Elisabeth Schwarzkopf from Flower Maiden to Marschallin (Opera Biography) (Amadeus)

This book was a small dissapointment. It has very, very little text and many photos, but also many empty spaces. Half a page with a rather small photo - and then emptiness. I suppose this is a try to expose the often most beautiful pictures in the best way possible. Many photos are similiar, you can contemplate Dame Elisabeth's great beauty, but it is the same face on side after side. All in black and white. And with no comments. One can compare this book to two other picture books: Birgit Nilsson's "My memoirs in pictures" and the more recently Vittoria Crespi Morbio's "Maria Callas. The La Scala years". Nilsson's book is filled with pictures, no empty spaces here, and most important, she herself makes very interesting comments to every single picture! The book about "La Divina" also has very little text and very many pictures. But the pictures are large, mostly in colour, and shows all the costumes from her great roles at La Scala. The two latter books really have "five stars status".

Photographs were excellent but facts were sparse.

This is a beautifully presented book and well worth having for the lovely photographs. The text is interesting but not in any way a complete biography. I very much hope that a well balanced biography will appear sometime. The earlier one from Alan Jefferson does not give a fair picture of the life and work of this great artist.

This new American/English edition of the original dual-language Austrian edition of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's photo-biography, which was sold only in Austria and Germany, is especially to be treasured even by those who have that first edition since this one features new photos, a revised, expanded and re-edited text, a new discography, new tributes, and a lengthy Epilogue about the editor's last visit in Schruns, Austria, with the 90-year-old Schwarzkopf a few months before she died--full of her wisdom about singing, composers, musicians, and indeed life as seen through the eyes of the definitive Marschallin. A book that will be cherished by her fans and, one hopes, studied by future singers!

As a photographer and big fan of Madame Schwarzkopf (i photographed her in 1978 and 1981) i feel cheated , The book is a fraud because every page is a PHOTOCOPY so the quality is dreadful, Shame of you. Ruggero Pozzr