Product Description: While undergoing routine surgery to remove a benign tumor, Ruby Elzy died. She was only thirty-five. Had she lived, she would have been one of the first black artists to appear in grand opera. Although now in the shadows, she was a shining star in her day...read more

Product Description: Kathy H. Brown focuses on the nature and content of the teaching of soprano Lotte Lehmann (1888-1976)-with an emphasis on interpretation of the text-after her immigration to the United States. Advice culled from the transcripts of voice lessons and master classes as well as from questionnaire from students is provided for two-hundred-twenty-three art songs by twenty-six composers and twenty-five arias by twelve composers...read more

Product Description: From 1906 until 1922, Geraldine Farrar was the Metropolitan Opera's most popular and glamorous prima donna. Convinced that music must always serve the drama, she often sacrificed tonal beauty to dramatic effect, and her acting was noted for its intensity and realism...read more

Product Description: A memoir of Williams, an African-American operatic soprano. It relates Williams' early life, education and subsequent career as an artist and educator.

Product Description: Now in paperback! The most celebrated "voice" in Hollywood speaks for herselfEveryone knows Marni Nixon...even if they think they don’t.One of the best-loved singing voices in the world, Nixon was the un-credited singing voice for Natalie Wood in West Side Story, Audrey Hepburn in My FairLady, and Deborah Kerr in The King and I...read more

Eileen Farrell is blessed with two voices. A classically-trained dramatic soprano who also loves to belt pop songs and torch the blues, she successfully conquered the worlds of opera and popular music over the course of her whirlwind career. Now, Farrell shares reminiscences about her remarkable professional and personal life. With candor, humor, and affection, she recalls her New England childhood, her overnight success at age twenty as star of her own CBS radio show, her big break dubbing vocals for Eleanor Parker in the MGM movie Interrupted Melody, and her many guest appearances on television shows. Farrell discusses her rise to fame as an opera star, from her highly acclaimed performance in Medea in 1955, to her historic debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Alceste in 1960. She also fondly recollects her marriage of forty years to New York police officer Robert Reagan and her life outside the limelight, including her frustrating tenure as a faculty member at Indiana University. Farrell speaks frankly about her tumultuous years at the Met, where her head-to-head confrontations with Sir Rudolph Bing brought her promising operatic career to an abrupt close after five seasons. While she loved singing the music of Verdi, Mascagni, and Giordano, Farrell reveals that she never reconciled herself to the life of a diva, preferring the friendliness of show business to the aloofness of the opera world. Populated with such figures as Leonard Bernstein, Arturo Toscanini, Maria Callas, Ethel Merman, Mabel Mercer, and Carol Burnett, this engaging memoir takes the reader from backstage at the Met to behind-the-scenes of the Ed Sullivan Show, providing a fascinating view of opera and the entertainment industry. Eileen Farrell's legion of fans will delight in her inviting story of a career that was like no other singer's.

Product Description: THE DIVA AND I combines old world charm with glamour, travel and humor. Essentially, a love story, it depicts the author's life with beautiful Metropolitan Opera star, Patrice Munsel. Two extraordinary people, the story has all the elements of a Hollywood plot...read more

Product Description: Madame E. Azalia Hackley was an African-American classical singer, social worker, writer, philanthropist, and activist who championed the use of African-American spirituals among her own people as a tool for social change. Her efforts led to the use of spirituals as freedom songs during the Civil Rights Movement...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Jeanette MacDonald, the movie musical's first superstar, was an American original whose onscreen radiance mirrored a beguiling real-life personality. Based in large part on the author's exclusive access to MacDonald's private papers, including her unpublished memoir, this vivid, often touching biography transports us to a time when lavish musical films were major cultural events and a worldwide public eagerly awaited each new chance to fall under the singer's spell...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This charming autobiography captures the life story of a fascinating woman—a Missouri girl turned world-class soprano who remained true to her roots through it all. Born and reared in St. Louis and proud of her origins, Helen Traubel grew up in a modest German American family...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Chronicles the life and career of the great soprano (view table of contents)

Product Description: This is a full-length investigation of the life and accomplishments of American concert-singer Dorothy Maynor. After her retirement from the concert stage, Dorothy Maynor established the Harlem School of the Arts. The book describes Maynor's advocacy of work and commitment in three dimensions: as artist, academician, and altruist...read more

Product Description: Soprano Eleanor Steber graced the Metropolitan Opera stage between 1940 and 1966, singing 404 performances of 33 roles, including four Met Opera premieres and one world premiere. For ten years she was the most famous voice on the national radio/TV "Voice of Firestone...read more

Illustrated with private photographs and listing a complete discography, this autobiography chronicles the sublime singer's little-known personal life, which included a divorce, suicide attempt, drug addiction, and a break-down