Dining and the Opera in Manhattan: Recipes from Manhattan Restaurants, Opera Arias (Cookbook & Music CD Boxed Set) - Softcover

Sharon O'Connor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883914035 ISBN 13: 9781883914035

Publisher: Menus and Music Productions, Inc., 1994

Synopsis

Stars of the Metropolitan Opera join 21 of Manhattans finest French and Italian restaurants to create an evening to remember! Home cooks will find recipes that are perfect for intimate suppers or festive dinner parties. Dinner guests will enjoy more than an hour of beautiful arias performed by Beverly Sills, Leontyne Price, and Placido Domingo.

About this title

Review:

Sharon O'Connor is a San Francisco-based musician and entrepreneur who matches delectable recipes from significant restaurants with music to suit them in one convenient package. The result is a fine gift idea--or a nice treat for anyone who likes to check out menus (or even try whipping up a few recipes) while listening to good music. Most of O'Connor's previous productions featured her own San Francisco String Quartet; this book comes instead with a compact disc of arias (in older recordings by outstanding artists now, for the most part, retired) chosen by members of the Metropolitan Opera Guild. The recipes are from assorted high-profile Manhattan restaurants. And though the disc opens with the "Brindisi," or drinking song, from Verdi's La Traviata, most of the other selections have little or nothing to do with food and beverages--or their consumption. No matter, it's still a lot of fun. One warning: the cookbook itself contains the only guide to the identity of the voices on the CD, and that can be somewhat aggravating for listeners with only the CD in hand trying to figure out just which tenor or soprano is performing. --Sarah Bryan Miller

About the Author:

Sharon O'Connor was the first person ever to pair a cookbook with music. What seems like a simple idea food and music are a natural combination is actually the culmination of years of life experience. As O'Connor puts it, Menus and Music has packaged up my life.

After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley with degrees in music and sociology, O'Connor trained at the renowned Amsterdam Conservatory of Music. She began her career as a performer with the San Francisco Ballet and Opera and has worked with famed performers such as Frank Sinatra, Van Morrison, Tony Bennett and Linda Ronstadt. She has also recorded with the American Conservatory Theater, Aretha Franklin, John Williams, and for numerous Hollywood film scores. She continued her musical career as the founder and cellist of the San Francisco String Quartet.

A lifelong amateur chef, O'Connor began looking for a way to combine her loves for music, food, travel, and writing. Twelve years ago, while driving across the San Francisco Bay Bridge after a performance with her string quartet, she came up with the idea for Menus and Music.

Now, fourteen volumes later, O'Connor O'Connor travels the world to research each cookbook and is an expert in adapting recipes from professional chefs for the home cook. Equal time is devoted to meeting with other musicians, mixing, arranging, editing, and performing the musical selections on the compact discs.

Sharon O'Connor makes her home in the San Francisco Bay Area with her two daughters and husband. Her family enthusiastically helps in the research, travel, and tasting for her series.

About this edition

• Publisher: Menus and Music Productions, Inc.
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1883914035
• ISBN 13: 9781883914035
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 218