Description: Opera has never been more popular in America, and American singers are fixtures on every leading opera stage throughout the world. In this lively and engrossing book, Peter G. Davis, music critic and leading opera authority, recounts how these supremely talented American singers have transformed this venerable European-born art form and made it their own.

Davis shows how over the years American singers have grown in sophistication and stature along with their country. From the nineteenth-century pioneers who crashed the gates of Europe's elite opera circles, to the glamorous singers of the early twentieth century, to those performers since World War II who have not only gained European acceptance but now dominate the art, this spirited and highly readable account chronicles the extraordinary world of these flamboyant personalities. Stories of Maria Callas, Marilyn Horne, Lawrence Tibbett, Richard Tucker, and hundreds more are as dramatic and compelling as the roles they sang onstage. Full of prima-donna antics, hilarious backstage anecdotes, and performance lore, "The American Opera Singer" is a delight for anyone who has felt the magic of opera.

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