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Losing the Plot in Opera (Brian Castles-Onion, Exisle Publishing, $34.95 pb, ISBN 9780908988594, May) ****

The title, Losing the Plot in Opera, sets a good scene for this book. Brian Castles-Onion is one of Australia’s best conductors and pianists. He regularly conducts for the Australian Opera and has also worked at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Thus he has a great background to have written this entertaining book about the great operas and the people that bring them to the stage. His passion and wit are very evident in this book. It is a tribute to opera and is full of behind-the-scenes gossip as well as honest and humorous stories from productions involving many an opera celebrity. The chapters of the book are divided into famous operas. In each, Castles-Onion gives a short summary of the plot of the opera and these are thoroughly accessible and easy to read. He also gives insights into the opera singers that have particularly shined in each work—making their roles their own and setting a benchmark for all future performers. It is the entertaining anecdotes of these performers, conductors and directors that bought the chapters to life and kept me reading. Brian has written a fantastic little book on opera and this will really appeal to those that have an interest in opera and music. It is accessible to ‘beginners’ through to the most seasoned opera goer.

Melanie Barton is fiction category manager at Angus & Robertson

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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