The Pursuit of Perfection by Garry O’Connor

The Pursuit of Perfection

A Life of Maggie Teyte

by Garry O’Connor

Victor Gollancz, 1979, [First Edition], ISBN 05752562X, black and white photographic plates, photographic frontispiece, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, ex-library with stamps and stickers to front and back end papers stamp to bottom for edge, tape residue to front and back covers, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, sunned spine, (see photographs)

“Maggie Teyte was one of the great singers of this century.  She was English born and bred (born Tate, raised in Wolverhampton) but it was one of her life’s many ironies that she reached the peak of her reputation in France, in French opera and song.  It can be said that she left England, when still a music student, as a fugitive from oratorio, in its lingering Victorian tradition; and in France she entered the magically different world of Debussy and Ravel.  Melisande, in the opera based by Debussy on Maeterlinck’s play, was her most famous role.  She also excelled in singing Mozart, and in roles such as Butterfly and Mimi, Manon and Marguerite, and she was a greater Eva (in Die Meistersinger) than she was willing to concede.
Her story, spanning fifty years of music-making in France, England, and the United States (and she lived to be 88), is an utterly fascinating one.”