Cather and Opera by David McKay Powell (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Cather and Opera by David McKay Powell
• Maria Mackas

David McKay Powell, Cather and Opera. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2022. 216 pp. Hardcover, $45; e-book, $14.99 (Nook) / $19.95 (Kindle).

Cather and Opera delivers much more than the title implies. Though David McKay Powell presents comprehensive analyses of the author's references to opera and of her employment of operatic devices—from her early short stories to her later novels—he also offers insightful commentary about Cather's life and work. Cather scholars need not have an interest in opera to find the book fascinating, though opera aficionados will appreciate Powell's vast knowledge of the art form's history in America and nuanced discussions of various operas and composers. (If you don't know opera, [End Page 286] keep a dictionary handy for terms like "verismo" and "coloratura soprano.")

After a chapter providing an overview of Cather's multilayered relationship with opera, followed by a chapter on opera in the United States during Cather's time, the book's remaining six chapters chronologically explore the author's work through an opera glass lens. Cather mentioned forty-seven operas in her fiction, with operatic references in nine of her twelve novels and about half of her short stories. Powell closely examines why Cather mentions specific operas and oratorios in her fiction, and why she fashions some novels using operatic structures.

A recurring exploration is the parallel between Cather's fiction and opera in the United States, which both grapple with "the apparent dissonance between high culture and common folk" (30). Powell writes that "opera is a self-consciously emotional medium housed in a self-consciously sophisticated cultural environment. Likewise, Cather's work tends simultaneously to exploit both the primitive and the refined. Both Cather's work and opera can be critical conundrums" (3). Powell is adept at helping the reader relate to these "critical conundrums," drawing relatable parallels to make his points and make the text accessible. For example, when discussing "The Bohemian Girl" and the reason that Cather's title has significance relating to composer Michael William Balfe's Irish Romantic opera of the same name, he writes, "the idea that Cather titled 'The Bohemian Girl' as a throwaway reference or as simple irony would be akin to an author today titling a novel The Empire Strikes Back and not expecting audiences to consider, on a page-to-page level, the reference to the film" (69–70). Similarly, in describing Cather's only recurring character, Kitty Ayrshire, who was modeled on soprano Mary Garden, he writes, "she is a fascinating, witty personality—Kate Hepburn might well have cited her as a character influence" (74).

Powell also explores "Cather's fixation on the relationship between art, the artist, and society," noting that "whereas most artistic endeavors remained male-dominated, operatic performance was distinctly the realm of the female superstar" (71–72). He writes that no other author focused as predominantly on the prima donna [End Page 287] as a literary type, citing Cather characters Selma Schumann in "A Singer's Romance," Thea Kronborg in The Song of the Lark, Cressida Garnet in "The Diamond Mine," Kitty Ayrshire in "Scandal" and "A Gold Slipper," and Eden Bower in "Coming, Eden Bower!"

In addition to presenting perceptive analysis, Powell offers useful documentation; the book includes two appendices, one listing the operas and oratorios mentioned in Cather's fiction alphabetically by composer, the other listing them chronologically by the author's works.

Powell's conclusion features the story of Truman Capote's chance meeting with Cather at the New York Society Library and their subsequent dinner. The story was told in Capote's last work, written the day before he died, in 1984 at age fifty-nine. Powell writes:

On the eve of his death, Cather was on Capote's mind. He remembered her as she tends to be remembered: wholesome, broad-faced, and countrified. A prairie gal with a Western accent. Approaching her apartment before the dinner party, Capote recollected, he "was still amazed to think Willa Cather wore sable coats and occupied a Park Avenue apartment. (I had always imagined her as living on a quiet...