- Hardcover: 800 pages
- Publisher: Fig Tree; First Edition edition (17 Sep 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1905490151
- ISBN-13: 978-1905490158
- Product Dimensions: 23.8 x 15.8 x 5.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
289,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #34 in Books > Biography > Theatre & Performance Art > Ballet
- #79 in Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Performing Arts > Dance > Classical
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Product Description
Review
Magnificent…comprehensive and compulsively readable (Simon Callow The Guardian )
The definitive biography, a gripping account of an extraordinary life (Lynn Barber Telegraph )
She writes with flair and abundance (The Sunday Times )
Undoubtedly the definitive biography. Rudolf Nureyev, superstar, emerges in all his terribly flawed glory (Sunday Telegraph ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
The definitive biography, a gripping account of an extraordinary life (Lynn Barber Telegraph )
She writes with flair and abundance (The Sunday Times )
Undoubtedly the definitive biography. Rudolf Nureyev, superstar, emerges in all his terribly flawed glory (Sunday Telegraph ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
Magnificent...comprehensive and compulsively readable -- Simon Callow The Guardian The definitive biography, a gripping account of an extraordinary life -- Lynn Barber Telegraph She writes with flair and abundance The Sunday Times Undoubtedly the definitive biography. Rudolf Nureyev, superstar, emerges in all his terribly flawed glory Sunday Telegraph
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Kavanagh's "Nureyev" is another first-rate dance biography, fully matching her marvelous account of Frederick Ashton. Nureyev was more a great star than a great dancer, yet his impact on male ballet dancers worldwide was transformative. Before Rudi, they were mostly earthbound dullards, either crudely straight or mincingly effeminate; after Rudi, men in ballet became nearly as turned out, pulled up, and extended as ballerinas, with a protean animalism that enabled them to live gay yet seem to love their women onstage.
Unlike her predecessor Richard Buckle, whose dance bios read like transcribed engagement books, Kavanagh offers a nearly perfect balance of details and distillation, compellingly tracing arcs in her subject's life. She pays extra attention to Rudi's first years in the West, richly detailing his two key relationships--with Margot Fonteyn, whom he ignited just as she was about to retire, and with Eric Bruhn, the one dancer he would learn from and the love of his life--plus the recasting of his dancing into a fusion of Russian and Western. Rudi's restless gay life is all there, yet without prurience. Eventually he settled down, for a time, with Wallace Potts, an all-American gay boy whose goodness and devotion shine through very attractively (other acolytes followed). In these pages, Rudi lives just like a coddled star athlete: no matter how beastly his conduct, somebody always satisfies his needs and keeps his ego fully inflated. A fine biography and a great read.
Unlike her predecessor Richard Buckle, whose dance bios read like transcribed engagement books, Kavanagh offers a nearly perfect balance of details and distillation, compellingly tracing arcs in her subject's life. She pays extra attention to Rudi's first years in the West, richly detailing his two key relationships--with Margot Fonteyn, whom he ignited just as she was about to retire, and with Eric Bruhn, the one dancer he would learn from and the love of his life--plus the recasting of his dancing into a fusion of Russian and Western. Rudi's restless gay life is all there, yet without prurience. Eventually he settled down, for a time, with Wallace Potts, an all-American gay boy whose goodness and devotion shine through very attractively (other acolytes followed). In these pages, Rudi lives just like a coddled star athlete: no matter how beastly his conduct, somebody always satisfies his needs and keeps his ego fully inflated. A fine biography and a great read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This must be one of the best books on Nureyev available.The prose is excellent and the research has obviously been most comprehensively and meticulously undertaken.Brilliant.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Rudolf Nureyev, one of very few icons of 20th-century high culture who entirely transcends the art form in which he earned his fame, deserves a biography befitting his status. In Julie Kavanagh's Rudolf Nureyev: The Life he has found one. I knew next to nothing about ballet before picking up this wonderfully hefty volume. I came away from it wanting to rent every available DVD of Nureyev dancing. The author finds a way of walking the layman (or woman) through the complex technical passages, explaining exactly how his greatness grew out of a combination of cussed perfectionism and a charismatic humanity that cannot be worked up at the barre. But the exhaustively researched narrative is about so much more than dance. You turn the pages eager to discover what fresh celebrity he will befriend, which new city he will conquer, which nose he will put out of joint. It is a riveting portrait of an epically complex man - a sensitive monster, a Soviet-reared libertine who accumulated homes, money and lovers with unbridled avidity. His biographer does not flinch in the face of the bestialities, although she is also careful to attribute them to a horrific childhood and the shock to Nureyev's moral system that came with his dramatic escape to the west. The story of his rise is intoxicating. The story of his decline is almost unbearable. The dying fall of the last fifty pages, his powers bled away by arthritis and Aids till he ended up living all but ferally like Prometheus on a lonely Italian rock, counts as the most powerful climax to a biography I've ever read. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Rudolf Nureyev. The Life
The book was a present and arrived very quickly so it was in good time. It was aa very welcome present. Thank you very much for your quick service.
Published 8 months ago by E. Brissenden
Love it, love him
I'm staggered by some of the critical reviews here; I find it a very sympathetic, beautifully written and seemingly well-researched account. I fell in love with him. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Cherry Radford
Worthy without being interesting...
This is a worthy if tedious account of a great personality, whose achievements on stage pale in comparison to the impact he had off it. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Dr. G. SPORTON
Inspirational, sad
I did not expect to be so move by Nureyev's life - the narrative has a pattern which is something like "wanting and achieving goals despite all the odds and then being rejected". Read more
Published on 11 July 2009 by Jacques Dutronc
a flawed account
Julie Kavanagh seemingly had access to a number of people important in Nureyev's life who had never before spoken to a biographer. Read more
Published on 28 Jan 2008 by Judith Percival
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