Angels & Monsters: Male and Female Sopranos in the Story of Opera.(Book Review)

Angels & Monsters: Male and Female Sopranos in the Story Of Opera by Richard Somerset-Ward Yale University Press, 310 pp. $30

It takes only one soprano to change a light bulb; she stands there and holds it, while the world revolves around her. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, as Richard Somerset-Ward makes abundantly clear in this soprano's-eye view of opera history. From its genesis in the late sixteenth century through its heyday at the end of the nineteenth, opera developed according to both the prevailing style of singing and the particular gifts of its leading singers. The umbrella term "soprano" here includes history's most influential castratos, contraltos, mezzo-sopranos and high sopranos, many of whom were capable of brilliant artistry and appalling behavior in equal measure. Somerset-Ward documents their ascendancy in basic chronological order, via national and stylistic developments, neatly connecting the dots from the days when any woman who set foot onstage was branded a courtesan to the early-twentieth-century era of proto-starlets Mary Garden and Geraldine Farrar. The rise and fall of the castratos, in this context, emerges as a bridge between the two, and a look at the relationships between singers and composers such as Handel, Rossini, Mozart and Verdi casts a new light on their compositions.

The organization of content within the chapters, however, can be a bit chaotic, with threads introduced and dropped, then picked up pages later. There is a big buildup to the formidable Australian-born diva Nellie Melba, queen of Covent Garden, at the end of Chapter Seven but no real discussion of her until the end of Chapter Ten. Conclusions and descriptive phrases often are repeated, and the book threatens to sink under the weight of its superlatives. When two singers (often ...