Description: In "Cinderella & Company," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Manuela Hoelterhoff takes us on a two-year trip on the circuit with Cecilia Bartoli, the young mezzo-soprano who has captured an adoring public around the world. Rossini's Cenerentola is Bartoli's signature role, and "Cinderella & Company" tells the fairy-tale story of her life, which started on a modest street in Rome where the Fiat was the coach of choice. The lucky break, the meteoric rise, the starlit nights and nail-chewing days, are all part of a narrative that shows Bartoli rehearsing, playing, traveling, and charming us with her vivacity and dazzling virtuosity.

Along the way, Hoelterhoff gives us an unusually vivid behind-the-scenes look at the opera world. The first stop is Houston, where Bartoli brightens a droopy Cenerentola production; later scenes follow her to Disney World and to the Metropolitan Opera, where a fidgety cast awaits the flight-phobic mezzo's arrival for Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. Here too are tantalizing glimpses of divinities large and small: Kathleen Battle's fatuously chilly limousine ride; Placido Domingo flying through three time zones to step into the boots of an ailing Otello; Luciano Pavarotti aiming for high C in his twilight years. And we meet the present players in Bartoli's world: Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu, a.k.a. the Love Couple; Jane Eaglen, the Wagnerian web potato monitoring her cyberspace fan mail; the appealing soprano Renee Fleming, finally on the brink of stardom. At once informed and accessible, "Cinderella & Company" brings the world of grand opera into sharp focus -- right up to the last glimpse of Cecilia Bartoli waving triumphantly from Cinderella's wedding cake.

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