The Pulitzer Prize—winning critic offers a vastly entertaining peek behind the scenes at the world of contemporary opera. Although the period between mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli’s performances of Cenerentola at the Houston Grand Opera in 1995 and at the Metropolitan Opera two years later provides the chronology and the excuse for Hoelterhoff’s smart, sassy chronicle, it is in fact something rather more ambitious than a simple case study of a single singer. Shrewd snapshots of opera’s brightest stars; intriguing conversations with agents, directors, managers, and designers; and scads of well-informed, just-catty-enough gossip add up to a vivid, intelligent portrait of the financial, artistic, and personal pressures that bedevil the artists and those who employ or serve them. Some are as time-honored as the tendency of divas (and divos) to cancel performances at the last minute; some are as up-to-date as the impact of jet travel on vocal cords. Hoelterhoff considers these and other issues in prose so snappy that opera seems as with-it as MTV. Her opinions are forceful—Met artistic director James Levine (one of the few movers and shakers in opera who apparently didn’t give her an interview) is dissed as a bland, press-shy egomaniac who leaves the dirty work to others; rising superstar tenor Roberto Alagna and his equally glittery wife, soprano Angela Gheorghiu, are mercilessly caricatured as “the Love Couple,” throwing tantrums in between nuzzles—but generally seem justified. (We hear a few times too often, however, that unionized musicians are lazy and overpaid; Hoelterhoff should save those diatribes for her gig on the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.) The affectionate profiles—down-to-earth soprano Renee Fleming, overbearing but knowledgeable artist manager Herbert Breslin, among them—are as punchy as the nasty ones; only Bartoli, oddly enough, doesn’t register all that strongly. The text’s general vivacity mostly disguises this absence at the center. It’s hard to imagine a better guide to opera than Hoelterhoff, who captures its beauties and absurdities with equal zest. (8 pages photos, not seen) (First printing of 50,000)
Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-44479-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
A brief but sometimes knotty and earnest set of studies best suited for Shakespeare enthusiasts.
A brisk study of 20 of the Bard’s plays, focused on stripping off four centuries of overcooked analysis and tangled reinterpretations.
“I don’t really care what he might have meant, nor should you,” writes Smith (Shakespeare Studies/Oxford Univ.; Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, 2016, etc.) in the introduction to this collection. Noting the “gappy” quality of many of his plays—i.e., the dearth of stage directions, the odd tonal and plot twists—the author strives to fill those gaps not with psychological analyses but rather historical context for the ambiguities. She’s less concerned, for instance, with whether Hamlet represents the first flower of the modern mind and instead keys into how the melancholy Dane and his father share a name, making it a study of “cumulative nostalgia” and our difficulty in escaping our pasts. Falstaff’s repeated appearances in multiple plays speak to Shakespeare’s crowd-pleasing tendencies. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a bawdier and darker exploration of marriage than its teen-friendly interpretations suggest. Smith’s strict-constructionist analyses of the plays can be illuminating: Her understanding of British mores and theater culture in the Elizabethan era explains why Richard III only half-heartedly abandons its charismatic title character, and she is insightful in her discussion of how Twelfth Night labors to return to heterosexual convention after introducing a host of queer tropes. Smith's Shakespeare is eminently fallible, collaborative, and innovative, deliberately warping play structures and then sorting out how much he needs to un-warp them. Yet the book is neither scholarly nor as patiently introductory as works by experts like Stephen Greenblatt. Attempts to goose the language with hipper references—Much Ado About Nothing highlights the “ ‘bros before hoes’ ethic of the military,” and Falstaff is likened to Homer Simpson—mostly fall flat.
A brief but sometimes knotty and earnest set of studies best suited for Shakespeare enthusiasts.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4854-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Startling, at times pretentious in its self-regard, but ultimately breathtaking: The Lost Weekend for the under-25 set.
Frey’s lacerating, intimate debut chronicles his recovery from multiple addictions with adrenal rage and sprawling prose.
After ten years of alcoholism and three years of crack addiction, the 23-year-old author awakens from a blackout aboard a Chicago-bound airplane, “covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood.” While intoxicated, he learns, he had fallen from a fire escape and damaged his teeth and face. His family persuades him to enter a Minnesota clinic, described as “the oldest Residential Drug and Alcohol Facility in the World.” Frey’s enormous alcohol habit, combined with his use of “Cocaine . . . Pills, acid, mushrooms, meth, PCP and glue,” make this a very rough ride, with the DTs quickly setting in: “The bugs crawl onto my skin and they start biting me and I try to kill them.” Frey captures with often discomforting acuity the daily grind and painful reacquaintance with human sensation that occur in long-term detox; for example, he must undergo reconstructive dental surgery without anesthetic, an ordeal rendered in excruciating detail. Very gradually, he confronts the “demons” that compelled him towards epic chemical abuse, although it takes him longer to recognize his own culpability in self-destructive acts. He effectively portrays the volatile yet loyal relationships of people in recovery as he forms bonds with a damaged young woman, an addicted mobster, and an alcoholic judge. Although he rejects the familiar 12-step program of AA, he finds strength in the principles of Taoism and (somewhat to his surprise) in the unflinching support of family, friends, and therapists, who help him avoid a relapse. Our acerbic narrator conveys urgency and youthful spirit with an angry, clinical tone and some initially off-putting prose tics—irregular paragraph breaks, unpunctuated dialogue, scattered capitalization, few commas—that ultimately create striking accruals of verisimilitude and plausible human portraits.
Startling, at times pretentious in its self-regard, but ultimately breathtaking: The Lost Weekend for the under-25 set.Pub Date: April 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50775-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
4 Book Adaptations to Check Out In December
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