Now available from Amadeus Press...

352 pp, 14 b/w illustrations, 6 x 9", hardcover

ISBN: 1-57467-077-8

$24.95, plus shipping and handling

Publication Date: July 2002

Available from Amadeus Press, LLC, 512 Newark Pompton Turnpike, Pompton Plains, NJ 07444 Telephone: (973) 835-6375, (800) 321-3408. http://www.amadeuspress.com/ and email at publicity@amadeuspress.com

The memoir of opera singer Blanche Arral is the international adventure tale of a lifetime, complete with intrepid heroine whom readers will love for her exuberant temperament and irresistible charm. Born in Belgium as Clara Lardinois, the youngest of seventeen children, Arral was destined for a life wilder than fiction. She began her career at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, where Massenet added a small part to Manon for her, but her love for adventure soon led her to perform around the world. During her travels Arral became acquainted with such legendary figures of her time as Sarah Bernhardt, Mata Hari, Harry Houdini, Victor Hugo, Franz Liszt, and Camille Saint-Saëns, to name only a few. In Fiji she met Jack London, who later based a character on her in his book Smoke Bellew. She recounts uncomfortable meetings with Rasputin in Russia, and describes how in Turkey she performed for the sultan, Abdülhamid II, before narrowly escaping from a harem. She describes her recording sessions with Thomas Edison and her run-ins with the difficult Nellie Melba. Wherever Blanche Arral went, excitement and intrigue followed.

By the time Arral settled in the United States, after a lifetime of globe-trotting, she had been nearly forgotten. But then writer and opera aficionado Ira Glackens discovered that the singer, whose recordings he had collected, was living in a small New Jersey apartment, and he persuaded her to record her extraordinary stories. Now, more than sixty years later, the book is finally in print. Editor William R. Moran has confirmed the veracity of Arral’s account and annotated the volume, which also includes an afterword, chronology, and discography. The result is this astonishing memoir, which Arral titled Bravura Passage in reference to her concluding sentence: “Like a flash I am back in my dressing room, nervous and tense, eager to step out onto the stage to hear the initial burst of applause and once again mark a bravura step in my passage through this life.”