Cinderella & Company: Backstage at the Opera With Cecilia Bartoli

The snooty world of opera has rarely seemed as hilariously bitchy as it does in Cinderella & Company: Backstage at the Opera With Cecilia Bartoli, a behind-the-scenes expose by Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal critic Hoelterhoff, who followed the likable mezzo-soprano Bartoli — one of opera's top-selling superstars — around the globe for two years. The author shares her dishy, fly-on-the-wall view of the jet-set opera scene's mega-egos, diva feuds, and petty day-to-day bartering that keeps the dinosaur of the fine arts from going extinct. What ultimately emerges is a fascinating portrait of the love-hate relationship between the hoary vocation of ''classical singing'' and the merciless machinations of instant fame in the digital age. A