Strictly for opera connoisseurs, but for those in the know, a treasure trove of information on tenors, methods, and...
This third volume of an opera series on tenors gathers interviews with Franco Corelli—along with accounts of peers, rivals, and possible successors—with a focus on techniques, teaching, and booing.
The author, an accomplished singer, former host of Columbia University’s radio show Opera Fanatic, and a pre-eminent scholar, shares transcripts of salon-style interviews in the 1990s with Corelli, the “prince of tenors.” The Italian superstar answers a variety of questions regarding his technique, teaching—which he rarely did—and the stage appearances of fellow tenors. On the subject of evaluating performances, the controversial topic of booing artists is raised with Corelli, with numerous positive opinions on it from hard-core fans, singers, ushers, and even Miss Manners herself, presented practically in sports terms. Moving beyond Corelli, interviews on methods with the likes of tenors Roberto Alagna (who sang through the pain of a tumor and blood clots) and Alfredo Kraus, renowned voice teacher Bill Schuman, and others speak at length about larynx-lowering, glottal attacks, and diaphragmatic breathing. There is a wealth of operatic terminology that will go over uninitiated readers’ heads, but fans of this series will likely be properly informed. Modern singers are evaluated by the author with an eye toward who might be the next great tenor. Unlike the first two installments, Zucker (Franco Corelli & a Revolution in Singing: Fifty-Four Tenors Spanning 200 Years, Volume 2, 2018, etc.) feels a bit freer to editorialize here. This welcome development, coupled with Corelli’s own wit and wisdom, makes the interviews with the other performers pale in comparison. They just don’t have the same charisma or enthusiasm as Corelli and the author. As with the other volumes, the photographs included here, particularly those featuring singers in full costume, are quite stunning, capturing the visual glamour alongside the work’s deep, rich dissection of methods. The wide array of interview subjects and the concentration on teaching, techniques, and booing—along with the ending’s look at modern tenors—make this book slightly more piecemeal than the previous ones. But, in the name of comprehensiveness, leaving any of it out would have been a huge misstep.
Strictly for opera connoisseurs, but for those in the know, a treasure trove of information on tenors, methods, and performances.Pub Date: April 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-891456-01-5
Page Count: 347
Publisher: Bel Canto Society
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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
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