Claudio

Claudio is Elfrieda Von Riesen’s agent, longtime professional ally, and one of the people who tries to hold both the practical and human dimensions of her life together. Their relationship begins when she is seventeen and ends, in the novel’s aftermath, with his tearful visit to her family bearing a recording of her final rehearsal. In between, he arranges work, worries over her health, and insists that her life matters beyond the demands of a concert career.

Identity and First Meeting

Claudio meets Elfrieda after one of her concerts in Rome, when he finds her behind the concert hall smoking, crying, and trembling, as she often does after performing. She is still in her black concert dress and military jacket, sitting on the ground with her shoes off and crushing a cigarette into the asphalt. The scene places his first impression of her talent beside the physical cost of performing: he approaches not a composed public virtuoso but a young musician struggling to recover from the concert.

He introduces himself, says that he has heard a great deal about her, and offers to represent her. Elfrieda misunderstands the word as meaning that he will pretend to be her; Claudio patiently explains the arrangement. He also asks whether he should contact her parents, whether she is all right, whether she needs a cab, and whether she has eaten. His manner is calm and attentive, and he tells her she has an extraordinary future ahead of her.

Claudio does not treat the offer as a purely professional transaction. Before accepting, he insists on flying to Manitoba to meet Elfrieda’s parents and ask their permission. The family recalls this as a mark of his character and jokes that he may have been the first Italian to visit their town. A neighbor, who had never been outside it, reportedly came over simply to stare at him. The episode gives his formal approach a comic setting while showing how seriously he takes the family into account.

A Career Built on Care

Claudio remains Elfrieda’s agent from the time she is studying in Oslo at seventeen. Elfrieda knows relatively little about his private life, but she knows that he visits his sick father in Malfi once a month and swims long distances across straits, narrows, and channels; jellyfish bites sometimes leave his face swollen. From Elfrieda’s perspective, he has helped her out in countless ways. These few details give him a life beyond his role as an organizer, while the limits of what she knows about him preserve the relationship’s focus on the long-running work of supporting her.

That work includes the routine obligations of a professional career. When Elfrieda is hospitalized, Claudio is still trying to settle the details of a tour that has been months in preparation, including a contract that remains unsigned. He has been leaving messages because neither Elfrieda nor Nic is answering calls or emails. He asks Yolandi Von Riesen whether Elfrieda is well and keeping steady, explaining that she is due to be ready in less than three weeks. His concern is not limited to the schedule: he knows that performance approaches can leave her unsteady, and he seeks information because he fears for her as well as for the tour.

At the same time, the touring commitments become an added pressure on a family already trying to secure appropriate care. Elfrieda worries about letting people down, while Yolandi and Nic are trying to arrange psychiatric home care and prevent a premature return home. Nic’s blunt response that the tour can be forgotten registers the family’s changed priorities. Claudio eventually deals with the venues and insurance and calls the tour off; he also arranges for a public statement describing the cancellation as exhaustion and requesting privacy. The decision removes a professional obligation at a moment when the family’s attention must turn to Elfrieda’s condition.

Presence During the Crisis

Claudio does not disappear when the tour is cancelled. He plans to come from Budapest to Winnipeg, and Nic describes him as concerned, helpful, and stressed. When Claudio visits Elfrieda in hospital, he brings an extravagant bouquet. He greets Yolandi warmly, kisses Elfrieda’s forehead just above her new scar, and takes her hand. He speaks to her in Italian, but she shakes her head and asks him not to continue. The scene makes visible both his affection and the boundary Elfrieda sets: his language carries memories of beauty, love, and laughter, but she cannot receive them then.

Claudio tries to ease Elfrieda’s guilt about the cancelled performances. He tells her that the musicians have found other engagements and that they send their love, naming Antanas, Otto, Ekko, Bridget, and Friedrich. When she asks after Friedrich, Claudio replies that he is still having trouble with women and money; the exchange briefly restores the familiar world of colleagues and ordinary news inside the hospital. His reassurance is specific: the people affected by the cancellation are managing, and they have not turned against her.

He also recounts an incident he witnessed in Budapest. From a bridge over the Danube, he watched a man sitting by the river with a can of beer. The man stepped down to the water, filled an empty bottle, returned to his place, and slowly poured some river water into the beer before drinking it. Claudio had feared at first that the man would jump into the river, and then worried that he would drink the water; the man’s eventual action still upset him deeply and made him want to leave Budapest. The story lingers over an ambiguous, small act rather than explaining it away. In the hospital conversation, it becomes one of the concrete things Claudio carries with him: an encounter whose meaning he cannot settle, but whose effect on him is unmistakable.

Advocacy and the Family’s Vigil

As the crisis continues, Claudio tries to protect Elfrieda from both professional anxiety and isolation. He tells Yolandi that replacement concerts can still be arranged and asks her to tell Elfrieda not to worry. He stops, places his hands on Yolandi’s shoulders, and calls her sister a rare person unlike anyone he has known. Then he urges Yolandi to keep Elfrieda alive and to try everything. He is crying as he says this. Yolandi promises that Elfrieda will be all right, and the two embrace before Claudio leaves for a waiting car.

His appeal contrasts with the hospital’s difficulty in reaching Elfrieda. She sometimes will not speak to the psychiatrist, though Yolandi explains that she is willing to write things down; the psychiatrist says he does not have time to read while working. Lottie challenges the staff’s emphasis on cooperation, arguing that Elfrieda is a human being and should not have to eat or speak on command. Claudio cannot repair the institutional failures, but his attention to Elfrieda’s wishes and his insistence on her value place him alongside the family’s efforts to treat her as more than a patient or a cancelled engagement.

After Elfrieda’s Death

Claudio returns to Lottie’s home at Christmas, carrying carefully wrapped gifts and snow on his shoulders. He brings Italian wine and letters of condolence from Elfrieda’s colleagues and fans. The family gathers beside the piano, with old piano books from Elfrieda’s early years piled on top. Claudio says he is still in shock and admits that he had believed music would save her life. Lottie answers that it probably did for as long as Elfrieda was alive, a response that neither denies his belief nor turns it into a cure.

He describes how Jaap Zeldenthuis filled in for Elfrieda on the tour, performing despite jet lag and attracting criticism for rhythmic irregularities. Claudio also distinguishes the obituaries that wrote about the colour and warmth of her playing from those that made her health issues the story. His concern is for how the public account remembers her: not as a sensational case, but as a musician whose playing had distinctive qualities.

The gifts contain a video of Elfrieda’s last rehearsal. Claudio tells the family that she gave the best performance of her life that day, playing as if there were no physical barrier between her and the piano. The orchestra stood and applauded for five minutes; Elfrieda hid her face in her hands and wept, and half the musicians wept too. Claudio cries as he recounts the scene, then struggles to leave, holding on to the banister and apologizing for all those years. His final appearance gathers the strands of his character: he is still the agent who remembers the performance, but also the witness who brings its evidence to a grieving family. The rehearsal does not undo the loss; it gives them one last account of Elfrieda’s musical life that is more expansive than the illness that ended it.