Sam Staggs: Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard & Johanna Fiedler: Molto Agitato; The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera

I’ve put these two books together for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, each deals with a big passion of mine - viz opera and cinema. And while each book deals, ostensibly, with just one item/topic - a film, an opera house, - they are very far from being small-scale and insular. Molto Agitato manages to give something of a (NYC-centric admittedly) history of an aspect of a certain type of music in the USA while Boulevard, by dint of the film chosen and the people who worked on it, actually gives something of a brief Grand Tour of the Hollywood machine through films, locations, companies, studio bosses and stars.

The other factor that they have in common is their style and approach. They are both written in a very easy-to-read popular journalism style. Some might cruelly say they are largely gossip-based and while there might be an element of truth in this (if by gossip you mean individual stories about people, places, films etc etc told in a vigorously entertaining style, then, yes they are gossipy - but in a very good way). Both tell riveting stories and the anecdotes and comments that sparkle through both books really bring the topics alive. But this should not lead one to assume that they are just recycled cut-and-paste gossip column collections. The (insider) knowledge is there and the authors have done much research. Perhaps in some areas the research could have been more carefully verified, perhaps in others a little to much weight is given to unsubstantiated remarks, but, by and large, the material is very sound.

Great reads then, both of these…