When I was 10 I went to a Pops Concert conducted by Fiedler in San Francisco and stood in line for his autograph. I expected a Burl Ives warm-fuzzy guy. What I got was a no-nonsense, brusk, get-away-kid-you-bother-me guy. But, I still loved him and his work. It is this paradox that Fiedler's daughter writes about in her (auto)biography. But, her life is no less interesting than her father's. What you get out of this book is an insight into the life of a great artist, fueled by the conflict at home between and among his wife and children, and between his art and the orchestra personnel and administration that sometimes seemed indifferent to him. I found the book exceptional.

Back when I used to spend more summer days on the beach than at work, this book would have been considered a perfect "beach book." Anyone interested in opera in general or the Metropolitan Opera specifically, will want to read what goes into the day-to-day workings of this city within a city.

MOLTO AGITATO's subtitle says it all: "The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera." Fiedler is a witty, clever writer who keeps the pace going and although she has some obvious likes and dislikes among the stars and the office and backstage workers, she seemingly keeps her opinions on the back burner and tries, often successfully, to tell the facts. But, let's face it: the Met is a performing arts organization and, therefore every civilian who watches or listens to even one opera from the Met, becomes a financial and artistic critic.

Conductor James Levine, one of the Met's treasures, and, in fact, one of the world's musical treasures, gets the lion's share of attention and adoration, but Fielder is "relatively fair" to more famous names like Marian Anderson and Placido Domingo, Cecilia Bartoli and Beverly Sills, Maria Callas and Enrico Caruso, et al. For snide laughs, start with the gossip surrounding the firing of Kathleen Battle; for grim adventure, there is the real murder of violinist Helen Hagnes; if you believe that the Met, to survive, has got to hire more experimental directors, read about John Dexter and his defeat at Lincoln Center; if you believe that the Met, to survive, must continue to hire more lavish directors, read about Franco Zeffirelli and his opera-as-spectacle policy; if you, like most, get your only opera experience from The Three Tenors, there are pieces on all three of them and an extra long chapter on the, arguably, most famous singer of all time, Luciano Pavarotti.

I gave Molto Agitato to my wife for Christmas, then picked it up and read it in three days. It's a delightful romp through 100-plus years of the Metropolitan Opera. The folks on the opera newsgroup enjoy trashing it, but the nits they pick are mostly trivial. They also say that Ms Fielder has merely rehashed other books for the early history of the Met, but since I haven't read those, it was all news to me, with the single exception of the Vanderbilt sandpile filled with jewelery. Similarly, the new stuff was mostly a revelation, and only the story of Kathleen Battle in the back seat of her limo, telephoning her agent so that he could telephone the driver and tell him to tune the air conditioning, was a repeat to me.

By today's standards, Molto Agitato is brilliantly edited, with few or no typographical errors or solecisms.

I'd give it 5 stars except that it is clumsily organized. Any author would have problems making a coherent whole out of 100 years and dozens of personalities, but every once in a while Fieldler changes subjects so quickly or leaps out of her chronology so drastically that it's a bit bewildering. Even the ending, to me, was flat: a performance about to begin, about which we hear nothing further.

But this is the best book I've read so far, and it will serve until those smart guys on rec.music.opera write about all the nits they know.

I really loved this book. Most books about opera are somewhat staid and intellectual. Not this one. It gives you all the dirt behind the goings on at the Met. Particularly juicy are the tales about tempermental singers, most notably Kathleen Battle. The author was a press representative for the Met and her insider's knowledge is quite evident. The main flaw of the book is the first part, when the author tells some of the stories about the Met up until the Bing years. After that it is very intersting. It's like you're reading The National Enguirer, only instead of pop stars and movie celebrities, the subject is opera. I know it's not intellectual, but it's a lot of fun and very entertaining.