Customer Reviews

Nelson Eddy: The Opera Years

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Nelson Eddy was the lead baritone for the Philadelphia Opera Co. for over a dozen years before he made a film. It is regretable that he is remembered for 16 motion pictures rather than the operas he sang so beautifully in. This book has all the reviews,showing how the critics loved him,and the responses of the audiences who could never get enough of the young, multi talented baritone. The book covers those first 12 years of his opera career, and shows him to be the first successful cross over artist, going smoothly from opera to popular music without missing a beat.

For those who think, like I do, that Nelson Eddy was America's Greatest Baritone, this book is a must. You see how hard Nelson worked to get to the top of his profession, starting with his first professional performance. Sometimes he sang 2 or 3 times a week, and all the reviews and interviews are here. If he had a cold or was flirting onstage with his singing co-star, it's all here. I liked the reproductions from his scrapbooks with his personal comments. After reading the excerpts from Nelson's Chaliapin screenplay, I'm sorry he never had a chance to make that movie. The coverage of Jeanette MacDonald's opera career was equally thorough and interesting, since people tend to diss her (apparently unfairly)as an opera singer. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in either star or in the history of 20th Century American opera.

The collection of reviews which forms the main body of the book is useful to have. I thought the short biographical section to be short on hard facts and angledto infer a love affair between Nelson and Jeanette.
Margaret Blair

I think Ms. Rich must have found every review that was ever published. A large portion of the book is reproductions of and copied reviews. I'm sure this was done to flesh out the meager supply of eyewitness and recollections of Mr. Eddy's years prior to 1935 when he first appeared in Naughty Marietta. I liked it and it was a needed reference to supplement Ms. Rich's definitive "Sweethearts".