That's what I thought- of course you love both! So in response to the news that Annie Proulx is writing a libretto for a Brokeback Mountain opera, here's a list of (mostly obscure) books about opera (or having something to do with opera, etc. etc.). Hey, some of them are wacky, 19th century books, so how can you go wrong?
(This list is not all-inclusive).
Gertrude Atherton, Tower of Ivory (1910)
Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark (1915)
Lydia Maria Child, A Romance of the Republic (1867)
F. Marion Crawford, Soprano: A Portrait (1905), The Primadonna (1908), and The Diva's Ruby (1908)
E. F. Ellet, Love in a Maze, or, The Debutante's Disenchantment (1865)
Edgar Fawcett, Purple and Fine Linen (1873), Mirian Balestier: A Novel (1888)
Mary Ann Fisher, A Spinster's Story (1866)
Agnes Leonard Hill, Vanquished (1867)
William J. Henderson, The Soul of a Tenor: A Romance (1912)
Fanny N. D. Murfree, Felicia (1891)
Blanche Roosevelt, Stage Struck; or, She Would Be an Opera Singer (1884)
Pitts Sanborn, Prima Donna: A Novel of the Opera (1929)
Upton Sinclair, Prince
Hagen: A Phantasy (1903)
Joseph McElroy, Women and Men (1987).
ReplyDeleteThough it's only one of the many different plot elements in the novel, there is a lot of focus on a Chilean Opera singer who is displaced after the Chilean revolution in the '70s. She has a doctor plant a tapeworm in her to lose weight. The climax of the novel also takes place during an Opera.
Try to find the novel, it's really amazing.