The Kaminsky Symphony

LoveReading Says

Set from 1913, Paolo G. Grossi’s The Kaminsky Symphony explores a celebrated conductor’s all-consuming love of a lifetime as political unrest rises to the October Revolution. The conductor in question, Carlo Alberto Mandelli, the Count of Castagnino, is the darling of Milan’s high society circles, a society that also condemns his attraction to men, as poignantly conveyed in a conversation with his nephew: “Will the time ever come when we will finally do away with “Private Secretaries”, “Assistants”, “Managers” and all these ridiculous euphemisms which no one is so stupid to believe?

Will we one day be able to call them as they are? The people we love?” the nephew asks, to which the Count replies, “Maybe one day, my boy. Maybe. But it would be foolhardy to swim against the tide. Mostly because people who attempt to do that usually drown. One lives in the times he’s born into.

It is of no use to keep trying to change them. This world, as currently designed, is not for us”. In the context of trying to live in a world that’s not designed for him, Mandelli leaves his position at Milan’s La Scala to become chief conductor at Odessa Opera House, a city in which he finds success and meets a man with whom he experiences a “special passion” that’s a first for them both: “There is something different to it.

And when they disappear under the covers, a wave of repressed emotions seems to overwhelm them. Because when one finds it, one knows it. It happens almost in an instant. And it's real. In the mind and in the flesh. In the blissful heaven”. Then, as the couple’s carnal passion blossoms into soulful love and domestic bliss, the October Revolution puts Mandelli in an all but impossible position.

Chiming with its name, The Kaminsky Symphony is operatic in nature and delivery, with character, emotions and a vibrant sense of time and place conjured through richly evocative language. In essence, The Kaminsky Symphony is a gripping LGBTQ+ drama of the most sweeping order.

Joanne Owen, A LoveReading Ambassador

About The Kaminsky Symphony

Milan, 1913. Maestro Mandelli di Castagnino is resident conductor at La Scala, having taken over from the legendary Toscanini. Barely in his mid-thirties, he is revered by the Milanese public and fêted by the city’s high society.

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