TY - JOUR
AU1 - Law, Joe K.
AB -  Books Alice May: Gilbert and Sullivan's First Prima Donna Adrienne Simpson New York: Routledge, 2003 224 pages, $49.95 Readers turn to life stories for a number of reasons. Traditionally, a biography or autobiography celebrates the subject's achievements, often in the face of considerable obstacles. Such texts inspire admiration and sometimes are meant to encourage emulation. In another venerable tradition, life stories are told with less noble ends, appealing more or less obviously to readers' prurient interests. Still others are obviously commercial enterprises, simultaneously promoting and capitalizing on the rising celebrity of the subject. Yet another strain of biography, the so-called critical biography, analyzes its subject's life and work in relationship to each other, and a related variety, the life-and-times biography, puts its subject into a larger historical context as well. Most singers' published life stories seem to fall into the first group, providing a calendar of the singer's engagements, a supply of enthusiastic reviews, a cache of photos in and out of costume, and some lively anecdotes. (Has any soprano ever sung "Vissi d'arte" without having her wig catch fire?) While some of these books make compelling reading, they usually provide little insight into what sets that interpretive 
TI - Alice May: Gilbert and Sullivan's First Prima Donna
JF - The Opera Quarterly
DO - 10.1093/oq/kbh061
DA - 2004-07-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/alice-may-gilbert-and-sullivan-s-first-prima-donna-1A3Rkp5vIv
SP - 441
EP - 447
VL - 20
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -