One couldn’t ask for a more knowledgeable guide to the inner workings of the Met.
A thoroughgoing, eyeball-rolling institutional history of the Metropolitan Opera that concentrates on the personalities to pretty much the exclusion of the art, from Fiedler (Arthur Fiedler, 1994), for 15 years the press representative of the Met.
It might not be quite the treacherous world that the author would like to think, but the Metropolitan Opera, from its inception as a breakaway from the Academy of Music, has had its share of turmoil and emotional strife, if no more than is exercised in familial and corporate settings. While it’s fun to read about the richly deserved axing of Maria Callas and Kathleen Battle, appalling to be reminded of the murder of Helen Hagnes, and dreadful to learn that the tenor Richard Versalle’s last words were “You can only live so long,” sung immediately before a heart attack killed him and he plummeted to the stage from a perch atop a towering ladder, the meat-and-potatoes of Fiedler’s work is the functioning of the Met. Strong personalities have ruled both the Met’s artistic and management offices, from Rudolph Bing’s treating the opera as though it were his personal monarchy, to the more tactically politic (while no less power-hungry) role assumed by Joseph Volpe, who rose from the position of master carpenter to become the current general manager. While Fiedler spends less time on the artistic sensibilities at work, she does a fine job explaining the character of the artistic directors, beginning with Toscanini and his snits and appetite for women, through the unrivaled years with James Levine, who reinvigorated the standards, built the repertory, and explored lesser-known operas. And it is gratifying to follow Fiedler as she charts the democratization of opera, transitioning from the turf of boxholders looking for “the ultimate symbol of social triumph,” to the pure joy of opera lovers.
One couldn’t ask for a more knowledgeable guide to the inner workings of the Met.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-48187-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
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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