Doing it: Five Performing Arts - Tapa dura

Does an opera producer do anything besides tell the singers where to stand? Can a single note be played more or less beautifully on the piano? In these essays, all originally published in The New York Review of Books, five of our most accomplished contemporary artists and critics explore the relationship between technique and interpretation in the performing arts. Tom Stoppard discusses how playwrights control the ways in which information flows from the stage to the audience. Charles Rosen highlights the very physical relationship between the pianist and the instrument. Jonathan Miller describes how he has found new stagings for some of our best-loved operas. Garry Wills argues that the collaborative and commercial pressures of filmmaking have produced some of our greatest cinematic triumphs. And Geoffrey O'Brien looks at how hip music lovers in the nineties rediscovered sixties pop-icon Butt Bacharach. Witty, trenchant, often surprising, and always insightful, this collection is essential reading for all devotees of the performing arts.

Tom Stoppard's work includes" Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (Tony Award), "Jumpers", "Travesties" (Tony Award), "Night and Day", "After Margritte", "The Real Thing" (Tony Award), "Enter a Free Man", "Hapgood", "Arcadia" ("Evening Standard" Award, The Oliver Award and the Critics Award), " Indian Ink" (a stage adaptation of his own play, "In the Native State") and "The Invention of Love".

Jonathan Miller is the Secretary for the Kentucky Finance and Administration Cabinet. Prior to that he served as the State Treasurer of Kentucky. He has been named an emerging national leader by groups as diverse as the Democratic Leadership Council, the United Jewish Communities, and the Aspen Institute. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

Garry Wills is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and cultural critic, and a professor of history at Northwestern University. A recipient of the National Book Award, his many books include "Lincoln at Gettysburg", "Reagan's America", "Witches and Jesuits", and a biography of Saint Augustine. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Robert B. Silvers is co-founder and editor of "The" "New York Review of Books," He is the editor of "Hidden Histories of Science" and "Five Performing Arts," and co-editor of "Striking Terror: America's New War," "The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin," and "India: A Mosaic,"