As always, my daughters suffered the brunt of my wild-eyed, still-in-her-jammies, what-day-is-it attempt to write another book. I thank Matt Baugh, Mariana Syrotiak, and Brian Kimberling for reading early versions, but above all Laurie Hitt for reading it with ferocity and marking it all up.
I grew up in a Wagner-free household. My grandmother adored Italian opera, and my mother passed that on to me. Wagner, linked forever with Nazism, was persona non grata.
Geoff Grundy changed that. He gave me his CD of Nina Stemme and Plácido Domingo in Tristan and Isolde. I hadn’t needed another reason to fall in love with him, but it sealed the deal. I remember sitting on a plane, my earbuds a-swell with it—and weeping, to the alarm of my seatmate. I am, for this and for so much else, in his debt.