Sign-In
Cart
Reflections from the Audience: Sixty Years of Attending Thousands of Performances-and Writing About Them
Paperback
Entertainment & Performing ArtsMusiciansLiterary Criticism
ISBN13: 9781936411870
Publisher: YBK Publishers
Published: Jan 15 2024
Pages: 274
Weight: 0.81
Height: 0.58 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Les Epstein attended thousands of live performances of opera, theater, and concerts. You might say he became a collector of live performances.
What!? How does one collect live performances?
Since 1960, every time he attended a theater, concert hall, or opera house, he wrote a review-his take on what he had seen. There are about four thousand reviews in his collection, but fear not, only a very few appear in their entirety. Handwritten with a fountain pen, they are preserved in three-ring binders in his basement. He finds it impossible to explain why he wrote them. He is simply an audience member and, surely, a very dedicated fan of the arts.
About sixty years after writing his first review, a cataclysmic world pandemic occurred. Weighed against its real impact, the loss of life, closing all live performances was a minor casualty that caused him enforced exile from the audience. He remembered that he had a trove of written stuff downstairs. Maybe he could do something with it. Skimming the reviews, he realized they contained descriptions of now-legendary performances and discussions of performers who a younger generation could not have seen perform. He would write a book!
Definitely not a collection of reviews-the book, however, contains ample quotes-it is a general discussion of performances and performers, some of them world-famous, others less-known; some the author admires greatly, a few, not so much. In some cases he writes about those he never saw in performance, but who left examples of their art on film or in recordings, enabling their evaluation and comparison based on those media.
Among the rare events Les attended and reported on are Richard Burton's last performance of Hamlet on Broadway (including his curtain speech), Maria Callas's last two Metropolitan Opera performances, Janis Joplin's last public performance, Jason Robards in several O'Neill plays, and Meryl Streep's early New York appearances. You will see and hear iconic performances of such as Ethel Merman, Judy Garland, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, Zero Mostel, Patti LuPone, Victor Borge, Tony Bennett, Duke Ellington, and many more. In opera, the author tells you about such luminaries as Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, Ferruccio Tagliavini, Tito Gobbi, Franco Corelli, Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, and Placido Domingo (describing both his official and unofficial Met debuts). You can hear and see for yourself some of what Les actually heard and saw because in some cases he uses Internet linking to the very performances he attended.
If you don't follow opera, you may think you have never heard the aria Nessun Dorma from Turandot. You have. Six-year-olds have! How about a riff-by-riff comparison of it between Pavarotti and Corelli? Franco Corelli. You say you've never heard of Franco Corelli? Or heard him? You have. Hear Corelli and Pavarotti duke it out for the high notes!
What runs through the book is the author's love for the beauty of the human voice that began for him at five years of age when he first listened to the pop music that is linked and discussed, showing its progression to his opera-think. It's a book of essays that can be read and enjoyed in just that way-and, when you add the linked performances, it becomes something much more. It becomes a listening guide to your own discoveries about those times and those performers, spending as much time as you want being guided through some amazing performances.
Also in
Musicians
Smash!: Green Day, the Offspring, Bad Religion, Nofx, and the '90s Punk Explosion
Winwood, Ian
Hardcover
A Screaming Life: Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond
Tepedelen, Adem
Thayil, Kim
Hardcover
Where the Music Had to Go: How Bob Dylan and the Beatles Changed Each Other--And the World
Windolf, Jim
Hardcover
The Little Guide to Dolly Parton: It's Hard to Be a Diamond in a Rhinestone World
Hippo! Orange
Hardcover
Mahalia Jackson, Moving on Up a Little Higher: The Story of an American Civil Rights Pioneer
Tyson, Timothy B.
Williams, Mary D.
Hardcover
P Fkn R: Bad Bunny Y La Música Como Un Acto de Resistencia / P Fkn R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance
Díaz, Vanessa
Rivera-Rideau, Petra R.
Paperback
Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days
Whitfield, Bill
Beard, Javon
Hardcover
David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God: A Spiritual Meditation on His Music and Creativity
Ormerod, Peter
Hardcover
Dolly Parton Songteller: My Life in Lyrics: My Life in Lyrics
Parton, Dolly
Oermann, Robert K.
Hardcover
A Life in Lyrics: The Official Creative Legacy of Freddie Mercury
Austin, Mary
Mercury, Freddie
Hardcover
What Do You Do When You're Lonesome: The Authorized Biography of Justin Townes Earle
Bernstein, Jonathan
Hardcover
Is This It: The Never-Ending Rise and Fall of the Strokes (and Rock 'n' Roll)
Hyden, Steven
Hardcover
With a Little Help from Their Friends: The Beatles and the People Who Made Them
Maconie, Stuart
Hardcover
Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton (Large Print Edition)
Ackmann, Martha
Hardcover
Bust a Move: Matt Dike, Delicious Vinyl, and the Hip-Hop Hits That First Conquered Pop
Relic, Peter
Hardcover
It's No Wonder: The Life and Times of Motown's Legendary Songwriter Sylvia Moy
Christian, Margena A.
Hardcover
Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm
Charnas, Dan
Paperback
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles
Emerick, Geoff
Massey, Howard
Paperback
3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool
Kaplan, James
Paperback
Little Book of Elvis Presley: Inspirational Quotes from the King of Rock 'n' Roll
Croft, Rod
Hardcover
The Colonel and the King: Tom Parker, Elvis Presley, and the Partnership That Rocked the World
Guralnick, Peter
Hardcover
Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008
Payne, Chris
Paperback
The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead--The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter
Hunter, Robert
Paperback
What Happened to Your Hair?: How We Played Loud... Loved Proud... and Never Backed Down... Together
Nelson, Matthew
Nelson, Gunnar
Hardcover
Keep It Beautiful: Inside the Funkyverse of Shock G and Digital Underground
Jacobs, Gregory E.
Mbassa, Alexis Wolfe
Hardcover
Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene That Transformed Rock
Gould, Jonathan
Hardcover
Puccini Without Excuses: A Refreshing Reassessment of the World's Most Popular Composer
Berger, William
Paperback
Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah
King, Charles
Paperback
Dolly Parton: The Stories Behind the Songs: The Very Best Tracks, Explored and Explained
Zaleski, Annie
Hardcover
Elvis and Me: The True Story of the Love Between Priscilla Presley and the King of Rock N' Roll
Harmon, Sandra
Presley, Priscilla
Paperback
Loud and Clear: The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound and the Quest for Audio Perfection
Anderson, Brian
Hardcover