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243 pages + discography + 80 pages of photos.
6 x 9 hardcover.
Includes an audio CD featuring 18 rare live recordings.
ISBN: 1-880909-71-5
Autobiography by Marilyn Horne with Jane Scovell, with a preface by Terence McNally
Like other books in our series, this one attempts to memorialize a great singer's achievements-in particular, Marilyn Horne's range of characterization (extensive, as our photos will testify), and her stylistic fluency in operas by composers as different as Handel and Leoncavallo, Rossini and Verdi, Vivaldi and Berg (as revealed by her discography and the attached CD); finally, her life story shows us the artist and teacher, mother and friend, in words that are frequently generous, but sometimes harsh, in keeping with the unabashed honesty that is one of her outstanding personal qualities.
As a singer Horne achieved great consistency without mechanicalness, great diversity without superficiality, and she was one of few singers ever who could be both charmingly unaffected and magisterial-in the course of an operatic evening or just an aria. As a singer, then, it sometimes appeared that there was nothing she couldn't do; as a mother, however—or as a wife, or as a woman who could be swept off her feet, or troubled by an unkind word—Horne was sometimes fragile or disconsolate and emotionally quite distant from her public persona as a confident performer fearlessly taking on new challenges. In fact "General Horne," as she came to be called for her many trouser roles, spent lots of time in the trenches. One senses that she gave just as generously of her heart to the people she encountered there as she did of her talent to those who paid to hear her sing. So let the song continue, and let the story continue, and the giving, and the sharing. Let us rally to the boldness and cheerfulness in Marilyn's story, still giving the quiet passages a chance-and never forgetting that the story is far from over.
Horne's Bradford, PA, origins are discussed in the book, along with the influence of her Dutch-American parents, her years in California as a teenager and student, and her career, which has led Terence McNally, in the foreward, to agree with her designation as "the greatest singer in the world."
Critical Acclaim
“...Enjoy these eye-dropper servings of the Horne persona. What’s even better, this incarnation of the book contains a CD of private Horne tapes, including lots of atypical repertoire from the early years of heart-stopping vocal opulence.” – Opera News, July 2004
“This is quite a book; a gutsy, earthy, direct, passionate testament of an artist’s love for her art and her life.” – Schuyler Chapin, former General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera
About the Co-author
Journalist Jane Scovell has published articles in a great many magazines and major dailies, including the New York Times and the Boston Globe. She has collaborated with celebrities such asElizabeth Taylor, Ginger Rogers, Maureen Stapleton and Kitty Dukakis and had a recent success with a biography of Oona O’Neill Chaplin. She has also been a teacher of college courses in opera and film. |
