Littlejohn writes with the zeal and broadmindedness of a true lover of the art, and he conveys in strikingly personal terms the delight he takes from the diverse range of activities that take place on the lyric stage. . . . San Francisco Opera Anyone who cares about opera will find The Ultimate Art a thoroughly engaging book. David Littlejohn's essays are exciting, provocative, sometimes even outrageous. From its seventeenth-century beginnings, opera has been decried by its detractors for its elitism, its artifice, its absurd costliness, and its social irrelevance. But Littlejohn makes us see that opera embraces an extraordinary amount of intense human emotion and experience, Western culture, and individual psychology.
Every opera is a veritable piece of cultural history.
Littlejohn presents these and many other fascinating moments in the history of opera with conviction and flair. By the end of the book the reader may very well be persuaded that opera is indeed the ultimate art.