»The City of Falling Angels

The City of Falling Angels is John Berendt's collection of vignettes about aristocratic life in Venice. The episodes tie together loosely around the destruction of La Fenice, the fading Venetian opera house, but touch on the lives of the well-known and sociable throughout the city. Berendt once again improbably insinuates himself into the daily lives of the people he meets, finding himself invited to cocktails, protests, celebrations, and into salons and archives out of the reach of most. How does he manage this? Like his previous book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The City of Falling Angels tells stories of deception and murder amid a dissolute setting, in a city of langorous decay.

The nocturnal ambient sound level in Venice is 32dB, much quieter than the 45dB of Milan and other Italian cities. A/V geeks attribute this to the absence of automobiles (!!).