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Review
'Wonderfully innovative, creative and fun' The Times
'Winterson's stellar cast delivers plenty of incident as well as atmosphere to power this upbeat collection' Financial Times.
'Offers a glimpse of how the inspirational and the creative juices interact' Spectator.
'Soars to some hugely enjoyable climaxes' Irish Times.
'Winterson's stellar cast delivers plenty of incident as well as atmosphere to power this upbeat collection' Financial Times.
'Offers a glimpse of how the inspirational and the creative juices interact' Spectator.
'Soars to some hugely enjoyable climaxes' Irish Times.
Review
Lynne Truss's chilling little version of The Turn of the Screw is funny and pointed Kate Atkinson, who has the quasi-musical ability to write narrative voices in counterpoint, gives us a witty and touching duet between celebrity culture and La Traviata Atkinson brilliantly combines sentimental appeal and a deadpan tone Toby Litt's The Ghost raises the hairs on the back of your neck a varied and enjoyable collection' Times Literary Supplement. The strongest and wittiest anthology of short fiction to appear for years: a superior selection box of irresistible delights' The Tablet.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this because it should have been perfect combining Opera and Literature but I was very disappointed.
Imagine Orpheus and Eurydice without The Overture, Che farò senza Euridice? and Trionfi Amore ie. leaving all the dull bits and this is what you have here.
I can't remember a particular highlight although Kate Mosse's story was quite good. The lowest point was Ali Smith's reworking of Fidelo with Porgy and Bess which was a terrible story, as boring as it could have been. (Digressing a bit - later I would read other Ali Smith short stories to find this is a recurrent theme in her writing. In shear desperation to seem clever she writes boring stories to show you how stupid you are for not being entertained. "A game on TV where people try and make words from letters" for example.)
I hoped that Antonia Fraser would have done some non-fiction (and by the way, Antonia Fraser is my favourite person - ever.) This would have been more interesting than her Mills and Boon style story in this. And Colm Toibin's token gay story is just not interesting, not fun, not clever, not worth reading.
Of course these are just a few examples of the many totally bland stories in this book, brought to you by (mostly) great authors who seem as if they couldn't be bothered. This is obviously sad, not only because it cost me 20 quid but in theory most of the people writing here are good and working on the original Opera stories could have been brilliant. It's certainly a good idea, but it alas! fails miserably. What could have been an expression of high art, in reality, is an exercise in turning wonderful, pretentious, fantastically difficult Opera into Eastenders.
I say no encore editing Ms WInterson.
Imagine Orpheus and Eurydice without The Overture, Che farò senza Euridice? and Trionfi Amore ie. leaving all the dull bits and this is what you have here.
I can't remember a particular highlight although Kate Mosse's story was quite good. The lowest point was Ali Smith's reworking of Fidelo with Porgy and Bess which was a terrible story, as boring as it could have been. (Digressing a bit - later I would read other Ali Smith short stories to find this is a recurrent theme in her writing. In shear desperation to seem clever she writes boring stories to show you how stupid you are for not being entertained. "A game on TV where people try and make words from letters" for example.)
I hoped that Antonia Fraser would have done some non-fiction (and by the way, Antonia Fraser is my favourite person - ever.) This would have been more interesting than her Mills and Boon style story in this. And Colm Toibin's token gay story is just not interesting, not fun, not clever, not worth reading.
Of course these are just a few examples of the many totally bland stories in this book, brought to you by (mostly) great authors who seem as if they couldn't be bothered. This is obviously sad, not only because it cost me 20 quid but in theory most of the people writing here are good and working on the original Opera stories could have been brilliant. It's certainly a good idea, but it alas! fails miserably. What could have been an expression of high art, in reality, is an exercise in turning wonderful, pretentious, fantastically difficult Opera into Eastenders.
I say no encore editing Ms WInterson.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Operatic Hits and Misses
4 Feb 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
A collection of short stories commissioned for the Glyndebourne Festival includes submissions by some of today's leading UK authors. Each story is intended to spin off the themes of operas both well and not so well known. This proves an interesting concept as part of the fun of reading this book is to figure out which operas are represented in each story. For the most part, this is not a challenge as the majority of these stories identify the opera in question straight off. Taken as a whole, this is an uneven volume. Fortunately, with an anthology of short stories, the reader can pick and choose. Some stories rise to significant heights, eg, "My Lovely Countess" (Le Nozze di Figaro), "First Snow" (Eugen Onegin), "First Lady of Song" (Makropoulos Affair). Others make you wonder, why bother?: "Fidelio and Bess,"(Fidelio and Porgy and Bess), "To Die For" (La Traviata), and "Forget my fate" (Dido and Aeneas) However, there is one real gem in this collection, "Freedom," which relates an apochryphal story of the great Irish tenor John McCormack. In it, he performs a little known opera "Natoma" (about native Americans) to a tribe of real native Americans in the Western Plains. This book will appeal primarily to operaphiles as many of the insider references will simply seem obscure to most readers. As an aid to the latter group,the appendix lists synopses of the cited operas as well as brief bios of the contributing authors. Despite some caveats, there is enjoyment to be found in this book and if you don't care for the writing, there are some great cartoons in its mid-section.
Summer reading for (some) operaphile(s)
19 July 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I don't really know what qualifies as "summer reading," but I'll bet this collection comes close. As you would expect with any anthology, this one is spotty. Some very good stories, even one or two worth re-reading; others something less than up to their author's par, but no real clunkers. I recommend suspending any expectation you may have for any given story to reflect something of the opera that supposedly inspired it. About five or six stories into the book, I discovered that giving up that notion and just going along for the ride gave certain of them more heft. Some of these pieces make me wonder if their authors have ever darkened the door of an opera house (or even listened to recordings or their selected jumping-off point), however.
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