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
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
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
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