Opera Antics and Anecdotes

Tanner, Stephen

ISBN 10: 0920151329 / ISBN 13: 9780920151327

Published by Sound And Vision (edition 2nd ed.), 1999

About this Item

The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way.

Seller Inventory # 0920151329-7-1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Opera Antics and Anecdotes
• Publisher: Sound And Vision (edition 2nd ed.)
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0920151329
• ISBN 13: 9780920151327
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Taccola, Umberto
• Edition: 2nd ed.
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

Opera singers are just like other people, only more so. Often unseen by their public and fans, they erupt in glorious, dazzling displays of human cussedness, using biting banter, one-up-manship, and even sabotage to deal with their main frustration, which is, of course, each other. The irreverent atmosphere backstage is often hilariously in contrast with the reverent hush out front. In terms of chaos on stage, yells from the balcony and intermission twaddle in the foyer, you'll meet dimwitted audience members, meatball tenors, vain soprano fatsos, stilletto-tongued conductors and old-time impresarios and general managers who didn't know their brass from their oboe. The Viennese conductor Franz Schalk said, "Every theater is an asylum, but an opera theatre is the ward for incurables."

Stephen Tanner grew up in Cambridge, Mass. with a yen for music, theatre and creating mirth. During twenty years of living in several European opera capitals he purposely rubbed elbows with the widest variety of opera folk and gained many glimpses into the life in the opera world and the "light" motifs of backstage humor: flubs, idiocy, vanity, imbroglios, squabbles, vendettas and dirty tricks. He lives in southern California. Umberto Taccola lives in Isernia, Italy.

About the Author

by Stephen B. Tanner; cartoons by Umberto Taccola