Since The girl with the pearlwhich brought her worldwide fame, the novelist, translated in forty-five countries, focuses on female figures who emancipate themselves in the turmoil of history. In The glass spinner*, she is a pearl maker, born Orsola Rosso in Murano in 1477, and covers the centuries from the end of the 15th century to our own. On the occasion of the publication of her book, the author took us to her region of Veneto.
We are precisely where the fate of my heroine changes, when Orsola Rosso falls into the water at the age of 9 before meeting a few moments later the one who will teach her the basic principles of glass beads. There it is in Murano, at the mouth of the Rio dei Vetrai canal, at the entrance to the district where, from the 13th century, most of the glass-blowing workshops were located and where the writer wanted to set her new novel. Here she improvises as a guide to a secret Veneto, that of passages and alleys, still alive with centuries dedicated to art, with their workshops where the furnaces burn and where the glasses of a thousand colors are blown that have made the lagoon famous.
In Tracy Chevalier’s novel, it is the place of parting between the heroine Orsola and her gondolier friend Domenego. © Isabella De Maddalena/Leextra
Used to stage…
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