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Title: Giulietta Simionato: How Cinderella Became Queen (Great Voices, No 4) by Jean-Jacques Hanine-Roussel, Samuel Chase, Teresa Brentegani, Albert Miner, Adriana Miner, Jean-Jacques Hanine Roussel, Jean-Jacques Hanine Vallaut ISBN: 1-880909-49-9 Publisher: Baskerville Publishers, Inc. Pub. Date: March, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00

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Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Critics' Reviews
Comment: This book is not what you would think of as a biography. If you want to find out about Giulietta the woman, you will not find much here. If you want to read the critics' reviews from every performance, then this is the book for you. There is an occasional bit about something interesting that happened to her, but not much. The tribute chapter tells more about her than the bulk of the work, and the cd is definitely worth the price of the book!
I hope that one day the Bastianini book is translated into English and becomes available in the USA. What little I've read of it shows it to be more what I personally like in a biography.

Rating: 3
Summary: more tribute than biography
Comment: First of all, I've read other "Great Voices" biographies and they do not
pretend to be very scholarly, or delve very deeply into the personal lives
of the singers. They are less 'biographies' than 'loving tributes'. There
are some great pictures, loving reminisces, glowing accounts of illustrius
careers, and only the briefest sketches of personal life. Pesky things like
vocal decline, feuds, scandals, and other unpleasantries are for the most part
ignored and mentioned only obliquely. Simionato's biography is on its own
terms rather charming. There are great reminisces and tributes by lots and
lots of colleagues, wonderful pictures (i was shocked by just how large her
repertoire was), and some good reviews. There's a full chronology of her
career. Predictably, her bitter rival Fedora Barbieri is never mentioned,
and nothing is mentioned of her vocal decline. We are led to believe the
only reason she retired was because of her marriage. Listening to
Simionato's recordings at that time I hear a large hole developing in the
middle of her voice, and she often sounded raspy and colorless. Her top was
as brilliant as ever. The author also gives us the impression that every man
who ever met Giulietta fell madly in love with her -- her three marriages
are mentioned in a sort of vague, sentimental way. One of the more
interesting aspects of Giulietta's life is never delved into very deeply:
her childhood. Seems she had an abusive mom. But maybe the diva simply did
not wish for such things to be mentioned in great detail.
Overall this is a nice sentimental tribute to one of my favorite singers.
But it often felt like a cupcake, with the slightly hollow aftertaste --
there's very little sense of who Giulietta really is.