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  • While I adore anything by Terry Pratchett, I admit that this may be my least-favorite of his works. Though his parody of "The Phantom of the Opera" is masterfully done, I found the conclusion disappointing, but inevitable. Another reason to love Terry Pratchett - he presents reality in a fantastic ... Continue

    While I adore anything by Terry Pratchett, I admit that this may be my least-favorite of his works. Though his parody of "The Phantom of the Opera" is masterfully done, I found the conclusion disappointing, but inevitable. Another reason to love Terry Pratchett - he presents reality in a fantastic setting, but he presents it truly. No sugar-coated, inorganic, cut-and-paste happy ending in the Discworld. He looks at the world and tells it like it is.

    

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• ― guaddess said on Sep 22, 2007 about the School & Library Binding edition| Add your feedback

It's true, there's a ghost in the Opera House of Ankh Morpork. Sardonic, flamboyant and, well, ghostly, it wears a bone-white Mask and terrorizes the entire company, including the immortal Enrico Basilica, who eats continuously even when he's singing. Mostly spaghetti with tomato sauce.

What better way to flush out a ghost than with a witch? Or even two! And Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg happen to be in Discworld's capital city trying to recruit a third (since three witches make a coven, and two make only an argument).

Enter the Opera's newest diva, the alarmingly fetching Perdita X. Nitt, who has such an astonishing range that she can sing harmony with herself, and is so agreeably large that she hangs out with the elephants in the cellar.

They say that inside every fat women there's a thin woman struggling to get out (or at least dying for chocolate). In Perdita's case, the thin woman is more ambitious, since she would also dearly love to be a witch.

Beginning to get the picture? One would hope so. For this isn't cheese. It's opera, which runs on a Catastrophe Curve. And to further complicate matters, there is a backstage cat named Greebo who occasionally becomes a person just because it's so easy. Not to mention Granny Weatherwax's old friend, Death, whose scythe arm is sore from so much use.

And who has been known to don a Mask...

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