Customer Reviews

Cinderella and Company: Backstage at the Opera with Cecilia Bartoli

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1 star:		(7)

 

 

Readers should be aware, at least, that this book is not a biography of, or even mainly about, Cecilia Bartoli. What the book should be called is "Backstage at the Opera With Manuela Hoelterhoff" and it should have a big picture of Hoelterhoff on the cover. There's nothing wrong with that. I read through it with some pleasure nevertheless. But Hoelterhoff concedes that Bartoli was not tremendously forthcoming about herself or anything else.

Reading the descriptions of Hoelterhoff's encounters with Bartoli and family, one could get the sense that they didn't much like having this journalist around. Maybe they loved her, who knows? But you wouldn't know it. The encounters total perhaps seven. I could be wrong on the exact number but it was far from a long, intimate association.

Personally, I also found that the much-advertised "wit" wore. Hoelterhoff's brand of catty glibness is not often actually funny in the 'this will make you laugh' sense of the word, if you're into that. I'd say there are about three little "witticisms" per page and maybe there are ten laughs in the book. That's a lot of non-funny jokes to get through. You won't be urging her to try to get on staff at Letterman anyway. I suspect her catty, punchy style is more congenial in a short space, such as a magazine article.

Can you be disappointed as strongly as you can be thrilled out of your mind? I can. And if I rise spontaneously to thank a performer with a standing ovation for a rare transcendant experience, I should be allowed to throw tomatoes too to express disappointment or disapproval. If I had to qualify this book in a sentence I would say: TABLOID TALE. It does not discuss artistic achievement. Instead, the author focuses on the kind of gossip usually found in tabloid newspapers, but here expressed in a more stylistically elevated way. I have a passion for Cecilia Bartoli and in spite of Hoelterhoff's salacious stories and their catty, vicious little tidbits which are not my cup of tea, I have read the book from cover to cover. I must acknowledge that her journalistic style has incited me to read it. But what remains after the reading of this book? My first impression was being the victim of an incredible swindle. The reason: the title of the book is fallacious, it makes us believe that it is a book on Cecilia Bartoli and her generation of singers while, in reality, she is merely the center of a pinwheel, just a box-office name on which to hang as witty and bitchy a picture of this rarefied world as the most gossipy opera lover could ask for: Hoelterhoff blends hearsay, commentary and industrious observation to render in living color the world that swirls around Bartoli. In fact, Cecilia Bartoli has so much company in this book that she is swamped. She is just a "good excuse" (or a selling device?). She has little to do with the goal of the book- but as we know, Bartoli sells well! ''Cinderella & Company'' began as an attempt to write a book concentrating just on Ms. Bartoli, tracking her movements during two years for a year-in-the-life narrative: an attempt that failed. But the reason, after reading this book, seems to differ from the one Hoelterhoff gave - the author once said that she fell victim to Ms. Bartoli's cancellations "and that would have required that too much of the book be devoted to [Bartoli] staying at home, nursing a cold''. The world's most popular young opera singer is too normal and uninteresting in every venomous, bitchy, gossipy aspect, and therefore Hoelterhoff turns to dishing out the dirt on everyone from Herbert Breslin to the Alagnas. To her credit, Bartoli fares relatively well in this dish-fest. Strangely, considering that Bartoli is ostensibly the main subject of the book, Hoelterhoff mostly limits herself to reporting Bartoli events without drawing conclusions from them (or, for that matter, giving us an interesting perspective of her own). One exception is when she relates the singer's attitude after a 1997 Rome concert, implying that the diva's behavior has become less innocent and more diva-like over the years. Similarly, an anecdote from the Metropolitan Opera's rehearsals shows the singer using a passive-agressive approach to problems. Perhaps these rare bits of analysis could have been expanded, giving us insights, for example, into how family pressures and the cutthroat world of opera (which Hoelterhoff describes so vividly) might be related to this new diva-like behavior. But, the connection is never made. Page after page tells of family crises, and it comes across that, unlike many singers, the mezzo-soprano is at least as devoted to her family as to her career, even during hard times. However, we never get an opinion on how the singer copes with all the expectations placed on her, or how she will juggle these demands in the future. Now, I better understand why Hoelterhoff once stated that her book may provide a useful corrective to Kim Chernin's! Hers lacks the depth of Chernin's comprehensive and heartfelt analysis of both personality and artistic standards, and Hoelterhoff compensates with a gratuitous gossipy surface. Talking about artistic insight seems to be of no interest for Hoelterhoff, but offering juicy "observations" on a bunch of fairly unpleasant people is prime grist for comments. Most of all, in contrast to Hoelterhoff, Chernin's book is written to illuminate, NEVER to wound. If "Cecilia Bartoli - The Passion of Song" by Chernin (with Stendhal) has been wrongly called a clinical example of the hysteria surrounding Ms. Bartoli, Hoelterhoff's book "Cinderella and Company: Backstage at the Opera With Cecilia Bartoli", is a sad example of the fact that dumbing down, even in music coverage, is the slogan of our age and is becoming ever more pervasive. The appearance of this modishly prurient gossip sheet, however, would not be of special interest if it did not represent, in a curious way, the habits of the media at large. Major media love scandal and always gravitate toward stories about scandal that have nothing to do with artistic questions, but with gossip. The spicier, the better. Spicier SELLS better. This book is more a random sampling of juicy glimpses of celebrities than a comprehensive view of the opera world. Serious music lovers, particularly those with at least a familiarity with artistic achievement, will be disappointed. There are anecdotes told to shock. Hoelterhoff can be sweet, Hoelterhoff can be cruel, Hoelterhoff can be bitchy. Hoelterhoff can be funny (but it's based on nastiness instead of love). The author contrives a picture of the opera world that is unattractive in many ways. She could certaintly develop her view of this art form by deepening her skill and sensitivity. Even the tone of this book may bother serious opera lovers. On several occasions the author seems to reinforce prejudices which several detractors of Bartoli share: that if we love this singer it is because we know NOTHING about opera. Her endless but well-written synopses and thumbnail sketches of opera plots, all aimed at the lowest common denominator, may irritate a reader looking for serious insights. Personally, I cannot imagine who would want to spend $25 to find some dirt and gossip when you can get juicier stuff at a lower price at your news-stand. Perhaps, if you love a performer, you want to know ALL the gossip and rumours about his/her private life, even at the expense of sacrificing all information about his/her art? "If theater is an insane asylum, opera is the ward for incurables", Rudolf Bing, former general director of the Metropolitan Opera, once said. This might be a cogent comment about Hoelterhoff's too often acid-tinged, one- sentence descriptions of artists and her superficial view of the opera world.

This book belongs in the library of everyone with a passing interest in the world of opera, not so much for what it reveals about Ms. Bartoli (which is precious little except that she is perpetually in the midst of a family crisis), but because of Manuela Hoelterhoff's deliciously wicked, slightly skewed view of the art form that brings together the best, and worst, aspects of drama and music. Ms. Hoelterhoff's several years honing her word craft as opera reviewer for the Wall Street Journal were not wasted. She is masterful with a well-turned phrase, as shown in her description of a famous operatic manager, "a motor-mouthed, bullet-headed, forever-tan egomaniac who is adored and loathed in about equal proportions among those who've had the joy of doing business with him." And her knowledge of opera and singers is encyclopedic. Sometimes she is laugh-out-loud funny-her one run-on sentence synopsis of Bellini's La Straniera is a knee-slapper-other times, she elicits an internal smile, but always, she offers insightful commentary on the world of opera. (Her insider's view of Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu, for example, clarifies why they are the operatic couple everyone loves to hate.) Buy this book for your permanent library-and mark the passages that tickle your funny-bone so that you can find them quickly if you need to brighten your day. (If this book is had an index so that one can easily find his or her favorite parts, I would have given it five stars.)

I cannot join in the general rejoicing at Ms. Hoelterhoff's 'bitchily witty' or 'wittily bitchy' or "brutally droll' (or whatever) opus. This book is on the whole smug, self-satisfied, angry, mean-spirited and without any sense of love or even respect for the art whose practicioners she so expertly eviscerates. Now, Ms. Hoelterhoff is quite a celebrated stylist: she can turn a phrase that would make Dorothy Parker proud, and goodness knows she's not afraid of anybody.But if the 'backstage world of opera' is truly (as Ms. Hoelterhoff seems to insist) populated with idiots, crooks, goons and bastards, why does she hang around there in the first place? Cinderella and USCompany has big type and wide margins. It's unconscionably padded with every hoary opera anecdote you've ever heard, soprano jokes, tenor jokes, shaggy-dog stories, insults for her pet target Kathleen Battle, and junk apparently just cut-and-pasted off the internet into the manuscript. Every opera that comes up in conversation - even a bread-and-butter work like Bohème -- is Hoelterhoff's cue for a paragraph or so of synopsis; every singer, conductor, manager or hanger-on who shows up in the story merits a mini-bio. Now, who is all this spoon-feeding for? Opera fans surely already have some vague idea who Rosa Ponselle is, and non-opera fans aren't likely to be reading a book that is nothing more than a bunch of opera professionals bitching about the lousy state of the music business. Cecilia Bartoli, the ostensible subject of this book, actually plays only a small role because she is rather a dull interview and she doesn't do much of anything interesting. Like, for example, she and her family take a daytrip to Disney World with Hoelterhoff tagging along. They have a little lunch and eat a little ice cream, and, well, then they go home. And Hoelterhoff the author complains that nothing dramatic happened. When Bartoli's brother and collaborator suffers a series of operations for a brain tumor, Bartoli (admirably) snaps to her handlers, 'This thing with Gabriele...it's not something the world needs to know. I don't want it dramatized into something very sentimental...' Incredibly, Hoelterhoff includes not only Gabriele's illness but Bartoli's complaint in the book. Hoelterhoff widens her net to, basically, everyone she knows, eliciting rapturous praise for Bartoli from personal manager Jack Mastroianni, impresarios Joe Volpe and David Gockley and various others who have huge stakes in the mezzo's success. More thoughtful (and far more entertaining) reflections on Bartoli and the operatic world she inhabits come from Hoelterhoff's two nominees for the title of 'most hated man in the music business,' Herbert Breslin and Matthew Epstein, who also serves to remind the reader what all this backstage brouhaha is really about: he is a fan, about the only one glimpsed in this book. Hoelterhoff crashes his reunion party for long-time Tebaldi fans ('a weepy, noisy crowd of aging singers and standees') long enough to recall, unconvingingly her own memories of standee days. This was supposedly the formative experience of her life, and all the author can muster is a Harlequin Romance cliché -- without an iota of the flair she brings even to a throwaway gag about Riccardo Muti! One glaring problem with the book, something Hoelterhoff's editor really should have taken her to task for, is the incessant, obsessive carping on overweight, an obsession that suggests the real title of this book should be 'Slenderella and Company. Five times in the first four pages the author snipes at someone for being fat; the references continue at a rate of approximately once per page for the rest of the book. She calls Luciano Pavarotti 'The Fat Man' at least a dozen times. Every time Jane Eaglen shows up in the book, Hoelterhoff tosses in some further size-specific adjective ('jolly' or 'jumbo-sized') to remind us that the soprano is big. And some of it is just distasteful: 'One night I was watching 'The X-Files' and encountered a fat-sucking vampire with very dry skin who befriended large women he met though on-line chat rooms. I thought of Jane Eaglen.' Not only performers fail Hoelterhoff's avoirdupois test: she snipes at those behind the scenes as well. What difference does Sally Billinghurst's 'fluffy plumpness' make to her velvet-glove management style at the Met? Do people resent Herbert Breslin's chutzpah more because he is 'pot-bellied?' Would the 'portly' Matthew Epstein lose his 'most-hated' status if he could drop a few pounds? (Given that Epstein has been HIV-positive for over a decade, perhaps he's happy to be able to keep the weight on.) The author takes playwright Albert Innaurato to dinner, where he voices fears about Bartoli turning into a sort of operatic Neely O'Hara, but Hoelterhoff's not listening: she's too busy scanning the menu for a low-fat entree. Here and there we get revealing, sometimes surprising glimpses of opera stars we thought we already knew. Renée Fleming is surprisingly witty and level-headed, and the Alagnas (whom the author takes great pains to despise) come off vulnerable and charming, if a little kooky. Hoelterhoff does a little double-dipping toward the end of the book. The Met hires her to write the television commentary for the marathon James Levine gala; the script she delivers is too smartass for their taste, so they pay her off and go elsewhere for rewrite. In the meantime, Hoelterhoff repeats everything she hears at the production meetings, where presumably it did not occur to anyone to tell a contractee that their talk was off the record. Hoelterhoff works like a dog to spin the Manuelaless gala into a disaster, but, as it turned out, it was a tolerable success with some glittering moments. All Hoelterhoff's sour-grapes grumbling can't change anyone's mind about that. 'Cinderella and Company' is apparently selling pretty well; perhaps even well enough to lead Knopf to ask Hoelterhoff for a sequel. The only problem is, after everyone in the business has read this collection of hatchet-jobs, who will be so foolish as to talk to her?

Judging from other customer comments, Manuela Hoelterhoff and her new book certainly have ticked off a lot of people. Not me. This is the most entertaining book on the opera business that I have read in some time. It is also one of the most revealing and insightful. As those who read (past tense) Ms. Hoelterhoff's music criticism in the Wall Street Journal know, she writes with pungency, wit, and a genuine flair for turning a phrase - literary talents which often, though not always, compensate for a lack of real critical insight or profound musical understanding of the works or performances under review. It follows that the weakest parts of this book are when the author is writing about music itself. (Do we really need all those silly little thumbnail plot summaries of operas?) Hoelterhoff's greatest strengths are as a reporter, observer and chronicler, and as that is mostly what she does here, it is enough. Some may find Hoelterhoff's humor catty. Perhaps it is, but it is also very funny. I laughed out loud often while reading this book. I, too, could have done with fewer fat jokes, but I also think a singer's size is a legitimate subject for commentary. He or she is, after all, a performer, and grossly excess weight can detract from the artistic impression on stage. (Can one imagine Jane Eaglen singing Madama Butterfly?)

Although nominally about mezzo-soprano superstar Cecilia Bartoli, "Cinderella and Company" is more about the Company than about Cinderella. Bartoli's fans may be disappointed, but this focus suits me fine. Bartoli is a fine artist, but she does not sound like a particularly interesting person, and she certainly has not had a career that in length, variety or artistic significance would warrant an entire book about her, except in her manager's dreams. (In fact, I had no interest in reading this book until I heard that it was about much more than C.B.) Instead, Hoelterhoff has written an inside look at the music business itself, and at the creators (manufacturers?) of superstardom in the world of opera today - the agents, promoters, publicists, record companies and opera administrators who shape public perception of opera singers and who actually get the show/singer "on the road," or on stage. Bartoli and her career are not so much the central subject of the book as they are the recurring theme in a rondo. The main characters here are the "supporting cast" behind the scenes: Herbert Breslin, the Big P.'s manager; Matthew Epstein, promoter/concert organizer extraordinare; Jack Mastroianni, Bartoli's manager; and Met director Joseph Volpe.

The "opera racket," as Virgil Thomson might have called it, has changed significantly in the past thirty years. Time was, in Ze Oldt Days, when an opera singer's reputation was actually made on the opera stage - in performance. Recordings were important to a big career, but they generally followed success in the opera house rather than preceded it. Now, "superstars" are packaged, promoted, marketed, videoed, digitized, mega-concertized (viz. the Three Tenors), and sold to a generally ignorant opera public who think that if they have seen the singer on TV, they must be hearing a great performance by a great singer. Lusty, cheering standing ovations are now common for mediocre singing. Who, we are asked breathlessly, will be the "fourth tenor?" Could it be Roberto Alagna? or is it Andrea Bocelli with his pea-sized voice that couldn't project to the back of Marie Antoinette's tiny theatre at Versailles? Are we supposed to care about this or think it is important? Lots of people with lots of money at stake would like us to think it is.

Cecilia Bartoli represents the modern opera superstar redux: a singer whose phenomenal success and fame is based largely on promotion, recordings and hype, rather than performance. To be sure, the lady has talent and a lovely, if tiny, voice, considerable charm and appeal, and a nice smile. But do the contents of the package really justify all the hoopla and hysteria? There is something out of whack, almost grotesque, about a singer receiving a roaring, standing ovation for a performance as Despina, of all roles. Underneath all the anecdotes, the witty (yes, I found them so) comments, and dishy gossip (some of it mean, but then gossip usually is), Hoelterhoff is examining how this happens, and who makes it happen. The resulting picture, though entertaining, is not a pretty one and calls to mind the old saw about how political policy is like sausage: it is best not to watch how it is made. The same could be said for much of what goes on in opera today. (Speaking of sausage, it is much to Ms. Bartoli's credit, as recounted here, that she apparently drew the line at the "Today Show" wanting to film her buying one - presumably to show that opera singers are "just folks" too.)

The most telling chapter in the book is the one entitled, "Queen of the Met." No, not Bartoli (at best, only a lady-in-waiting), but Renata Tebaldi, a real, larger-than-life diva from the past. Well over twenty years after her last appearance in New York, we see hundreds of devoted fans standing in line for hours to greet her and get her autograph. The outpouring of genuine love and devotion for Tebaldi, a truly great singer, is deeply moving and stands as a sharp rebuke to the crass, slick, shallow PR apparatus that manufactures opera celebrities today. Would Tebaldi have looked good enough on TV to have made a big career in the 1990's? After reading this book, one wonders. One thing is certain: no one would have dared ask to film her buying a sausage.

This book amused me no end, and, as one who likes opera but knows little about the opera world, I found it quite informative. I wrote this in 1999, after reading the earlier reviews, but wanted to get my name on it, so it's on top even though it belongs chronologically near the bottom.

I decided to write this note after reading all the nasty reviews by the sourballs above. If you are a sourball, don't read this book. If you aren't, you'll find that the five-star reviews are correct.

Opera is a magical world, made by mere mortals. Hoelterhoff tells us how, with wit and understanding, it's done. The talent and the foibles. And it's fun to read!

I looked forward to a gossipy read spiced with intelligent commentary on opera. Here is what I learned: feel free to harshly criticize the dead or those that you can either "get" with someone else's nasty comment or people like the Alagnas who are on the "--- list" of everyone. Oh but especially "her" the scheming wife.

Carp gently at your subject for tiny things and then show her in a good light right away---this mimics objectivity. But, do note that no one reasonable has even the teeniest bad thing to say!

Decry large fees a bit now and then, but really save your venom for "union orchestras" and workers who are destroying music or civilization or whatever....

make a note of who is really, really talented. Talk about how good they are, how dependable and how talent really, really matters (all in line with your conservative politics that you never stop spouting no matter how off-topic) and then sum up career prospects for these two or three people by pronouncing them DEAD unless they stop that "sneaky eating" that you know they must be doing. Nice hedging by claiming that it is the requirements of "theatre" to be chic---you think I listen to Pavarotti for his looks! Nope its the voice, the voice, the voice and so it will be for the women I listen to also. (BTW, your photo isn't svelte by any means)

This is how you write like Hoelterhoff---never really criticize the "star" just give a bit of tough love and go after those who cannot deny you access in the future....sad and a wast of money.

Apaprently some of the readers of "Cinderella & Company" would rather curl up with Grove. This is a endlessly witty book. Manuela Hoelterhoff is a gifted, and very funny writer, who doesn't shirk from piercing the pomposity and self-importance of the opera world. At the same time, she clearly loves the art form.

What does an author do when she doesn't have enough material to fill a book on the subject of her biography? Digress by trashing every other opera singer she can get a dig in. Is it any wonder why singers can be paranoid, neurotic, and overly sensitive? Of course her favorites, such as Tebaldi get passed over as though ram's blood was smeared on their dressing room doors. My suggestion is talk to a friend who's read the book already. They'll probably remember the nastiest digs and save you the money as well as the 15 minutes it takes to read this.