Tales From The Pit

What Kitchen Confidential did for restaurants, Tales from the Pit does for the Metropolitan Opera, and now you can hear it told by the man who lived it.

In this fearless and hilarious memoir, legendary trumpeter Mark Gould, former co-principal trumpet of the Met Orchestra for nearly three decades, takes listeners behind the gold-leaf curtain of the world’s most secretive opera house. With sharp wit and total honesty, Gould reveals what it’s really like to spend 29 years buried beneath the stage in the biggest opera house on earth—sharing tight quarters with world-famous singers, unpredictable conductors, and a brass section built on equal parts brilliance and chaos.

Through his unmistakable New York delivery, Gould brings the Met’s characters vividly to life:

• James Levine, the musical titan whose genius and downfall shaped an era.

• Carlos Kleiber, the storm-like conductor who inspired awe and fear in equal measure.

• Luciano Pavarotti and Kathleen Battle, divas whose power onstage was matched only by their offstage drama.

• And the infamous trumpet section—chain-smoking, bourbon-drinking, endlessly talented, and dangerously unfiltered.

From his first nerve-shattering solo in Pagliacci to a midnight scene on Broadway involving a homeless man, an accordion, and Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Gould’s stories swing between absurd comedy and aching truth. His narration captures every laugh, gasp, and heartbreak with the timing only a lifelong performer could deliver.

Beneath the madness lies deep love, for the music, the craft, and the brotherhood of players who made magic in the dark. Tales from the Pit is Gould’s unfiltered tribute to life in the trenches of the world’s greatest opera house: wild, moving, and unforgettable.