In Anne Rice's "The Vampire Chronicles", Lestat plays the violin and sings amazingly.
Were these abilities he possessed before turning or do vampires in her books develop amazing abilities, perhaps to attract humans? I'd like to know about the book canon rather than the films.
The book "The Vampire Lestat" makes it abundantly clear that Lestat could neither play the violin, nor sing with any great ability before he became a vampire;
But I was in paradise again. And so was Nicolas though no decent orchestra in the city would hire him, and he was now playing solos with the little bunch of musicians in the theater where I worked, and when we were really pinched he did play right on the boulevard, with me beside him, holding out the hat. We were shameless!
.................. [later]
Something to do with the sentiments Nicki was expressing. Didn't make sense. I tried to shrug it off.
"If you'd set out to play the violin, you'd probably be playing for the Court by now," he said.
Lestat is, however an accomplished actor with excellent vocal projection, a regular churchgoer and the second son of an aristocrat so it's likely that he's had a level of choral training and almost certain that he can play some kind of instrument (he repeatedly mentions the harpsichord).
For the record, the vampire Armand already knew how to play the violin before being turned into a vampire (or at the very least owned a violin) since it was listed among the belongings he takes with him.
In the "Vampire Chronicles" universe, all vampires are great mimics so they would obviously be good at any activity which wouldn't require one to understand the underlying concepts. With anything else they learn at a human rate. For example, Lestat is horrible with technology or scientific stuff because he doesn't understand what's behind it.
