Book lover: Patricia Wright

Patricia Wright. Photo / Supplied.

The book I love most is ...
Lots of my reading is background to forthcoming performances or preparation for students at the University of Auckland. I loved the two biographies on the world's most beautiful soprano _ Kiri Te Kanawa _ in every way.

The book I'm reading right now is ...
The greatest self-improvement book of all time. Life of the Party: The Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman by Christopher Ogden. You have to admire a woman who marries Churchill's son, becomes the father's confidante during the war, living at 10 Downing St, and ends up appointed by Bill Clinton as the US ambassador to France.

Though it would be easy to view her as a courtesan, coached for a while by Wallace Simpson, she was successful at everything she turned her hand to.

I'm also dipping into the Pushkin verse novel on which Tchaikovsky based Eugene Onegin. The book is revered in Russia and has been called ``an encyclopaedia of Russian life'. I'm also reading Alexander Poznansky's book, Tchaikovsky, the Quest for the Inner Man.

The book I'd like to read next is ...
After the intensity of rehearsals and opening performance and social events, I'll blob out between performances with a good Michael Connelly murder mystery.

Eugene Onegin opens on Thursday, September 17. www.nzopera.com