Customer Reviews

Diva: Great Sopranos and Mezzos Discuss Their Art

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I have borrowed Diva from the library - I hate to return it so...I plan to buy this book, so I can read it over and over. As an aspiring opera singer - it has been not only helpful but, inspirational. It is not only interesting to read about how each singer got her start, it is also enlightening to read about the repetoire they choose to sing, the when and the why of it.

This is an enjoyable read, even if you don't plan to study opera. If you just want to understand why people love opera- or why others love to sing it, if you want to know how these women became Diva's, or about the triumphs and the failures they experienced....and just a little about their interesting lives, then this book is for you. It makes me want to know more about each of them.

Also, Ticket to the Opera is another enjoyable book. (If you are new to being an Opera buff).

When I bough this book, I expected more than a huge list of gossips about my favourite opera singers. In deed this book is a summary of interviews made to the most famous female opera singer. Here, you can find their feelings, their thoughts, their points of view of their principal characterisations in a very interesting way. I was very pleased to find this book. But, I felt the author gave diverse and different deepness to these interviews, in addition you can feel which are the author's favourite singers. This is difficult to cope like a reader because you have your own favourite ones. I would have preferred a more balanced document. There are weird things in some chapters. You ask yourself why doesn't the author ask Joan Sutherland more about her Lucias and Normas? I miss chapter dedicated to Birgit Nilssen, Leonie Rysanek, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Regine Crespin, Retana Tebaldi, Marilyn Horne. In some aspects, this book could cope my expectations, but in others it couldn't.

Ms. Matheopoulos' tome "Diva" is very impressive; however, one cannot write a book on the most famous sopranos and mezzos wihtout including the presence of, arguably, the greatest human voice of the last half of the 20th century, Marilyn Horne. The absence of this inclusion delimits the importance of the book in question. What is the answer, Ms. Matheopoulos?