Anthony Burgess was preoccupied with the musical stage throughout his life. His mother, he claims, was a star of the Manchester music halls, while his father was a pianoplayer in the city’s pubs and silent cinemas. Burgess fictionalised his experience of growing up around musical performers in his 1986 novel The Pianoplayers, and wrote extensively about many forms of musical entertainment throughout his career, and composed musicals on subjects such as Shakespeare, James Joyce’s Ulysses and his own A Clockwork Orange.

This article, originally written for New York Magazine, shows Burgess considering the tempestuous legacy of the opera singer Maria Callas, claiming ‘she would threaten to knife a tenor for holding a high B flat too long’.

For more information on the Observer/Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism, click here. 

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