Timing is Everything: A Life Backstage at the Opera

Moffatt Oxenbould has lived and breathed opera for more than forty years. And from the first, his career has been linked with what would eventually become Australia's national opera company. From stage manager to artistic director, Oxenbould's career has been an outstanding one, growing in tandem with the Opera as it developed into the prestigious and renowned company it is today. Genial, deeply knowledgeable and thoroughly entertaining, Moffat Oxenbould's memoirs are filled with riveting backstage stories of divas and disasters, outback tours and stunning triumphs, of all the international and local stars and productions for which the Opera is justly renowned, as well as the significant struggles for survival that the company has faced in the last five decades. Having worked with everyone from Pavarotti to Sutherland, Luhrmann to Kosky, David Hobson to Simone Young, Oxenbould's story is fascinating both in its retelling of a life spent backstage and as the story of the life of an opera company. timing Is Everything is essential reading for anyone with a drop of greasepaint in their blood and a song in their heart.