This book features interviews with 22 famous opera stars whose careers began in the late 1940s and extended into the 1970s and beyond, providing a rare glimpse for opera lovers and other music fans into the shifting landscape of opera.

The interviewees recall their studies or performances with legends such as Maria Callas, Rosa Ponselle, Beniamino Gigli, Aureliano Pertile, Lydia Lipkowska, Leonard Bernstein, and Leonard Warren, as well as their pitfalls and triumphs. The experience of George Shirley, the first African American tenor to perform on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, is illustrative of the challenges faced by him and his fellow performers, presenting a rich picture of these singers as they illuminated stages across the world.