En cours de chargement...
What does it take to turn the rejected ghost of a virtuous woman, who has never thought herself a woman, into a woman in full bloom? Conversely, what force in life turns a cynical Italian male, who goes through women like glasses of fine wine, into the man he was meant to be? The Girl Left Behind in the Rich Italian's Garden finds Caroline Rossini in a squabbling but loving Italian family in 1957 Italy.
She lives a vibrant, difficult life with the impoverished Rossini's who cherish her daughter while she slaves at their hotel, doing good deeds at the orphanage (financed by The Rich Italian who flirts with her as with every woman). At times Cara feels she is living the life of a stranger as she struggles in this disreputable hill town where brothels outnumber churches and schools, so much more challenging than the convent life she still craves.
She has befriended Claudio's melancholic daughter, Rosa, who improves while they work in her father's ancient Gardens said by the superstitious to have powers over the unwary. The Rich Italian is growing older and richer with ever more women chasing him. He moves money in the markets for his pharmaceutical companies seeking compounds to alleviate the sadness afflicting his family for centuries. Claudio dismisses an ill-tempered mistress, impulsively giving Cara four box seat tickets for Turandot in Venice.
The Rossini's attend where Caroline learns Elizabeth's father, Ismael, the tenor of the age, will soon perform. She secretly attends, hoping to make contact, but is defeated by his screaming fans, she but one of them. She prays that she may learn to forgive Ismael, who changed the course of her life, taking every one of her dreams, but forgiveness eludes her, even after eight years. She seeks comfort from Rosa, but Claudio, alone, invites her in, then dinner, wine and kisses in the Floria Gardens, a place thought to have powers over the naive who take its flowers or work in its soil as she has done so many times with Rosa.
Physically attracted to Claudio, as is every other woman in Northern Italy, she sees the decadent Claudio as a remedy for her bitterness, not admitting that she is putting her heart at risk as he has a wife long in an asylum. Claudio takes her on to keep her in Italy for Rosa's sake. An intense relationship begins as he spoils Caroline as only he can. She works as translator on trips where he steals Austrian and French researchers for his pharmaceutical companies from rivals who will seek revenge.
A breakthrough pill is created and Claudio's charming but unpredictable wife returns home. Claudio abruptly dismisses Cara. Cara, broken-hearted, moves to New York to support her ill mother and save her dance studio. Little Elizabeth struggles to learn English, as she now fights the sadness, too. Ismael abruptly leaves opera when his beloved wife dies. His son, Carlos, fearing for his grieving father's sanity, brings him to New York to manage a company of opera students and to compose opera where he will hear rumors of The Girl with the Flaming-Red Hair, whom he still believes to be in a Spanish convent, though he has long wished to make amends.
A happy ending? Maybe, though there are always, of course, the ancient gardens of The Rich Italian which does not willingly give up its sanctified dead or its wounded gardeners for anyreason.
