Licia Fiol-Matta traces the careers of four iconic Puerto Rican singers—Myrta Silva, Ruth Fernández, Ernestina Reyes, and Lucecita Benítez—to explore how their voices and performance style transform the possibilities for comprehending the figure of the woman singer. Fiol-Matta shows how these musicians, despite seemingly intractable demands to represent gender norms, exercised their artistic and political agency by challenging expectations of how they should look, sound, and act. Fiol-Matta also breaks with conceptualizations of the female pop voice as spontaneous and intuitive, interrogating the notion of "the great woman singer" to deploy her concept of the "thinking voice"—an event of music, voice, and listening that rewrites dominant narratives. Anchored in the work of Lacan, Foucault, and others, Fiol-Matta's theorization of voice and gender in The Great Woman Singer makes accessible the singing voice's conceptual dimensions while revealing a dynamic archive of Puerto Rican and Latin American popular music.

Surveys the work of thirty-eight great singers

In his previous books about singers, John Steane has taken for his subject the art of singing as heard on records (The Grand Tradition) and 'in the flesh' in opera houses and concert halls (Voices, Singers and Critics). Here, in Singers of the Century, he turns to the singers themselves, seeing how their art develops with the opportunities of their professional lives, with chance and design playing their part and all likely to be at the mercy of some quirk of taste or character. Each study is a carefully worked vignette, and the book is illustrated throughout with photographs and memorabilia, many never before published. Singers of the Century will appeal to all those with a love of singing and of music writing at its best.

An extensive biographical and critical survey of more than 300 jazz and popular singers is comprised of provocative, opinionated essays that incorporate the views of peers, fans and critics while assessing key movements and genres.

Wonderful compilation of advice and instruction from operatic immortals: Nellie Melba on voice training and preservation, Alma Gluck on building a vocal repertoire, Geraldine Farrar on the will to succeed, plus contributions from Caruso, Galli-Curci, Garden, Lehmann, many more. Indispensable for singers and any opera lover. Cooke, long-time editor of Etude Magazine, provides an Introduction. 24 photographs.

To perform well in today's highly competitive world where technical skills have been advanced to an unprecedented degree, a singer must be able to handle incredible pressure within the performing arena; his or her ability to deal with this stress will often determine whether he or she will succeed. Why, then, do singers with less technical skill sometimes out-perform stars? Why do some stars suddenly stop performing? What is that mysterious factor that makes an electric performance? Consistent, competent performances do not depend solely upon superior vocal skills, nor are they a matter of luck. On the contrary, the best performances result from a combination of mental attitude, concrete performing skills, and excellent technical skills in that order. Yet most singers have never had the opportunity to acquire the essential skills that make for a successful career.Written as a self-help manual for singers at all levels of expertise, Power Performance for Singers is designed to teach performing artists, and especially singers, how to experience elite performance at their level. The skills outlined in this book will help singers use what they have, to enjoy their voices during performance, and to perform consistently to the best of their present ability.

There is often a dichotomy between the academic approach to singing that voice students learn in the studio and what professional singers do on the operatic and concert stage. Great singers at the top of the performing profession achieve their place with much analysis and awareness of their technique, art, interpretation and stagecraft that goes far beyond academic study and develops over years of experience, exposure, and the occasional embarrassing error. Master Singers brings these insights to the student, teacher, and emerging professional singer, giving them many needed signs and signals along the road to achieving their own artistry and established career. Through interviews with some of today's most accomplished and renowned concert and operatic singers, including Stephanie Blythe, David Daniels, Joyce DiDonato, Denyce Graves, Thomas Hampson, Jonas Kaufmann, Simon Keenlyside, and Ewa Podles', Master Singers provides vocalists making the transition from student to professional with indispensable advice on matters ranging from technique and its practical application for effective stage projection to the practicalities of the business of professional singing and maintaining a career to recommendations for vocal hygiene and longevity in singing. Rather than relying on a traditional one-singer-at-a-time structure, Donald George and Lucy Mauro distill answers to a range of essential, probing questions into a thematic approach, creating not a standard interview book but a true reference for emerging professional singers. An indispensable resource and reliable guide, Master Singers will find its place on the bookshelf of singers of this generation and the next.

Take a tour through the wilder side of art history, and discover true tales of murder, forgery, and trickery—featuring jaw-dropping profiles over 30 iconic artists like Leonardo Da Vinci and Salvadori Dalí. With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Edward Hopper, Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy and gritty history behind the great masters of international art. Here, you’ll learn that Michelangelo’s body odor was so bad, his assistants couldn’t stand working for him; that Vincent van Gogh sometimes ate paint directly from the tube; and Georgia O’Keeffe loved to paint in the nude. This is one art history lesson you’ll never forget!