occupation. Shlomo Hed immigrated to Israel in 1948, and was a senior program producer in the music department of Israel's Broadcasting Authority for over thirty-five years. He wrote the first opera guide in Hebrew and, in cooperation with Ada Brodsky, a compilation of musical anecdotes."