"In this collection of three essays, internationally renowned tenor Ian Bostridge explores his relation to the performance of Western classical vocal music through the lens of gender, politics, or the ultimate paradoxical grounding of identity, death. As a performer who needs to negotiate between his own identity and that of the musical text he delivers on stage or in the concert hall, Bostridge asks questions about how the complex identity of a piece of music was creatively configured by composers at particular historical moments, and how today's performers can embody that complexity for their audiences. In lucid and compelling prose, Bostridge guides his readers through an exploration of the fluidity of gender roles in music by Monteverdi, Schumann, and Britten, the questioning of colonial power and hierarchy in Ravel's Songs of Madagascar, and Britten's reckoning with death in works from the War Requiem to his final opera, Death in Venice. As readers become privy to Bostridge's lines of inquiry into the music he performs, they are also primed for the searching intensity of his interpretations, in which the uncanny melding of song and self brings about moments of epiphany for both the singer and his audience"--

Ian Bostridge is an English tenor, known for his performances as an opera and lieder singer. His recordings have won multiple international record prizes and three Grammy awards, and he gives recitals regularly throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. He was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2004. His recent books include Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession and A Singer's Notebook.