The glorious ones : classical music's legendary performers / by Schonberg, Harold C.

Table of Contents: “…The castrati : lungs of men, voices of women -- Angelica Catalani : pyrotechnics and greed -- A digression on travel, the industrial revolution, and related matters -- Giuditta Pasta, Maria Malibran, Henrietta Sontag, and Giulia Grisi : bel canto -- Giovanni-Battista Rubini, Mario, and Luigi Lablache : Bengal rockets, sweetness, and cannonades -- A digression on money -- Nicolò Paganini : spawn of the devil -- Franz Liszt : the eagle of the piano -- Jenny Lind : the moral lady -- Joseph Joachim : the incorruptable -- Anton Rubinstein : Russian elemental -- Adelina Patti : the queen of song -- Jean and Edouard de Reszke : the singing brothers -- Ignaz Paderewski : the aureoled Pole -- Pablo de Sarasate, Eugène Ysaÿe, Jan Kubelik, and Fritz Kreisler : a quartet of violinists -- Nellie Melba : the singing machine -- Enrico Caruso : the tenor of tenors -- Josef Hofmann : the Polish keyboard master -- Sergei Rachmaninoff : the Russian master -- John McCormack : Irish gold -- Feodor Chaliapin : bass from Mother Russia -- Arturo Toscanini : the maestro -- Jascha Heifetz : unruffled perfection -- Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior : the two Wagnerians -- Arthur Rubinstein : joie de vivre -- Vladimir Horowitz : electrical energy -- Maria Callas : the will to succeed -- Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, and Georg Solti : timebeaters three -- Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo : mano a mano.…”