Word: hoelterhoff
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...Manuela Hoelterhoff...
...there another art form that attracts so many sublime sufferers and so many nuts?" asks Manuella Hoelterhoff in her new book Cinderella & Company: Backstage at the Opera with Cecilia Bartoli. The narrative, loosely based on a two-year period in the life of the world famous mezzo-soprano, provides a way for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hoelterhoff to expose all the craziness of the opera world. Her readable anecdotes of eccentric divas, push managers and overweight sopranos give a "behind-the-scenes" picture of opera that will delight everyone from the hard-core opera buffs who live for this...
...opera gossip that she has collected over a lifetime of being a devoted (obsessive?) opera fan and a cultural critic for the Wall Street Journal. Although Bartoli's seductive portrait is emblazoned on the cover and her name is included in the title, Bartoli remains elusive in the narrative. Hoelterhoff followed the shy off-stage mezzo on and off from 1995 to 1997 and attempted to capture her "rags to riches" story by making a parallel between Bartoli and her signature role as Cinderella in Rossini's Cenerentola. Bartoli's story, however, is quickly overshadowed and nearly buried...
...know that it's not over till the fat lady sings, and this book wouldn't be complete without the chapter titled "Clean Plate Club." Hoelterhoff throws political correctness to the wind in her descriptions of the "Three Tonners": Debora Voigt, Sharon Sweet and Jane Eaglen. In her merciless critique, she explains the difficulties of having hugely overweight leads playing believable romantic roles. In one version of La Boheme, with Jane Eaglan as Mimi, the Met had to build a bed that sunk with her weight to help some of the extra bulk. Hoelterhoff fills the chapter out with...
Keeping on the subject of "larger than life" singers, Hoelterhoff manages to continually weave in the story of everyone's favorite tenor, Lucianno Pavarotti. Told with a tinge of sympathy and pity, she traces the last moments of a tenor past his prime, who has constant memory lapses and has to transpose all of his arias down to avoid the dreaded high Cs, yet desperately does not want to leave the public spotlight. Like Bartoli, even Mr. P (as Hoelteroff affectionately calls the Italian tenor) is overshadowed by the more provocative characters surrounding him. Herbert Breslin, Pavarotti's "motor-mouthed...