The King and I

The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti's Rise to Fame by His Manager, Friend and Sometime Adversary

By: Anne Midgette, Herbert Breslin

Narrated by: Chris Lutkin

This is the story of the 36-year-old business relationship between Luciano Pavarotti and his manager, Herbert Breslin, during which Breslin guided what he calls, justifiably, “the greatest career in classical music”. During that career, Breslin moved Pavarotti out of the opera house and onto the concert (and the world) stage and into the arms of a huge mass public.

How he and Pavarotti changed the landscape of opera is one of the most significant and entertaining stories in the history of classical music, and Herbert Breslin relates the tale in a brash, candid, witty fashion that is often bitingly frank and profane. He also provides a portrait of his friend and client - “a beautiful, simple, lovely guy who turned into a very determined, aggressive, and somewhat unhappy superstar” - that is by turns affectionate and satirical and full of hilarious details and tales out of school, with Pavarotti emerging as something like the ultimate Italian male. The book is also enlivened by the voices of other players in the soap-opera drama that was Pavarotti’s career, and they are no less uncensored than Herbert Breslin. The last word, in fact, comes from none other than Luciano Pavarotti himself!

The King and I is the ultimate backstage book about the greatest opera star of the past century—and it’s a delight to listen to as well.

©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Interesting, but could have been so much better

My book club read this title, and I cringed almost from the start. Firstly, Breslin complains about egos in the opera world, but his was outsized as well. He wrote things like, “Most of the best things that were happening in classical music at the time were coming through me.” Pompous much? He also gets in some backhanded compliments and thinly-veiled digs, to the effect of, say what you want about Kiri Te Kanawa, she isn’t much of a talent, but audiences love her. Breslin would have done himself a service by resisting the urge to backbite and keeping things professional. That said, the book did provide an interesting glimpse into the world of opera and how it works, as well as into the career of Luciano Pavarotti.

Secondly, the writing is stilted, and the narration worse. A narrator should be able to properly pronounce the words in the book, including the names of operas. At times, the narrator sounded like a monotone third grader reading his “what I did on my summer vacation” paper.

Book was lovely. Narrator couldn’t pronounce text.

I enjoyed the book but it was very distracting to hear the reader fumble all the foreign names and titles.

Someone Else Should Have Narrated This Title

Sadly, the narrator's mispronunciation of singers' names and the names of operas made for an irritating listening experience over almost 11 hours. For example, he pronounced Montserrat Caballé as Montserrat CaballAH. He pronounced Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Fischer-DAskau. His rendition of the names of operas and cities in Italy were similarly butchered. Someone else, with a working knowledge of opera and the languages in which they are sung, should have narrated this title.