Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview
  • Cry to Heaven

  • By: Anne Rice
  • Narrated by: Tim Curry
  • Length: 2 hrs and 52 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (12 ratings)

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Cry to Heaven

By: Anne Rice
Narrated by: Tim Curry
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £7.99

Buy Now for £7.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

In a sweeping saga of music and vengeance, the acclaimed author of The Vampire Chronicles draws listeners into 18th-century Italy, bringing to life the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. This is the story of the castrati, the exquisite and otherworldly sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices win the adulation of royal courts and grand opera houses throughout Europe. These men are revered as idols - and, at the same time, scorned for all they are not.

Praise for Anne Rice and Cry to Heaven

"Daring and imaginative.... [Anne] Rice seems like nothing less than a magician: It is a pure and uncanny talent that can give a voice to monsters and angels both." (The New York Times Book Review)

"To read Anne Rice is to become giddy as if spinning through the mind of time." (San Francisco Chronicle)

"If you surrender and go with her...you have surrendered to enchantment, as in a voluptuous dream." (The Boston Globe)

"Rice is eerily good at making the impossible seem self-evident." (Time)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the abridged edition.

©1982 Anne O'Brien Rice (P)1991 Random House, Inc.
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Witching Hour cover art
Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra cover art
Brave New World cover art
I Am Legend cover art
Departure cover art
Dracula [Audible Edition] cover art
Fahrenheit 451 cover art
Hyperion cover art
Snow Crash cover art
Unstrung cover art
H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Omnibus Collection, Volume I: 1917-1926 cover art
Wild Cards I cover art
Wicked cover art
The Diamond Age cover art
New Spring cover art
Necroscope cover art

What listeners say about Cry to Heaven

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    10
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Truly operatic tale.

Wasn't what I was expecting, required some emergency censorship as my children were around! Tim Curry is perfection!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Abridged.

it's a shame it was abridged. I've read the full book and it loses depth in the abridgement, beautifully read though.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

The best 20th. century novel I've ever read

I'm a musician and very hard to please. I found this book by accident. I've recommended it to everybody I think could reach it. It's wonderful... truly wonderful.
It's the searingly moving and intricately informed story of the no-longer-tolerated 'production'(sic), practice and humanly demanding life of a castrato singer. I say no more.
Other books which have attempted to enter such culturally particular spheres have won big prizes. But I have never come across one which doesn't just skip the hard reality of such a life itself in favour of the bits of stories that inevitably attach to it. (Not that such stories do not also attach to the hero of 'Cry to Heaven'.) This book skips nothing.
It's a genuine masterpiece.
And it's been driving me mad, because all I've been able to find by Anne Rice to date is a load of vampires! I'll have another try now. I can't imagine I'll find anything, but if I do I know it can't be as amazing.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Don't bother

This is my favourite Anne Rice book and seeing it was read by Tim Curry I snapped it up as he has a voice to die for. Sadly, this version has had the heart torn out of it. I mean there's abridged and then there's this hatchet job. None of the joy and passion and sorrow of the book remains, despite Tim's wonderful reading. Just read the book yourself.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!