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Additional Reading
After you’ve read
Bel Canto
(and experienced the opera), here are a
handful of other literary works that feature music as a major theme or motif:
The Bear Comes Home
by Rafi Zabor
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. The story of an alto saxophone-
playing bear who happens to be an improvisational genius. According to
Annie Proulx, “Rafi Zabor somehow makes the reader hear music.”
High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby
A thirty-something London record shop owner holds forth on the aesthetics
of mix-tapes with his friends and confronts his fear of commitment when his
longtime girlfriend leaves him.
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
by Oscar Hijuelos
The first novel by a U.S.-born Latino author to win a Pulitzer. Cesar Castillo
reminisces about his life as a Cuban musician in 1950s New York City,
including his fifteen minutes of fame when he and his brother appeared on
an episode of
I Love Lucy.
Music and Silence
by Rose Tremain
British lutenist Peter Claire arrives in Copenhagen in 1629 to join the orchestra
of King Christian IV. Love, court intrigue, and soaring music. Winner of Britain’s
prestigious Whitbread Award.
The Song of the Lark
by Willa Cather
Portrait of the artist as a young woman. Against the backdrop of the late 19
th
century American West, an ambitious and gifted young singer pursues her
dreams.
A
Bel Canto
Reading List (Books the
Bel Canto
artists used along the way):
A Working Friendship: the Correspondence between Richard Strauss and
Hugo Von Hofmannsthal
Renée Fleming sent this book to Jimmy López in the early stages of his
collaboration with librettist Nilo Cruz. In López’s words: “One has the
impression that Hofmannsthal’s delicate phrasing is always at the brink of
breaking apart against Strauss’s direct and blunt manner of expression. That
they understood each other is already a miracle, but that they were able
to create such a string of masterpieces is truly astounding. Perhaps these
differences are what made their collaborations so richly varied. In any case,
it does make for a great read and it fully reveals the inner workings along the
process of creating an opera.”
The Magic Mountain
by Thomas Mann
A young man visits his cousin at a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. When he is
diagnosed with symptoms of tuberculosis, he extends his stay and becomes
acquainted with the other patients. A meditation on time, illness, music, and
much more. Patchett has said
Bel Canto
is really an homage to
The Magic
Mountain
, a book she credits with inspiring her desire to become a writer
when she read it at age fourteen.
Opera 101
by Fred Plotkin
Patchett’s bible while working on
Bel Canto
:
“It tells you how to listen and
what to listen to. It takes you through everything you need to know step by
step.”
“He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music.”
—Ann Patchett,
Bel Canto