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2 comments about Crowfoot: Chief of the Blackfeet (Goodread Biographies).

1. This book is interesting, adventurous, informative, accurate, captivating - a must read! It involves North American Indian history during the last half of the 1800's, in the Northwest US and Western Canada. The major focus is on the Blackfeet Indians of this area. Learn how critical the land and the buffalo were to so many Indian Nations, and how they lost both of these critical necessities of their life and culture. Read this book and learn that there were peaceful Indians, and there were violent Indians, rather like the rest of the world! Read this book and you will never think or say the North American Indians "were savages", as many people still do! This book should also be a must read for every high school student in North America! I highly recommend it!



2. This book is interesting, adventurous, informative, accurate, captivating - a must read! It involves North American Indian history during the last half of the 1800's, in the Northwest US and Western Canada. The major focus is on the Blackfeet Indians of this area. Learn how critical the land and the buffalo were to so many Indian Nations, and how they lost both of these critical necessities of their life and culture. Read this book and learn that there were peaceful Indians, and there were violent Indians, rather like the rest of the world! Read this book and you will never think or say the North American Indians "were savages", as many people still do! This book should also be a must read for every high school student in North America! I highly recommend it!

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5 comments about Jon Vickers: A Hero's Life.

1. Folks, this man is my hero. As an artist he is near pearless. Anyone who loves great acting can find inspiration if not enjoyment in Opera from seeing or hearing the great singing actors of our history like Callas, Gobbi, and most especially Jon Vickers. Watch his live performance as Peter Grimes under Colin Davis and you will see what I mean.
   Now to the subject at hand. Something should be remembered folks when you read the fact that he did not want to cooperate with this journalist from USA Today. He never really wanted full heartedly to be a 'professional singer'. He sang as a hobby why persueing a business career.
   He married a lovely women and had five children with her; six mouths to feed. If he fought against overuse of his instrument, lack of quality from fellow singers and directors, and had the courage to insist for higher salaries in this most grueling of businesses, I would say the man had his reasons and one has to wonder how he made it out of this business with any sanity. How can anyone dare to judge a man's behavior when his wife of 38 years is dying from a long battle with cancer?
   He says that he gave all his art to the glory of his God and that in it he found his purpose. I would say that if the stress of this self-inflicted goal made him a little difficult to be around or work with, then any of you who feel worthy to analize and judge him need to see if you could perform these works better then he.
   How dare this woman not allow him to tell his story as he wishes or even force him to tell it at all. If she has the right to privacy then so does he. And don't give me any stuff about 'the people needing to know everything'. Most folks today cannot tell what is important or not. Critical thinking is the worst thing being inflicted on students and artists in today's society. This retired artist has a constantly growing following. One of the biggest in history. And the man is retired. We have his work documented. It is there for all to see. Let this man tell us his story in his own way and leave him in peace.
   Have I read this book about my hero? Yes. It is more revealing than most fans realize. That is what is unfair about this. Provocative? Yes, but at the expence of an already great man by his simplicity that makes him great. View his art but leave his life to himself.



2. CRITICS' COMMENTS on Jon Vickers: A Hero's Life

   Peter G. Davis, music critic, New York magazine, formerly of The New York Times:
   ""Jon Vickers: A Hero's Life ranks among the most impressive books I have ever read about an individual singer . ...If the man himself remains an intriguing enigma, that in no way lessens the achievement of this objectively written, painstakingly researched, immensely readable biography."

   Antony Peattie, BBC Music Magazine:
   "This major new biography gives an unusually full picture of the man, his voice, and his career ... One of the best studies of a singer that I have ever read."

   Patrick J. Smith, Opera News:
   "Jeannie Williams has done an excellent job in bringing back memories of an extraordinarily vivid singer."

   Publishers Weekly:
   "In this remarkably even-handed, unauthorized account, Williams engagingly depicts the conflicting aspects of a great artist's personality and howthey shaped his career."




3. This is one of the finest biographies of a singer I have ever read. (And I've read a lot.) Jon Vickers was one of the greatest singers of the past 50 years, the supreme Siegmund, Florestan, Tristan, Aeneas and Peter Grimes of his time. (And no slouch as Otello, Canio, Samson and Parsifal, either.) He was a singer with a unique timbre, an iconoclastic temprement, and a burning sense of his artistic mission. Like many great artists, he could sometimes act a little crazy. He was stubborn, short-tempered (he did not suffer fools at all, much less gladly) and on occasion, downright irrational and almost violent. He was also a deeply spiritual man and great artist capable of giving performances of almost transcendant beauty and intensity.

   Jeannie Williams gives a comprehensive picture of the great tenor, both his abundant virtues and his manifest warts. The book is well-reasearched and remarkably complete in its account of his career, considering that Vickers refused to participate or cooperate with the author. Vickers' deep Christian beliefs and convictions are treated respectfully and recognized as an integral part of what made him the artist that he was.

   The most fascinating chapters are the ones on Vickers' notorious Tannhäuser cancellation in the late 70s (which left both Covent Garden and the Met in the lurch), and on his relationship with the opera "Peter Grimes." As to the former, Vickers maintained that he could not sing Tannhäuser because his religious convictions prevented him from finding any point of connection with the character, and because he found Tannhäuser "revolting." But every single person interviewed for the book, many of them wholly sympathetic to Vickers, believed that the real reason for Vickers' cancellation was because he could not handle the vocal demands of the part. The author allows the reader to draw his or her own conclusion about the incident. As for Peter Grimes, which many consider Vickers' greatest role, Williams affirms that the composer disliked Vickers interpretation intensely and resented Vickers' unilateral (and unauthorized) rewrite of some of the text. (Vickers later claimed that Britten had sanctioned the changes and that they had been made in collaboration with conductor Colin Davis, but according to Williams, they were entirely Vickers' doing.)

   This is the very best kind of operatic biography - written by someone who deeply admires the subject but who does not allow that admiration to cloud her judgment or degenerate into fan-like gush. This will no doubt remain the definitive biography of Vickers for quite some time. Highly recommended.




4. Reviewing this book is frustrating. As a biography, it is very well written and as close to objective as humanly possible. This is no drooling, glossy fan book altho Ms Williams is certainly a fan of Mr Vickers (as I have been for many years). The paradox comes as we read of Mr Vickers nasty temperament that hides behind a cloak of being so "religious" while showing numerous instances of public rudeness to colleagues as well as to his public by signing contracts he had no intentions of fulfilling (such as his Tannhauser). If a truly great artist and human being as Lauritz Melchior frankly admitted the role of Walther lay too uncomfortably high for him, why couldn't Vickers admit the role of Tannhauser was too difficult for him. Instead he hides behind a hypocritical excuse of "religion" or "morality." How moral is Siegmund, one of hsi signature roles, who runs off with his sister (who is married to another character) AND has a child with her? Ms Williams shows us that Vickers was quite similar to a composer her served so well, Richard Wagner - a genius but a lousy person.



5. The other day I watched a man sweeping the street where I live and it was fascinating. He took such care, and made great attention to all the little details. I was watching a great artist at work. I doubt if there is a book about him though. My point is, [if you've got this far], should these folk, like Vickers, Callas - certainly, Joan Sutherland, and to a lesser extent Rita Hunter, et al, be examined quite so thoroughly from the point of their human attributes? I mean, I'd like to be able to sing leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera, but I don't have a voice. I think I'm a nice person, though I do get hate mail for my reviews. So, again, another point, should we expect Vickers to be able to do what he did night after night and still be a nice person?

   Dare I say it? I don't want to get too close to people whose performances I've enjoyed, because I have the idea that they may not be very pleasant people. Likewise, I have no real desire to read about their appalling behaviour. These people are only singers for heaven's sake. They need keeping in line, whether it's by Rudolf Bing, Joe Volpe, John Tooley or Wolfgang Wagner. Vickers had a great career, but like so many singers, including Callas, Bjoerling, di Stefano, Corelli, Christoff right down to Rita Hunter, once the personality disorder gets in the way of the talent you may as well not bother.

   It's sad really, because there's no-one like Vickers around today. [I mean, I live in a city that thinks Andrea Bocelli is a great artist, but who am I among so many?] The fact that Britten walked out on Vicker's Peter Grimes tells me more about Britten than it does about Vickers. I would have taken it as a compliment.

   Maybe more people should be like me: Go the performance, applaud the performer and don't bother to peer behind the little bushes they are hiding behind.

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