Operatics Begin at Home
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SEEING THROUGH
A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera
by Ricky Ian Gordon
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 468 pages, $32.

SEEING THROUGH is composer Ricky Ian Gordon’s detailed, passionate recollection of his life and career. Discovering opera as a child, Gordon found it a means of escaping a tumultuous home life, which included sexual abuse as well as drug and alcohol addiction, even as he developed an appreciation for beautiful music. In a conversational style, he recounts his neuroses and obsessions, his triumphs and tragedies.