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ROSA PONSELLE

Name: ROSA PONSELLE
Author: James A. Drake
ISBN: 1-57467-019-0

A CENTENARY BIOGRAPHY

by James A. Drake ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1997

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A marvelous celebration of the life and career of the brilliant American soprano, incorporating interviews with the singer (who died in 1981) as well as the recollections of people who worked with her and for her, of family members, and of artistic colleagues. Each chapter of interviews is followed by a comprehensive documentary section drawn from such items as letters by Ponselle and reviews of her performances. The result is a fascinating, complex, and convincing portrait of a remarkable woman. Rosa Ponselle was born in 1897, in Meriden, Conn., to Italian immigrants. She studied music with her mother, and with her sister Carmilla formed the Italian Girls, a successful vaudeville act that eventually took them to New York, where they shared the bill with such luminaries as Al Jolson, Ed Wynn, and the Astaires. Caruso heard her sing, and the rest is history: In 1919 she became an overnight star at the Metropolitan Opera, and for roughly 20 years she was the American prima diva, a tempestuous star not just of opera, but the concert stage, radio, and recordings. She made her last appearence at the Met in 1937, after some 365 performances; she was, she tells Drake, ``tired of the grind.'' She spent the rest of her long life as a society hostess, usually living alone (her one marriage didn't last long). We know her through her recordings, most of which she condemns as ruined by ``that damned clock'' (i.e., the need to fit a performance within the confines of a 78 rpm recording, which drove singers to sing faster and louder, sacrificing nuance and contrast). Some of her recordings, such as the two arias from Vestale made in 1926, are classics. Her recollections of fellow perforers are frank, vivid and perceptive. Ponselle's husband remembered her as ``alluring, bright, shrewd . . . sometimes just impossible.'' Drake's splendid book gives us the full measure of her—both as diva and vaudeville star turned society hostess and self-exiled recluse. (63 b&w photos, not seen)

Pub Date: April 1, 1997

ISBN: 1-57467-019-0

Page Count: 536

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1997

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

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The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)