I was born in Vicenza, in the north of Italy, and I live in the historic centre of Rome. I started to read when I was four years old and at the age of five I received my first copy of Pinocchio as a present; at eight I used a type-writer to produce a little local newspaper for the area, or rather for our block, that I found the courage to sell and that a few people even found the courage to buy. I also played the piano from a very young age, using a faultless technique that you can admire in the photo.

After high school I went to drama school in Syracuse, in Sicily. In fact, when I went for the admission interview, I didn’t want to be an actress; I was actually thinking of being a playwright or director. However, someone told me that performing on stage for a short period would be a useful thing for me to do. The short period lasted nearly fifteen years.

With Nino Manfredi in the musical Parole d’Amore... Parole

With Nino Manfredi in the musical
Parole d’Amore… Parole
(© Tommaso Le Pera)

I worked with various prestigious Italian theatre companies; acting and singing on the stage, and on occasions I also played the piano. I had an important role in a musical with Nino Manfredi, one of the most prominent actors in the “commedia all’italiana” film genre. I also took part in various comedy television programmes. I then went to New York for a few months, where I followed courses at the HB Studio and featured in a musical at the NYU. In the photo below I am on the right dressed in black.

The cast of the musical On Broadway, New York University Theater

The cast of the musical On Broadway,
New York University Theater

But I didn’t like being on tour. As there are no fixed theatre companies in Italy, the only way to act in the theatre is to be constantly on the move, sometimes in a new city every day. However, above all, I had begun to live with the uncomfortable feeling that my artistic life lacked something important. So I started to stick a laptop into my suitcase (it was the 90’s, when laptops were more like tabletops) and I began to jot down my thoughts, wherever I found myself, and to cherish vague plans of writing.

I started working for a theatre review. The first article I wrote was about women directors, playwrights and composers: did they have to struggle more than men to make themselves heard? And why? It was then that I first wanted to tell the story of Nannerl Mozart. I only knew that she had been a child prodigy, like her brother, and that at a certain point she sank into oblivion.

That was 1996. Ten years later, Mozart’s Sister was published in Europe, Canada and America.

Mozart’s Sister is the first novel in a trilogy that explores the lives of three exceptional women from the past. The second book, La strana giornata di Alexandre Dumas (Alexander Dumas’ Strange Day), is out in Italy, published by Edizioni Piemme. The story is set in France, Italy and England at the end of the 1700s and beginning of 1800s. The protagonist is an opera singer who suddenly discovers she is not the real child of her parents. The great writer Alexander Dumas père, author of The Three Musketeers, has an important role in it. Finally, some characters from the first book return in the second, and some from the second will come back in the third…

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