Moths

Summary

A porcelain-skinned Parisian heiress, raised on Saint-Sulpice lace and maternal whispers of propriety, sacrifices her pulse to a frost-bitten Russian aristocrat whose eyes glint like sabers in the Neva twilight; meanwhile, her true voice—an aching soprano—belongs to a velvet-lunged tenor whose every aria coils around her marrow. The marriage contract, sealed under chandeliers of cut-glass shame, becomes a gilded cage rattled by snow-laden winds, Orthodox chants, and the distant echo of high-C that could shred the silk of her bodice more cleanly than any wedding-night dagger. In the end, the moth-wing girl must decide whether to immolate herself on the pyre of filial duty or fly head-first into the gas-lamp blaze of forbidden song.

Synopsis

To preserve the honor of her society mother, a young Frenchwoman marries a Russian, even though she is really in love with an opera tenor.