The Toughest Show on Earth

The Toughest Show on Earth PDF Author: Joseph Volpe
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307498379
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
The Toughest Show on Earth is the ultimate behind-the-scenes chronicle of the divas and the dramas of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, by the remarkable man who rose from apprentice carpenter to general manager. Joseph Volpe gives us an anecdote-filled tour of more than four decades at the Met, an institution full of vast egos and complicated politics. With stunning candor, he writes about the general managers he worked under, his embattled rise to the top, the maneuverings of the blue-chip board, and his masterful approach to making a family of such artist-stars as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Teresa Stratas, and Renee Fleming, and such visionary directors as Franco Zeffirelli, Robert Wilson, and Julie Taymor. Intimate and frank, The Toughest Show on Earth is not only essential for music lovers, but for anyone who wants to understand the inner workings of the culture business.

The Toughest Show on Earth

The Toughest Show on Earth PDF Author: Joseph Volpe
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307498379
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Toughest Show on Earth is the ultimate behind-the-scenes chronicle of the divas and the dramas of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House, by the remarkable man who rose from apprentice carpenter to general manager. Joseph Volpe gives us an anecdote-filled tour of more than four decades at the Met, an institution full of vast egos and complicated politics. With stunning candor, he writes about the general managers he worked under, his embattled rise to the top, the maneuverings of the blue-chip board, and his masterful approach to making a family of such artist-stars as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Teresa Stratas, and Renee Fleming, and such visionary directors as Franco Zeffirelli, Robert Wilson, and Julie Taymor. Intimate and frank, The Toughest Show on Earth is not only essential for music lovers, but for anyone who wants to understand the inner workings of the culture business.

Molto Agitato

Molto Agitato PDF Author: Johanna Fiedler
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1400032318
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
If the opera world is full of “intrigue, double meanings, and devious dramatics,” then no place exemplifies this more than the world-famous Metropolitan Opera, where politics, ambition, and oversized egos have traditionally taken center stage along with some of the world’s richest music. Drawing on her fifteen years as its press representative, Johanna Fiedler explodes the traditional secrecy that surrounds the Met in this wonderfully entertaining account of its tumuluous history. Fiedler chronicles the Met’s early days as a home for legends like Toscanini, Mahler, and Caruso, and gives a fascinating account of the middle years when haughty blue-bloods battled stubborn adminstrators for control of a company that would emerge as America’s premiere opera house. She takes us behind the grand gold-curtain stage in more recent years as well, showing how musical superstars like Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and Kathleen Battle have electrified performances and scandalized the public. But most revelatory are Fiedler’s portrayals of James Levine and Joseph Volpe and their practically parallel ascendancies—Levine rising from prodigy to artistic director, Volpe advancing from stagehand to general manager—and their once strained relationship. Weaving together the personal, economic, and artistic struggles that characterize the Met’s long and vibrant history, Molto Agitato is a must-read saga of power, wealth, and, above all, great music.

The Last Show on Earth

The Last Show on Earth PDF Author: Tim Galbraith
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1039106838
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Nearly ten years since the rapture and humanity is no longer the top of the food chain. God has taken his followers to heaven and left demons to rule earth in his wake. Those left behind seek to find either redemption in the eyes of their creator or revenge against him. An amnesiac awakens amongst those who are seeking redemption. They offer to help him find out who or what he is as he discovers an unexplainable ability in his attempts to protect them. A set of brothers have an item that they believe can bring them face to face with God to make him answer for crimes against humanity. Shining through the darkness, a group of survivors has come together under the lights of the last piece of entertainment left on this world, a traveling carnival, led by a mysterious and enigmatic man who has dubbed himself “The Queen.” These stories interweave with each other on their individual journeys through post-rapture Earth before they find their way to the City of God and face down their creator.

Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth

Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth PDF Author: Martin Dugard
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The author, a freelance journalist, describes his experiences as a reporter and participant in the Raid Gauloises, an annual eight- to twelve-day race designed to test the limits of human endurance.

Mental - The Toughest, Bloodiest And Hardest Challenges In The World

Mental - The Toughest, Bloodiest And Hardest Challenges In The World PDF Author: Helen Summer
Publisher: Kings Road Publishing
ISBN: 1782199233
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This title looks at 60 of the most extreme ultra marathons, triathlons, bike rides and other iconic events across the globe

How Winning Works

How Winning Works PDF Author: Robyn Benincasa
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 0373892551
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Practical and accessible with workbook activities and exercises for readers to do, this book shares the eight essential elements of teamwork, using Benincasa's exciting, challenging, and life-affirming experiences as an extreme world class adventure racer.

Grand Opera

Grand Opera PDF Author: Charles Affron
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958977
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
The Metropolitan has stood among the grandest of opera companies since its birth in 1883. Tracing the offstage/onstage workings of this famed New York institution, Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron tell how the Met became and remains a powerful actor on the global cultural scene. In this first new history of the company in thirty years, each of the chronologically sequenced chapters surveys a composer or a slice of the repertoire and brings to life dominant personalities and memorable performances of the time. From the opening night Faust to the recent controversial production of Wagner’s "Ring," Grand Opera is a remarkable account of management and audience response to the push and pull of tradition and reinvention. Spanning the decades between the Gilded Age and the age of new media, this story of the Met concludes by tipping its hat to the hugely successful "Live in HD" simulcasts and other twenty-first-century innovations. Grand Opera’s appeal extends far beyond the large circle of opera enthusiasts. Drawing on unpublished documents from the Metropolitan Opera Archives, reviews, recordings, and much more, this richly detailed book looks at the Met in the broad context of national and international issues and events.

Conversations with the World's Leading Orchestra and Opera Librarians

Conversations with the World's Leading Orchestra and Opera Librarians PDF Author: Patrick Lo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442255439
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This book is based on a series of informative interviews with a number of music librarians working for different leading symphony orchestras and opera companies throughout the world. In these interviews, librarians share with the readers what kind of professional skills, knowledge and personality that are required to supply music to the performers onstage, as well as information to these world-famous performing arts organizations. Interviewees also discuss in details about their professional lives, i.e., including their personal stories and working relationships with various legendary conductors and star soloists, e.g., Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, James Levine, Donald Runnicles, Bernard Haitink, Zubin Mehta, Sir Colin Davis, etc. Via the interviewees’ stories, one can also get a glimpse of the different inside operations and the unique management styles behind the backstage of these internationally renowned performing arts organizations. There are fourteen conversations including interviews with the Chief Librarian at the Metropolitan Opera and the Orchestra Librarians at the San Francisco Ballet, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Five Thousand Nights at the Opera

Five Thousand Nights at the Opera PDF Author: Rudolf Bing
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780848804305
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description


Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber PDF Author: Howard Pollack
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252054059
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 565

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Book Description
A pivotal twentieth-century composer, Samuel Barber earned a long list of honors and accolades that included two Pulitzer Prizes for Music and the public support of conductors like Arturo Toscanini, Serge Koussevitzky, and Leonard Bernstein. Barber’s works have since become standard concert repertoire and continue to flourish across high art and popular culture. Acclaimed biographer Howard Pollack (Aaron Copland, George Gershwin) offers a multifaceted account of Barber’s life and music while placing the artist in his social and cultural milieu. Born into a musical family, Barber pursued his artistic ambitions from childhood. Pollack follows Barber’s path from his precocious youth through a career where, from the start, the composer consistently received prizes, fellowships, and other recognition. Stylistic analyses of works like the Adagio for Strings, the Violin Concerto, Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for voice and orchestra, the Piano Concerto, and the operas Vanessa and Antony and Cleopatra, stand alongside revealing accounts of the music’s commissioning, performance, reception, and legacy. Throughout, Pollack weaves in accounts of Barber’s encounters with colleagues like Aaron Copland and Francis Poulenc, performers from Eleanor Steber and Leontyne Price to Vladimir Horowitz and Van Cliburn, patrons, admirers, and a wide circle of eminent friends and acquaintances. He also provides an eloquent portrait of the composer’s decades-long relationship with the renowned opera composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Informed by new interviews and immense archival research, Samuel Barber is a long-awaited critical and personal biography of a monumental figure in twentieth-century American music.