Joséphine and Emilie Book

Cecilia Bartoli is on the cover and in the subtitle, but this is not as much a Bartoli biography as a snapshot of mid- to late-90s opera in and around her career: Her 1995 tour following her chart-topping collection of 18th-century Italian songs If You Love Me (1992) were two of the things that got me into opera at the time, so it is great to add the personal dimensions of her family life, frugality, and desire for fame in her native Italy. Also swirling around her are other divas, the economics of operatic recordings past the age of their halo effect for labels, Pavarotti past his high C prime, Music Director of The Met James Levine as part of the unreasonableness of that venerable institution, and Columbia Artists Management Inc. CAMI. CAMI is the international leader in the management and touring activities of opera singers.

I am proud that my local Michigan Opera Theatre under the leadership of David DiChiera has funded and staged new American works, generally one every season it seems. However, even I must admit these have so far always been more memorable to me for plot and scenery than melody. The author here also wonders if this genre will ever find a way to extent the bel canto canon. (Personally, I believe all music is destined to become curated and fossilized, only exhibited with a largely purist presentation. It just take centuries. The Let It Be musical and RAIN: A Tribute to the Beatles are the symptoms of that disorder.)

As for the current state of new operatic works, the author says "For most people, a modern opera has all the appeal of a large pill that must be swallowed on the orders of an unseen sadist. That's the legacy of fifty years of music that often sounds like water drips and surgery without anesthesia. Championed by a critical elite, nurtured by subsidies and tenured professorships... People just don't want to hear it anymore."