Strictly for opera aficionados, a detailed, passionate analysis of what makes tenor singing and its practitioners unique.
A critical look at the evolution of operatic tenor singing, from the 19th century to the present.
In opera, Zucker’s bona fides are impeccable. A singer himself, he earned distinction from the Guinness Book of World Records as the “world’s highest tenor” for reaching an A above high C during a performance at New York’s Town Hall in 1972. He also hosted Opera Fanatic, the long-running program on Columbia University’s radio station, and founded the Bel Canto Society, a nonprofit opera organization. In this book, Zucker (Origins of Modern Tenor Singing, 1997) draws from conversations he had with the late Italian tenor Franco Corelli, a close friend and frequent guest on the Opera Fanatic program. Zucker offers their takes on popular tenors of the past, spotlighting each singer’s vocal stylings, physical techniques, strengths and weaknesses, as well as a consideration of the performance aspect. Even nonfans of opera might recognize the most famous tenors referenced—Enrico Caruso, Richard Tucker, Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, José Carreras, etc.—though the book by no means offers in-depth biographies. Less popular figures are given relatively brief chapters, including Jean de Reszke, Aureliano Pertile, and Mario Del Monaco. In some instances, Corelli acknowledges the tenors who influenced him, such as Beniamino Gigli: “His voice was exceptionally beautiful, warm like a lighted lamp, with a facile and inimitable emission….I remember a concert in which he gave twelve encores.” Zucker also offers frank, critical views on several singers, including legendary Caruso: “Compared with his predecessors…Caruso had less musical nuance, variety of dynamics and rubato; in short he had less musical imagination. He also had less control over dynamics. These were the prices he paid for his directness of address.” With formidable passion and knowledge from their own experiences as singers and lovers of the genre, Corelli and Zucker pick up on notes the average opera fan most likely does not. Interestingly, the book’s last portion consists of Zucker’s evaluations of several tenors’ performances as the character Radames from Verdi’s Aida based on archival recordings, such as Corelli’s from 1956, 1962, 1967, and 1972. Sprinkled throughout are wonderful archival photographs of the tenors dressed in their stage costumes. A reader not well-versed in the technical aspects of opera singing and history—let alone music theory and appreciation—might find the book a bit challenging, though die-hard opera fans and scholars will absorb it easily. Zucker and Corelli make appreciating the artistry easy, to the point where readers might seek out the actual recordings. Zucker, expert that he is, is beyond that point; of Francesco Tamagno, one of his favorite tenors, he says: “I can go for years without listening to his records physically yet play them inside of me, for his is singing heard in the soul.”
Strictly for opera aficionados, a detailed, passionate analysis of what makes tenor singing and its practitioners unique.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1891456008
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bel Canto Society
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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