Award-winning singer Ian Bostridge examines iconic works of Western classical music to reflect on the relationship between performer and audience. Like so many performers, renowned tenor Ian Bostridge spent much of 2020 and 2021 unable to take part in live music. The enforced silence of the pandemic led him to question an identity that was previously defined by communicating directly with audiences in opera houses and concert halls. It also allowed him to delve deeper into many of the classical works he has encountered over the course of his career, such as Claudio Monteverdi’s seventeenth-century masterpiece Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and Robert Schumann’s popular song cycle Frauenliebe und Leben. In lucid and compelling prose, Bostridge explores the ways Monteverdi, Schumann, and Britten employed and disrupted gender roles in their music; questions colonial power and hierarchy in Ravel’s Songs of Madagascar; and surveys Britten’s reckoning with death in works from the War Requiem to his final opera, Death in Venice. As a performer reconciling his own identity and that of the musical text he delivers on stage, Bostridge unravels the complex history of each piece of music, showing how today’s performers can embody that complexity for their audiences. As readers become privy to Bostridge’s unique lines of inquiry, they are also primed for the searching intensity of his interpretations, in which the uncanny melding of song and self brings about moments of epiphany for both the singer and his audience.

"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 of music was creatively configured by composers at particular historical moments, and how today's performers can embody that complexity for their audiences. In lucid and compelling prose, Bostridge guides his readers through an exploration of the fluidity of gender roles in music by Monteverdi, Schumann, and Britten, the questioning of colonial power and hierarchy in Ravel's Songs of Madagascar, and Britten's reckoning with death in works from the War Requiem to his final opera, Death in Venice. As readers become privy to Bostridge's lines of inquiry into the music he performs, they are also primed for the searching intensity of his interpretations, in which the uncanny melding of song and self brings about moments of epiphany for both the singer and his audience"--

Imitations of the Self reevaluates the poetry of Jiang Yan (444–505), long underappreciated because of its pervasive reliance on allusion, by emphasizing the self-conscious artistry of imitation. In context of “imitation poetry,” the popular genre of the Six Dynasties era, Jiang’s work can be seen as the culmination of central trends in Six Dynasties poetry. His own life experiences are encoded in his poetry through an array of literary impersonations, reframed in traditional literary forms that imbue them with renewed significance. A close reading of Jiang Yan’s poetry demonstrates the need to apply models of interpretation to Chinese poetry that do justice to the multiplicity of authorial self-representation.

"It's time for a new type of self-care. No bubble baths. No yoga. Just some truly wild-truly effective-ideas and activities that are good for you and your overall wellness. It's time to get feral! Feral Self-Care is loaded with self-care ideas that will actually help nourish your soul and make you feel good. Each entry covers an activity that reconnects you with your authentic self, helping you feel more empowered, free, and confident in embracing this human experience-in all its messy glory. From self-care activities that will have you connecting with nature to those that have you digging deep and exploring your truest self, Feral Self-Care goes beyond the skin creams and face masks to reveal and restore your inner being. You'll find inspired ideas such as: nature sounds ASMR, dancing in the rain, and much more!"--