Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singers' chance at immortality. When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all. As she mines her memories for clues, she recalls...

The Ghost in the bone-white mask who haunts the Ankh-Morpork Opera House was always considered a benign presence-some would even say lucky-until he started killing people. The sudden rash of bizarre backstage deaths now threatens to mar the operatic debut of country girl Perdita X. (nee Agnes) Nitt, she of the ample body and ampler voice. Perdita's expected to hide in the chorus and sing arias out loud while a more petitely presentable soprano mouths...

"Immerse yourself in more than 400 years of the world's most celebrated operas and discover the fascinating stories behind them. Explore the lives of singers such as Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, and Jonas Kaufmann. Meet composers like Mozart, Wagner, and Britten, and the librettists with whom they collaborated to create the magical blend of words and music that make up opera. From its origins in the 17th-century courts of Italy to live screenings...

The pathos of this heart-rending story about a sweet-natured Japanese girl and the caddish American naval lieutenant who marries then deserts her has seldom been conveyed with such emotional directness. In his sumptuous filming of Puccini's opera, director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle uses an array of cinematic effects to evoke the protagonists' irreconcilably separate lives and worlds. As Butterfly, Mirella Freni is unbearably moving in one of the finest...

"A scandalous and satisfying behind-the-scenes look at the glamorous world of opera, from an insider who was herself the lead soprano at the Met for many years, and a popular performer on radio and television. The backstage drama at the Metropolitan Opera often rivals the onstage performances but generally doesn't prove fatal. Not so for prompter Rudolf Salz, who chose a most inopportune moment during the second act of Wagner's Die Walküre to die...

"The Corominas family own a small planet system which consists of one gaseous planet and four terraformed moons, nicknamed the Four Sisters. The family lives on the largest of the moons. The patriarch of the family, Phillip Coromina, earned his riches though a company he started as a young man, which began as a terraforming and mining business and then later expanded into weapons manufacture, namely the production of genetically engineered soldiers,...

A New York scandal, a riot on a ship, and an evening of insanity in a concert hall are some of the problems resulting from Groucho's outrageous business schemes. The goal, to bring Milan's finest opera stars to Manhattan.