Opera Wars

Blunt, irreverent, and at times delightfully subversive, Opera Wars spotlights opera’s colorful and sometimes warring personalities, increasingly fierce controversies over content, and the battles being waged for its economic future—a “colorful, witty look behind the velvet curtain” (Renée Fleming).

Drawing on interviews with dozens of opera insiders—as well as her own experience as an award-winning librettist, trained vocalist, opera company director, and arts commentator—Caitlin Vincent “gives us the insider’s backstage view” (Financial Times), deftly unraveling clichés and presumptions. She exposes such debates as how much fidelity is owed to long-dead opera composers whose plots often stir racial and gender sensitivities, whether there’s any cure for typecasting that leaves talented performers out of work and other performers chained to the same roles, and what explains the bizarre kowtowing of opera companies to the demands of traditionalist patrons.

Vincent never shrinks from depicting the industry’s top-to-bottom messiness and its stubborn resistance to change. Yet, like a lover who can’t quite break away, she always comes back to her veneration for the artform, and in these pages—"suitable for young operaphiles-in-training and budding sopranos alike” (The Wall Street Journal)—she stirringly evokes those moments on stage that can be counted on to make ardent fans of the most skeptical.