I first read Edith Hamilton‘s classic book on Greek mythology about sixty years ago.

What better beach read than a juicy diva autobiography?

The earliest days of recording told by F.W. Gaisberg, the man who recorded Patti, Melba, Moreschi, and Tamagno among many others.

(What else?)

Not really an opera book but, c’mon, it’s Bach.

I did not expect Dorothy Kirsten‘s autobiography to be so rewarding a read: I did so twice.

A juicy, guilty pleasure read!

According to the memoirs of Alma Mahler, her third husband, Franz Werfel used to wander around the cafés of Paris with one of his chums, singing arias from obscure Verdi operas at the top of their lungs until the management would ask them to move on.

Giovanni Verga‘s short story (which he adapted as a play with Giuseppe Giacosa) provides the basis for Mascagni‘s famous opera.

Alex Ross wrote an exciting, gorgeously detailed examination of, for better or worse, Ricky’s far reaching influence on music, theatre, architecture, film, literature, mental illness, Satanism, Homosexuality, and rough sex.

Vishnevskaya writes rather as she sings.