Subtitled A Singer’s Perspective on the Major Tenor Roles, this book is many things: a guide to performing some of the greatest music ever written; a psychological and philosophical journey into the very core of the human condition as expressed by opera; an account of what it’s really like to work with directors and conductors; and an informal treatise on vocal technique. But above all, it’s a tribute to a great artist and, after having read it, one would have to say, a great human being.

The American Heldentenor Stephen Gould passed away just last year, way before his time – but not before he got to see an early proof of this book, the result of a series of Zoom conversations between himself and F. Peter Phillips, who dutifully recorded and transcribed them. Phillips had suggested the project during COVID, partly, he says, because “I had never encountered a systematic analysis of the performance challenges of these particular roles, written by someone who repeatedly performed them, for the purpose of sharing the experience of performance and the unique insights to be gained by putting the roles in your body and playing them out.”

Those roles, whose names form...