From Publishers Weekly
In this outspoken and entertaining book, the authors chronicle Breslin's 36 years as publicist and manager for tenor Pavarotti, from the early days when the singer was, Breslin says, "a very beautiful, simple, lovely guy," to the final years of his career, when Breslin found him "a very determined, aggressive, and somewhat unhappy superstar." In Breslin's frank telling, Pavarotti emerges as a charming but utterly impossible man with an outsized ego, a need to dominate, a total disregard for other people (from secretaries and coaches to world-renowned conductors) and a passion for food, women, horses and money. Breslin is blunt about Pavarotti's many quirks and foibles, such as his superstitions, his inability to read music and his frequent failure to learn the words of his opera parts in time for performances. Accounts of the singer's missteps in recent years, such as the embarrassing final Metropolitan Opera appearances, are especially unflattering. Tenor and manager parted by mutual agreement, but Breslin doesn't take the separation lightly. Pavarotti seems unaffected by the acrimony; the book concludes with an interview he gave Midgette, a classical music reviewer for the New York Times, in which he expresses appreciation for his longtime manager and friend. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
The King and I is a vulgar, mean-spirited book that casts little credit on either the author, Herbert Breslin, or the subject, the world-renowned opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti. It also makes one wonder why co-author Anne Midgette, a respected music critic for the New York Times, would lend herself to such a project.That said, one has to admit that this tell-all book by Pavarotti's "manager, friend, and sometime adversary" is both readable and entertaining in a bitchy sort of way. A brash New Yorker, Breslin writes as I assume he speaks (I don't recall ever meeting him) -- he is sarcastic, in your face, funny at times, and full of braggadocio. But his passionate love of music, especially the opera, also comes through. It all began when Decca Records executive Terry McEwen told the young tenor early in his career, "Luciano, you're a nice guy. So you need a real bastard to do your publicity." And he gave him Breslin's phone number. So it was that Breslin became Pavarotti's publicist, then manager and business partner for more than 35 years.Breslin's relationship with Pavarotti was the defining event of his life, and nothing in his recital of their years together remains sacred. Indeed, by the end of the book one has the sense that these two really deserved each other.As Breslin describes the three stages of their relationship, the early years were those of closeness, collaboration and excitement. They were like family, and Pavarotti was a "dream client" with a natural gift for promotion. He loved interviews, charmed everyone.In the second phase, the middle years, both were at the top of their respective professions, and they made each other rich. And finally the third phase -- the last 10 years, featuring the Three Tenors concerts all over the world and countless more arena concerts -- in which Breslin describes a very lazy divo, grossly overweight, reluctant to learn new music, willful and demanding, plus a messy, very public divorce.While Pavarotti was his focus, personally and professionally, Breslin knew almost every luminary in the opera world and either guided the public relations or managed the careers of many of them. Despite his obvious affection and respect for their artistry, Breslin just cannot resist the occasional put-down or sarcastic remark. Richard Tucker "regarded himself as the greatest tenor in the world" (implying that no one else did), soprano Joan Sutherland was "pretty dopey" and the great beauty Elizabeth Schwarzkopf looked like a cleaning woman offstage. The uppity German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau "gave the impression that his bodily emanations, shall we say, didn't smell." Breslin offers a great deal of information about the finances and economics of opera, and the book is full of behind-the-scenes anecdotes: "I remember Birgit Nilsson standing in the wings of the Metropolitan Opera one night when Montserrat Caballé was singing. Somebody spotted her and said, 'What are you doing here?'" 'I am here to hear Madame Aballé,' Birgit said." 'Madame Aballé? You mean Madame Caballé.'" 'No,' Birgit said sweetly, 'Madame Aballé. She has lost her C.' " (Referring, of course, to the high note that is very important for a soprano.)Breslin tells a story about Joan Sutherland, who had come to hear Pavarotti rehearse for his Carnegie Hall debut. The tenor gave his all and was sweating profusely when he came to speak with Miss Sutherland afterward. " 'Joan, we fat people know how it is,' he said, wiping his brow. . . . 'Luciano,' she replied: 'We are not fat. You are fat. I am big.' " This same Carnegie Hall concert was the occasion for the introduction of Pavarotti's trademark -- the white handkerchief. The reason? A bad cold. As Breslin put it, "Working with opera singers is a recipe for nervous collapse. The more carefully you make your plans, the more likely it is they'll get sick when the big night rolls around." But after that concert, Pavarotti never appeared without the hanky -- a versatile prop that he also used to wave at the crowd, for emphasis in a song, or as a hiding place for throat lozenges.Sometimes Breslin's frankness is bewildering. Obviously Pavarotti was no picnic, but even on the first page of the book, Breslin drips with sarcasm: "Luciano Pavarotti, you see, is one of the world's leading experts on everything. He knows more about music, medicine, dentistry, the prostate, child care, legal matters, and so on and so forth than anyone else alive. The rest of us are mere incompetents. At least that's how he sees it."Breslin says that Pavarotti was not much of a stage animal. He sang like a nightingale, but he was, "to put it tactfully, something of a lump." Later Breslin reports that "he never developed what you could call a facility for learning his music. . . . He could be a little casual about things like sticking to the notes the composer wrote." The hardest part for this tenor, according to Breslin, was remembering the words. "Nobody argues that he makes beautiful music, and has a beautiful voice, and phrases the music he sings so gorgeously that your heart stops," Breslin says. "But when it comes to things like sight-reading, or counting time so he knows when to come in, or any of the other technical things that make up the craft of musicianship, Luciano is a little bit challenged. It doesn't help that he can't read music." Breslin adds that his client was not a great favorite with conductors: He always knew better and tried to correct the conductor's tempo.On the more positive side, Breslin repeats like a mantra that Pavarotti was the greatest tenor in the world -- a statement with which some would argue. He also says that in all their years together, they never had a written contract. "Luciano was a straight arrow . . . he was a man of his word. As was I. And Adua, his wife, who looked after their financial affairs, ran a tight ship." Breslin also gives us a picture of the famous tenor outside the opera house -- at home in Modena, Italy, where he was a great host, a man with a gargantuan appetite who loved to cook for his guests. He has a passion for horses. He loves to gamble and is a terrific poker player. He also had a healthy appetite for beautiful women. Adua, his wife of many years and the mother of three daughters, took this in her stride, but finally Nicoletta Mantovani, the singer's secretary, caused their divorce and became Pavarotti's second wife. (She is 34 years his junior and has given birth to a daughter.)"Nicoletta is a cipher to me," Breslin writes. "I'm really not sure what Luciano is doing with somebody like that. She's not the most glamorous person in the world; I think she's dull as dishwater. And she doesn't seem to have any particular interest in what he's doing as an artist. She seems very interested in his fame, though, and what to do with that. She certainly has him wrapped around her little finger."And so the book ends with the severing -- somewhat acrimoniously but by mutual consent -- of Breslin and Pavarotti's relationship, although there is, strangely enough, an epilogue by Pavarotti himself as interviewed by Anne Midgette. In general, and to his credit, he speaks kindly and generously toward Breslin, who is now 80 years old. Pavarotti concludes, "Herbert was my wife in the opera." What a marriage! Reviewed by Selwa Roosevelt Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
At his career peak, Pavarotti was called the king of the high Cs. But Breslin, his manager for 36 years, called him Mr. Brain; he knew everything, you see. With his clear, projecting voice, Pavarotti rose to fame with a strategy of impressive solo concertizing that eventually propelled him to the operatic stage. His first loves, however, were food and the society of family and friends. Generous, he also had a lazy streak that later stunted the development of his repertoire. He had trouble memorizing words, and he never read music. He moved minimally onstage, preferring to emote through singing, not action; his foray into movies, Yes, Giorgio, was a near disaster. Breslin's forte was his stubbornness at getting everything his client wanted--and he is driven by money. Sprinkled with many stories of other clients and Pavarotti's costars, the book is more about the manager-client relationship, including the coddling and the epithets, than about Pavarotti per se. Nevertheless, its stories of a star's rise and fall are told from the heart. Alan Hirsch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


From the Inside Flap

Luciano Pavarotti’s longtime manager and friend tells all. All.

The King and I is the story of the thirty-six-year-old business relationship between Luciano Pavarotti and his manager, Herbert Breslin, during which Breslin guided what he calls, justifiably, “the greatest career in classical music.” During that career, Breslin moved Pavarotti out of the opera house and onto the concert (and the world) stage and into the arms of a huge mass public. How he and Pavarotti changed the landscape of opera is one of the most significant and entertaining stories in the history of classical music, and Herbert Breslin relates the tale in a brash, candid, witty fashion that is often bitingly frank and profane. He also provides a portrait of his friend and client—“a beautiful, simple, lovely guy who turned into a very determined, aggressive, and somewhat unhappy superstar”—that is by turns affectionate and satirical and full of hilarious details and tales out of school, with Pavarotti emerging as something like the ultimate Italian male. The book is also enlivened by the voices of other players in the soap opera drama that was Pavarotti’s career, and they are no less uncensored than Herbert Breslin. The last word, in fact, comes from none other than Luciano Pavarotti himself!
The King and I is the ultimate backstage book about the greatest opera star of the past century—and it’s a delight to read as well.


About the Author

Herbert Breslin has been a classical music publicist and manager for many of the greatest performers of our time for the past forty years.

Anne Midgette is a regular reviewer of classical music for the New York Times and has contributed to Opera News and many other music magazines.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter I



FROM CHRYSLER TO CARNEGIE HALL
Midlife Crisis: My Start in the Business



Here's how not to begin your brilliant professional career. In 1957, I was thirty-three years old. I was married, with a child on the way. And I was working as a speechwriter for the Chrysler Corporation. In Detroit, Michigan.

Detroit, Michigan. Who would even want to think about it? Misery.

People suppose that to succeed in the classical music business you should be very highly directed. You should have experience as a performer, so you know what it's like on the other side of the footlights. You should get your foot in the door early and work in a number of different areas so you get to know all sides of the performing arts. Ultimately, you'll gather the experience you need to set up your own company and manage top-level artists.

Well, that's all bullshit.

I came out of nowhere. I was smart. I was full of energy. And I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. All I knew was that I loved music.

How much did I love music? I'd been obsessed with opera since I was eight years old. The beauty, the glamour, the excitement, and the tremendous voices pulled me into another world. I had a huge collection of records I listened to constantly. I had scrapbooks of the performances I'd seen and the artists I loved. Whatever else was going on around me, opera served as my own private support system and gave me tremendous sustenance. So much sustenance, in fact, that it became my life.

The problem I had when I was thirty-three was that it had nothing to do with my life. Especially not my life in Detroit. There's a little bit of music in Detroit, but nothing you would really want to seriously consider. I'm a New Yorker. I was starved for opera. I would get the New York Times and wistfully scan the cast lists at the Metropolitan Opera, which the Times used to print every Monday, for the two weeks ahead.

One week I saw that Renata Tebaldi was scheduled to sing Tosca, and I couldn't help myself. Tebaldi was one of the greatest sopranos singing. People portrayed her as a rival of Maria Callas: Tebaldi's pure vocal beauty against Callas's dramatic brilliance. Myself, I liked Callas fine, but I was a fierce fan of Renata Tebaldi. Intoxicating things happened when the woman opened her mouth. It was enough to make you fly to New York. I said to my wife, Carol, "We're going to see that Tosca," and I bought tickets.

Carol is a New Yorker, too, so she was game for a weekend in the city. She herself was prone to making dramatic pronouncements that she didn't want our first child to be born in Detroit. She was no happier living there than I was. She didn't completely share my passion for opera, but she was certainly happy to go, especially to see a performance as great as I promised her this one was going to be. By the time we walked into the old Met on Thirty-ninth Street, I was beside myself with excitement.

Imagine my feelings when I saw a notice in the lobby announcing that Madame Tebaldi was indisposed. Tosca would be sung by Antoinette Stella.

I went cold with disappointment. By today's standards, Antoinette Stella is nothing to sneeze at; but I hadn't flown in all the way from Detroit to hear Antoinette Stella sing Tosca. I couldn't believe my plans had been thwarted so cruelly, and I didn't want to accept it. I completely lost my temper. I said, "I do not want to hear this performance."

Opera houses, of course, don't refund a patron's ticket money if an artist cancels. Cancelations are practically part of opera routine. A singer's instrument--as any singer will be the first to tell you, and the second to tell you, and the last to tell you, so often do they reiterate it--is extremely fragile. A mild cold, a touch of allergies, a dry hotel room: any one of these things, and a thousand more, can keep them offstage. If opera houses refunded ticket money every time a big singer got sick, they'd all be even more broke than they already are.

I knew this, or some of this, at the time, but I didn't care. I let the box office know it. I said, "I do not want to hear anybody else. I do not want to have anything to do with this performance. I want my money back."

"We can't give you your money back," said the man at the box office window.

"I want my money back!" I said. By this point, I was raving like a banshee. Nobody knew what to do with me. My wife was standing by, looking a little bewildered at my behavior.

I made such a stink that they finally summoned Francis Robinson, who was the head of the box office in those days, to come out and deal with me. Francis was a lovely guy and extremely knowledgeable about all things operatic; he wrote a lot about the opera, and he ran the Met's public relations department. But I barely knew who he was that night, and he sure as hell didn't know who I was. I wasn't even in the music business. I was just some crank from Detroit making a ruckus in the lobby.

"How can I help you?" said Francis.

I said, "Mr. Robinson, I am not as insane as I may sound, but the fact of the matter is that I came in from Detroit to hear Madame Tebaldi, and I was looking forward to it so much. I know that she's sick. But I do not want to go and listen to this."

"Well," Francis said with a smile, "unfortunately there's not much we can do to bring Madame Tebaldi to tonight's performance. Listen. Go to the performance now, and we'll see about getting you a pair of tickets to Madame Tebaldi's next appearance."

He did, too. He was a lovely guy.

Later in my life, I always remembered that incident whenever fans got upset at a Luciano Pavarotti cancelation. You come all that way for something you're really excited to see, and then your hopes are dashed. It's like having the rug pulled out from under you. I knew exactly how they felt.

Not that I ever gave any of them a free pair of tickets as compensation. I'd be in the poorhouse.

Little did I know that night at the Met that within a few years I would be Renata Tebaldi's press agent. I might have felt better.

As I said, I was hooked on opera from childhood--from the day my father took me to see Carmen at the New York Hippodrome, on Sixth Avenue at Forty-fourth Street. I don't know exactly why he took me; it wasn't as if we went to performances all the time. We were not people of great means. But he did love music. And Carmen, with its rousing tunes and gripping drama, was a great first opera. My father couldn't have suspected what he had started.

By the time I was a teenager, every spare penny I had was going for opera. From our home in the Bronx, I'd take the subway down to Manhattan and wait on the line for standing-room tickets. There was a real camaraderie on that line in those days. My friend Myron Egan, who was killed in the war, and I went together and saw everything and everybody that we could. After the show, we'd wait for the artists to come out and get their autographs. And what artists. In those days, it was the ladies who ruled opera: we went to hear the sopranos. Grace Moore, the glamorous American soprano, killed in a plane crash at age forty-eight: I heard her debut as Tosca. Zinka Milanov, the Yugoslavian who looked like a potato and sang like a goddess: somewhere I still have a picture that she autographed for me sixty years ago.

I fantasized about being a singer myself. But since I didn't have a lot of financial resources, I also had to pay close attention to what was practical. To help pay for all of my opera activity, I occasionally took a job in opera itself--as a supernumerary in the big operas, like Aida, that call for a lot of warm bodies onstage. In those days, you got paid something like two dollars for being a super. I got a little extra, because I always tried to take home a piece of my costume as a souvenir. I soon added a wig, a helmet, and a number of other items to my collection of opera memorabilia. I saw myself as a self-supporter, which was something that turned out to be very useful to me.

When I look back, all the dates in my life are marked by the music I heard. Well, nearly all. When I first went into the army in 1943, I was stationed in Nebraska, and there was no music there at all. My job was to guard the German and Italian POWs as they worked in the fields. My great contribution to the war effort was overseeing the harvest of the sugar beet crop in western Nebraska. The Italians were very lazy; you had to push them to get the work done. Come to think of it, this first exposure to the Italian mentality may have stood me in good stead in my professional life.

Later in the war, I did get music. In 1944, I was transferred to Camp Crowder, Missouri, and I went to Joplin, Missouri, to hear a recital by a wonderful soprano named Miliza Korjus, a lovely looking woman, if a little zaftig, who had starred in the film The Great Waltz, about Johann Strauss. It should have been called The Great Schmaltz, but she sang well. She could venture into a stratospheric range to which few singers could aspire.

In 1945, I went to Europe as a cryptographer with the army signal corps, following right behind Eisenhower. Army HQ was in Reims, France, and I took a day trip to Paris and went to the Opera Comique, where I heard Puccini's Madama Butterfly with a soprano named Jeanne Segala. Eisenhower moved on to Frankfurt, where all the theaters were bombed out; they were putting on opera performances in the basement of the Barsensaal, the stock exchange, and I attended a Tosca and Mozart's Nozze di Figaro down there. On my furlough, I went to Rome, where at the Teatro Reale I heard Maria Caniglia, the soaring Italian soprano, in Verdi's La Traviata. I adored Europe. I even found a voice teacher in Reims named Madame Patou, who gave me lessons once or twice a week in exchange for money, as well as coffee and sugar and other things I brought her that were very hard to get in those days. I would say I was a tenor of some kind. I was a rather immature student; I had never studied music, and I couldn't read music. She tried to teach me solfege, the art of sight-reading with musical syllables, and I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. But I still remember some of the songs she taught me.

In 1948, I heard Giuseppe di Stefano, the great Italian tenor, and the mezzo-soprano Ris' Stevens in Ambroise Thomas's sentimental opera Mignon. That was back in New York. I didn't necessarily want to be back in New York, but when the war ended, I was twenty-one years old and I didn't know what to do with my life. I was so full of drive and energy that I knew I wanted to do something, but I had no marketable skills. I wasn't an artist, I wasn't a writer, and I didn't have much experience doing much of anything. I was just a person, with no way to express myself. I tried to tell my parents that all I wanted to do was stay in Europe, but they wouldn't hear of it. What would I do in Europe? they wanted to know. I didn't really have an answer to that, other than "Sweep the streets," so I got on a boat and sailed back to the States, with no idea what was going to be happening to me. I was completely lost. I stood on the upper deck of the ship--the Ernie Pyle--as it was pulling out of Le Havre, and I looked out over the port, and at France behind it, and I said to myself, "I'm coming back." It was my first concrete ambition.

And I achieved it. In 1949, I heard the German soprano Maria Reining, a fantastic singer, as the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. I was back in Paris. In New York, I had gotten my college degree in business administration from the City University of New York and had taken a job in an import-export company. From my princely salary of $35 a week, I saved $10 a week, religiously, and at the end of two years I had $1,000 and was ready to go back to Europe. I still didn't have any idea what I was going to do when I got there, but I learned that the GI Bill would pay you $75 a month if you went to school, so I decided to enroll at the Sorbonne and take a course in la civilisation francaise. I didn't speak any French, but I didn't let that worry me. I figured I would pick it up. So I sailed back to Europe in June of 1949 on the George Washington, an old troopship that had been reconverted for passenger use. It wasn't that easy to find passage in those days--a lot of people wanted to go, and the possibilities were limited--but I did. I think I would have swum if I'd had to. When I got on that boat, I was in a state of excitement and anticipation that words can hardly bring across. I was beside myself. Until that point in my life, I had never had exactly what I wanted, but I knew that this, now, was the real me, going where I wanted, and I had made it happen.

My stay in Paris was everything I'd hoped for. I found lodgings at the Maison Francaise at the Citi Universitaire, where all the students lived; I hung out at Le Select, the famous cafe in Montparnasse; I went to some of the political rallies that were going on in France at that very turbulent time, led by people like Maurice Thorez, the head of the French Communist Party. I felt I was in the thick of things, which was a place I was very anxious to be in those days, even though I never was actually in the thick of anything. But once my time was up, I had to go home again--and think of another way to get myself back.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The King and I is the story of the thirty-six-year long business relationship between Luciano Pavarotti and his manager, Herbert Breslin, during which Breslin guided what he calls, justifiably, "the greatest career in classical music." During that career, Breslin moved Pavarotti out of the opera house and onto the concert (and the world) stage and into the arms of a huge mass public. How he and Pavarotti changed the landscape of opera is one of the most significant and entertaining stories in the history of classical music, and Herbert Breslin relates the tale in a brash, candid, witty fashion that is often bitingly frank and profane. He also provides a portrait of his friend and client - "a beautiful, simple, lovely guy who turned into a very determined, aggressive, and somewhat unhappy superstar" - that is by turns affectionate and satirical and full of hilarious details and tales out of school with Pavarotti emerging as something like the ultimate Italian male. The book is also enlivened by the voices of other players in the soap opera drama that was Pavarotti's career, and they are no less uncensored than Herbert Breslin. The last word, in fact, comes from none other than Luciano Pavarotti himself!

FROM THE CRITICS

Selwa Roosevelt - The Washington Post

… one has to admit that this tell-all book by Pavarotti's "manager, friend, and sometime adversary" is both readable and entertaining in a bitchy sort of way. A brash New Yorker, Breslin writes as I assume he speaks (I don't recall ever meeting him) -- he is sarcastic, in your face, funny at times, and full of braggadocio. But his passionate love of music, especially the opera, also comes through.

Publishers Weekly

In this outspoken and entertaining book, the authors chronicle Breslin's 36 years as publicist and manager for tenor Pavarotti, from the early days when the singer was, Breslin says, "a very beautiful, simple, lovely guy," to the final years of his career, when Breslin found him "a very determined, aggressive, and somewhat unhappy superstar." In Breslin's frank telling, Pavarotti emerges as a charming but utterly impossible man with an outsized ego, a need to dominate, a total disregard for other people (from secretaries and coaches to world-renowned conductors) and a passion for food, women, horses and money. Breslin is blunt about Pavarotti's many quirks and foibles, such as his superstitions, his inability to read music and his frequent failure to learn the words of his opera parts in time for performances. Accounts of the singer's missteps in recent years, such as the embarrassing final Metropolitan Opera appearances, are especially unflattering. Tenor and manager parted by mutual agreement, but Breslin doesn't take the separation lightly. Pavarotti seems unaffected by the acrimony; the book concludes with an interview he gave Midgette, a classical music reviewer for the New York Times, in which he expresses appreciation for his longtime manager and friend. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Breslin, a classical music publicist and manager, and Midgette, a music reviewer for the New York Times and contributor to Opera News, offer an engrossing, no-holds-barred treatment of the life and musical journeys of superstar tenor Luciano Pavarotti up to 2003. Episodes dealing with Pavarotti's appetites for various foodstuffs, the making of the film Yes, Giorgio, and the Three Tenors phenomenon are especially enjoyable; the role of the almighty dollar in decision making and Pavarotti's many self-indulgences are also emphasized. Breslin's crass and earthy style, which may result from exasperation with the constant demands of Pavarotti and other high-handed artists, wears a bit thin. though . Fortunately, the tenor has a short interview with Midgette at the end to explain some of his behaviors; without this, he comes across as rather a monster. The current book contrasts with the somewhat dated though still useful Pavarotti: My Own Story (1981) and its sequel, Pavarotti: My World. Sure to be in demand; recommended for public libraries serving a clientele with strong constitutions. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/04.] Barry Zaslow, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, OH Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews