 A funny
thing happened to Sherrill Milnes along his way to becoming one of the best American Verdi
baritones of the 1960s and '70s. In fact, dozens of funny things happened; he took careful
note of them and poured them into an autobiography that will appeal to his many fans and
anyone who relishes backstage opera gossip. The anecdotes are the best part of this book:
they are abundant, sometimes mildly malicious, and often very funny--at least to those
readers who are familiar with operatic plots, personalities, and music. For casual
readers, Milnes explains why the story is funny--for example, why a tenor should have been
executed after making a mistake in Puccini's Turandot. Milnes must be read
skeptically when he calls himself shy--his ego is healthier than his voice--but he writes
well of the anxieties of an opera star's life, particularly in discussing the vocal
problems that hit him in the 1980s and that (whatever he may think) were never entirely
cured. He is indignant about the Metropolitan Opera's failure to renew his contract in
1997. They could have been more sensitive, but he should have known that he had stopped
singing reliably at the Metropolitan Opera level years before. The book has a useful
discography and a list of his most notable performances. --Joe McLellan |