Quick: name a Princeton graduate who appeared naked and fully shorn of hair on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, singing repetitive music in ancient Egyptian. There is only one answer, of course, and the famed countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo opens his beguiling memoir with a wry account of becoming the star of Akhnaten, the sensational opera by Philip Glass performed at the Met in 2019. Costanzo is as charming as he is instructive in recounting his childhood, his attraction to singing falsetto, his education at an Ivy League school not known for turning out countertenors, and his adventures in the music world, including singing with Luciano Pavarotti and as Maria Callas (in Galas, Charles Ludlam’s play inspired by the life of Callas). His erudition gleams as he discusses the history of the castrati, the science of the human voice, and the business of running Opera Philadelphia, which he has done since 2024. You need never to have heard a Handel opera to thoroughly enjoy Countertenor, but if it leads you to Giulio Cesare, so much the better.
Wine: A Global History is not so much a history of the drink as it is an exhilarating exploration of its past as seen through the development, influence, and enjoyment of something first concocted 8,000 ago in what is now the Georgian hills in the Caucasus. Kathleen Burk is a stylish and fluid writer, so the reader is captivated by wherever she guides us, whether it be the role wine has played in religion (with Charlemagne’s blessing, Benedictine monks planted vines along the Rhine), medicine (Hippocrates recommended it for aiding digestion and for cleaning wounds), or society (in late-19th-century France, champagne’s popularity grew thanks to clever marketing that made it the aspirational drink for the growing bourgeoisie). Wine is blessedly free of jargon and brims with sparkling analysis and anecdote.