Opera

I have written one book about opera, as I came to understand it through the singing of Cecilia Bartoli, who has a rare and formidable ability to fill her music with powerful emotion. I write about opera as a fan, without shame for loving it so much and finding it so moving. When I read professional critics they often seem to miss out on the emotional impact of music or song, to be rather embarrassed by this somewhat uncouth aspect of music and perhaps by their own response to it. I have no credentials for writing about opera, yet it seemed to me that a writer can/should/must write about anything that moves her and strongly affects her. For me, Cecilia Bartoli was the musical discovery of a lifetime. I thought that a fan might be in the best possible position to account for the impact this great performer makes on an audience, and to reason, from a non-technical point of view, about why music itself is so very moving. It fascinated me, of course, with my long-standing interest in mothers and daughters, to discover that Bartoli's only voice teacher had been her mother, who had herself been an opera singer. I imagined there might be a great story there, and found that, indeed, there was.

Related Books

Cecilia Bartoli: The Passion of Song (with Renate Stendhal)

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Her Mother