Venetian finale

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The Teatro La Fenice, crime scene in a crime thriller

The Venetian Finale is the debut novel by Donna Leon , the prelude to a crime series about the main character Commissario Guido Brunetti. The novel was publishedby Random House in 1992 under the title Death at La Fenice , the German translation was published in 1993 by Diogenes Verlag . The story takes place in Venice , where the author lives.

German star conductor Helmut Wellauer dies of potassium cyanide poisoning in the Teatro La Fenice opera house . During his investigations, Brunetti comes across the conductor's Nazi past as well as his pedophile tendencies. Since Wellauer assaulted his second wife's daughter, she injected him with an antibiotic that damaged his hearing. It turns out that Wellauer poisoned himself to incriminate his wife as a perpetrator. Donna Leon received the Japanese Suntory Prize for the Venetian Final . The thriller was filmed for ARD with Uwe Kockisch in the lead role and first broadcast on October 23, 2003. It was also adapted as an audio book and radio play. The Venetian final has so far been followed by 25 more cases with Brunetti (as of 2017).

content

In the Teatro La Fenice , the famous German conductor Helmut Wellauer during the break before the last act of the Verdi - opera La traviata found dead. He died of poisoning from potassium cyanide mixed in his coffee. While the performance continues under the direction of the substitute conductor, the police appear at the scene. The senior official, Commissario Brunetti, asked some singers in their cloakroom after the opera was over, including the famous soprano Flavia Petrelli, as well as the director in his hotel. During the interviews it turns out that Wellauer put homosexual actors under pressure and threatened Petrelli, for example, to tell her ex-husband, who is fighting for custody of the children, about their relationship with her secretary Brett Lynch. The conductor's much younger wife appears suspicious because of her cool and reserved reaction to the death of her husband.

In the course of his further investigations, Brunetti comes across Wellauer's Nazi past and other suspicious incidents. His first wife, for example, committed suicide and it was linked to the death of a twelve-year-old Italian soprano in Italy in the late 1930s. The reference to this story comes from a gossip reporter who Brunetti's wife Paola is acquainted with and whom she introduces to her husband at a party held by her wealthy parents. Brunetti meets with the late young soprano’s sister, and Wellauer’s pedophile inclinations come to light. The inspector's investigations become more concrete when he learns that the conductor's hearing had recently deteriorated rapidly. The investigator also learns that Wellauer has molested his wife's daughter, who then sent her to her parents and took revenge on her husband. She, a trained doctor, injected him with an antibiotic that had damaged his hearing, claiming it was a vitamin shot. When Wellauer becomes aware of the consequences, he decides to commit suicide and incriminate his wife as the perpetrator. In the final report, Brunetti withholds his knowledge in order to protect the widow and her daughter.

background

Donna Leon in Warsaw, September 27, 2005

Venetian Finale is the first volume in the crime series about Commissario Guido Brunetti. By 2017, 25 more cases followed for the Venetian commissioner. Donna Leon had been living in Venice for ten years when she wrote this book. She conceived Brunetti as a family man with a good education. His wife Paola let her work as a professor of English literature, so that Leon, who taught English and American literature herself, was able to contribute her own experience. There are a few anecdotes about the genesis of the novel . Leon is said to have attended a rehearsal at the Teatro La Fenice with a companion , who is said to have said that he could kill the conductor. She is said to have replied: "I'll do it for you, but in a novel". Leon told the Spiegel that the idea for the material came about during a visit to the cloakroom of the conductor Gabriele Ferro , when he and his wife were sharing anecdotes and gossip about Herbert von Karajan . As a result, she invented the conductor Helmut Wellauer, who was ultimately also murdered.

Donna Leon entered Venetian finals in a Japanese crime thriller competition; she won this and also the Japanese Suntory Prize. The novel has been translated into German, Dutch, Spanish and Japanese, among others. In her home country, the United States, her debut was not a success. In Germany, however, she achieved her breakthrough with this book, of which 200,000 copies were sold in the first three years.

Adaptations

Several producers and directors had shown interest in the filming. The Babelsberg studio , which was planning a French-Italian-German co-production for television, Steven Spielberg and Bernd Eichinger, negotiated with Leon's agents . Leon paid particular attention to ensuring that Brunetti would not be burned for commercial purposes and that the script would be written by a Venice connoisseur. Finally, Trebitsch Produktion International and teamWorx Television & Film produced a television adaptation of the crime thriller on behalf of ARD . It was the fifth film in the television series that does not follow the order of the books in chronological order. The main role of Guido Brunetti was played for the first time by Uwe Kockisch , who succeeded Joachim Król . It was first broadcast on October 23, 2003.

In addition to the filming, there is also the implementation of the crime story as a radio play and audio book .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Anja Heinze: The migration problem in the current crime novel. Taking into account the psychological information process in the narrative technique. Diploma thesis in the public librarianship course at the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences, p. 18.
  2. ↑ a b Murder in Venice - US author Donna Leon invented the Italian Commissario Brunetti - one of the most successful crime heroes of recent times. In: Der Spiegel. 22/1996 of May 27, 1996.
  3. ^ Entry on Donna Leon on whoswho.de, accessed on April 24, 2010.