No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is...

"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...