A Night at the Opera

C. Stephen Gray is Director of Information Services, Institute of
Chartered Accountants of Ontario.

This elegantly written comic novel begins in modern-day Germany, but
eventually takes the reader several centuries back into German history.
As the novel opens, the reader learns that life has been generally good
for the main character, Herr Einzelturm, a solidly bourgeois bureaucrat
who has spent the past 10 years heading up a major expansion of the City
of Waltherrot’s transit system. But although Einzelturm has led a
hitherto blameless life, one that he himself declares to have been
“vorbildich” (i.e., wholly exemplary), he makes one horrible mistake
on completing the transit project that has been virtually his life’s
work: he chooses his own high-pitched and eccentric voice for the taped
messages announcing the various stations and connections on the system.

To celebrate the city’s magnificent new transit system, a special
presentation is planned of Der Hosenkavalier, the pre-eminent operatic
work by Waltherrot’s very own 19th-century composer, Carl Maria von
Stumpf. However, when Einzelturm is asked to say a few words after the
performance, the audience at once recognizes his voice from the transit
announcements, and what should have been for him the crowning
achievement of a lifetime ends in the humiliation of raucous laughter.
Having been given an extended holiday for his efforts, Einzelturm
determines to get to the bottom of his embarrassment—“that horrible
night at the opera.” He begins research on the life of Carl Maria von
Stumpf, and his quest takes him further and further back in time, to the
origins of Waltherrot.

This unusual, witty, and constantly entertaining book stretches the
boundaries of its genre without once falling into self-indulgence. Ray
Smith’s first book in 12 years, it was well worth the wait.