Word: hoelteroff
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This pseudo-biography of Cecilia Bartoli is in fact only a way for Hoelteroff to neatly package all of the 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...
...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, bullet-headed, forever-tan egomaniac" publicist, adds a touch of much needed vulgarity to the usually cordial dialogue. For him, everything the press writes isn't worth "a thimble-full...
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