In This month’s Opera News, soprano Andrea Gruber details her out-of-control career in the 1990s. “I took those drugs, and things spiraled out of control from there. I may have had a voice at that time, but I had no technique. And when you take enough drugs, you’re completely numb. You can’t breathe properly. I wound up pushing so hard on my throat that my cords would swell, and I had to take cortisone to get the swelling down. So there I was with no technique, and I was stoned out of my gourd, and they were shooting me up with cortisone. One day I’d be in great shape, and things would work, and the next day I couldn’t phone it in. Try having a career when one day you’re phenomenal and the next you’re not hirable — you can’t be put on the stage.”
Tag: 01.05
Philanthropic Nature – Britain Lags Behind
Breitain’s level of charitable giving is quite low, especially compared with America. “Victorian Britain invented modern philanthropy, but in the 20th century an important strand of British opinion, mainly on the left, came to see charity as a poor alternative to state-funded provision, Americans have had no such qualms. Since the time of de Tocqueville’s early 19th-century celebration of voluntary associations as a cornerstone of US democracy, philanthropy has enjoyed an honoured place in the American story.”