“New York’s Opera Society” is based upon a group of friends who like the title suggests live in New York City and are not only opera fanatics but have dreams and ambitions that revolve around opera. The main character’s name is Bill Albert a German American who thanks to his mother a currently semi-retired opera singer turned singing instructor decided to study singing at the New York School of Music. Bill’s mother Getty, is also a woman who has ambitions of her own as she is striving to be on the board of directors at the Metropolitan Opera House with the intensions of modernizing it.
Bill also has a group of friends one of them being his ex-girlfriend Amanda Johnson, a young lady who desires nothing but to become a great opera diva like her idol “Maria Callas”. Amanda’s fiancée is Arturo Gomez, a Colombian who studies conducting and has his sights are set on someday replacing James Levine as the artistic director at the New York Metropolitan Opera House. Bill’s circle of friend’s also includes Barbara Radniecki, a Polish American young lady who seeing that she would never be a great opera soprano opted to become a mezzo-soprano feeling that it would be better for her career. Like Amanda, Barbara also has a love interest and in her case he is a Hungarian American whose name is Brad Naggy but unlike the rest of the group does not have any musical ambitions fore his are set in the banking world.
It is during the course of the events in this book that Bill meets Gosia in a Polish diner while on his way to the first opera performance of the season. Gosia just happens to be working as a waitress but in reality is a student at “Julliard School of Music” where she is about to start her studies. Gosia and Bill take an immediate liking to one another as they embark on a romantic interlude that would see Gosia join “New York’s Opera Society”.
“New York’s Opera Society” also includes other characters such as Anna, Gosia’s Polish friend who also captures Bill’s eye for not only her charm but interpretive dancing of an opera aria he and Amanda are singing at the opening of opera season party which serves as the finale to our story. It is also while hosting this party which has Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras, Jessie Norman, James Levine, Kiri Te Ka Nawa and Yo-Yo Ma among its guests that Bill is finally introduced to the Russian couple of Svetlana and Vladimir whose reputations as rising stars in the world of opera and classical precede them. Vladimir as a last year student is already one of New York’s most gifted young pianist whose virtuosity rivals that of the late Vladimir Horowitz while his slightly older wife Svetlana is already a singer in the Metropolitan Opera. It is not only talent that draws Bill to this couple specially Svetlana who makes a tremendous impression on him by how much tenderness and passion she pours in to her story of how she failed in her attempt at becoming a ballet dancer but was consoled by her loving babushka who told her perhaps her talent traveled along different highways.
“New York’s Opera Society” even has a scene in which Bill meets the great maestro Placido Domingo at a well known locale called “Tavern on the Green” where he exclaims to Domingo that he felt his recent performance of “Gotterdammerung” was not substandard but was definitely not one of his best. It is this constructive criticism that Domingo being the great he is not only does not take as an insult but as the helpful opinion of a friend.
“New York’s Opera Society” does not however limit itself to telling a story of opera aficionados but also makes an attempt to go deeper in to the inner world that is New York Opera, exploring behind the scenes. Exposing how these grand opera productions are sponsored and not always for the sake of art but for business sakes as there are many large companies that which to tap in to New York’s opera society’s not only culturally rich crowed but financially as well.
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