Through 50 personal essays, maestro Patrick Summers has woven a tapestry showcasing opera's many threads and colors across the centuries into today.

It might seem strange to think in terms of fabric art to describe musical performance art, but this collection shows how many different arts comprise the whole. The author has devoted his career to opera, so he understands not only backstage logistics and onstage glory but the myriad connections in between.

His stories include profiles of opera stars past and present, along with composers, teachers, and the works behind them. He also reveals how American Broadway musicals link to the European opera tradition.

Each essay-thread stands on its own and can be read in any order. Combined, they form an enlightening picture of an artistic life.

Excerpt from the Foreword by Renée Fleming:

"How rewarding it is to have a buffet of operatic remembrances and insights served up by Patrick Summers! His passion for the subject is irresistible. No matter which chapter you sample first, you will appreciate his erudition, his bracing wit, and his openhearted embrace of opera's most profound challenges and rewards.

"You will learn about the art form's genesis, its masterpieces, joys, absurdities, traditions, and stars…be treated to some delightful detours into theater, film, literature, popular culture, and world travel…meet the imposing voice teacher Margaret Harshaw, whose imprint on American singing is indelible, and in whose studio Patrick found himself as an awestruck teenage pianist. You'll learn how visionary interpreters, both onstage and off, unlock new meanings in a four-hundred-year-old tradition. And you'll get to know the rising composers, like Matt Aucoin, who are creating the operas that will shape the future of the art.…

"Above all, you will share the transformative experiences that made an exceptionally talented boy from Loogootee, Indiana…into one of opera's most brilliant practitioners."

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