Winner of Italy's Strega prize in 2009, this impressionistic novella is set among the orphaned musicians of Venice's Ospedale della Pietà. There 16-year-old violinist Cecillia is tormented by her confinement, by the conversations she has with the mother she never knew and a snake-haired vision of death that mocks her fantasies of freedom. She plays the dull and repetitive music of a worn-out composer. Hidden behind a metal grille when they perform in church, the girls are "buried alive in a delicate coffin of music". Images of her and her companions being set free to fly as swallows over the city are quashed by the stinking reality of the latrines where Cecillia once witnessed a fellow orphan give birth, and fears that she too came into the world in such circumstances. Then a new composer  Don Antonio, a fictionalised Vivaldi  appears and through his music Cecillia finds her escape. Stabat Mater is old-school fairytale rather than modern-day whimsy, with Scarpa's narrative rooted in earthy images that give Venice, the convent and the music a raw reality.