Loving liner notes to accompany the BBC/PBS series hosted by the affable tenor. Snowman (The World of Pl†cido Domingo, 1985, etc.) followed a TV crew as it traced a ``year in the life'' of Pl†cido Domingo, traveling from Vienna, where he appeared as Siegmund in Die WalkÅre; to Hollywood, where as artistic consultant to the Los Angeles Opera he directed their production of La Bohäme; to New York's Metropolitan Opera for the lead role in Otello; and finally to Bonn, for a collaboration with film director Werner Herzog on a production of a modern Brazilian opera. When Snowman grandly proclaims that the TV series is ``a project unprecedented in the annals of film or television,'' one realizes that puffery will outweigh profundity throughout this expedition. When he isn't marveling over the ``ferocious schedule'' that the superstar tenor keeps, he is praising Domingo's ``uncommon fusion of physique, vocal quality, and musical intelligence.'' Through the four chapters of this brief valentine, Snowman combines a little operatic history, a little sight-seeing, and an occasional backstage glimpse; but he hardly provides the revelations about the operatic world that his overheated prose seems to promise. Snowman's analysis of Domingo's performing and conducting skills is, not surprisingly, hardly profound. There is no critic that Snowman can find who has a bad word to say about the tenor; no audience that is not ``adoring''; no peer who is not ``amazed'' by the ``incredible'' sympathy the singer shows. But when Domingo has an adolescent fit because the record company of his main competition on the operatic stage, Luciano Pavarotti, chose to advertise its client's recordings in his program booklet, one wonders whether this ``colossus'' is as generous as Snowman would have us believe. Flattery, apparently, will get you somewhere. (24 color & 4 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-931340-98-5
Page Count: 188
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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