| Contents |
The castrati: lungs of men, voices of women -- Angelica Catalani: pyrotechnics and greed -- A digression on travel, the industrial revolution, and related matters -- Giuditta Pasta, Maria Malibran, Henrietta Sontag, and Giulia Grisi: bel canto -- Giovanni-Battista Rubini, Mario, and Luigi Lablache: Bengal rockets, sweetness, and cannonades -- A digression on money -- Nicolo Paganini: spawn of the devil -- Franz Liszt: the eagle of the piano -- Jenny Lind: the moral lady -- Joseph Joachim: the incorruptable -- Anton Rubinstein: Russian elemental -- Adelina Patti: the queen of song -- Jean and Edouard de Reszke: the singing brothers -- Ignaz Paderewski: the aureoled Pole -- Pablo de Sarasate, Eugene Ysaye, Jan Kubelik, and Fritz Kreisler: a quartet of violinists -- Nellie Melba: the singing machine -- Enrico Caruso: the tenor of tenors -- Josef Hofmann: the Polish keyboard master -- Sergei Rachmaninoff: the Russian master -- John McCormack: Irish gold -- Feodor Chaliapin: bass from Mother Russia -- Arturo Toscanini: the maestro -- Jascha Heifetz: unruffled perfection -- Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior: the two Wagnerians -- Arthur Rubinstein: joie de vivre -- Vladimir Horowitz: electrical energy -- Maria Callas: the will to succeed -- Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, and Georg Solti: timebeaters three -- Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo: mano a mano. |
