An invaluable guide for both casual opera fans and aficionados, 100 Great Operas is perhaps the most comprehensive and enjoyable volume of opera stories ever written. From La Traviata to A da, from Carmen to Don Giovanni, here are the plots of the world's best-loved operas, told in an engaging, picturesque, and readable manner. Written by noted opera authority Henry W. Simon, this distinctive reference book contains act-by-act descriptions of 100 operatic works ranging from the historic early seventeenth century masterpieces of Monteverdi to the modern classics of Gian-Carlo Menotti. In addi... View More...
An invaluable guide for both casual opera fans and aficionados, 100 Great Operas is perhaps the most comprehensive and enjoyable volume of opera stories ever written. From La Traviata to A da, from Carmen to Don Giovanni, here are the plots of the world's best-loved operas, told in an engaging, picturesque, and readable manner. Written by noted opera authority Henry W. Simon, this distinctive reference book contains act-by-act descriptions of 100 operatic works ranging from the historic early seventeenth century masterpieces of Monteverdi to the modern classics of Gian-Carlo Menotti. In addi... View More...
Father Owen Lee is internationally known for his intermission commentaries featured during the Saturday afternoon broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. "A Season of Opera: From Orpheus to Ariadne" gathers together for the first time Father Lee's best broadcast and cassette commentaries, public lectures, and articles on twenty-three works for the musical stage. The essays range from the pioneering "Orpheus" of Monteverdi to the forward-looking "Ariadne" of Richard Strauss. Included are Father Lee's famous discussions of Mozart's "Magic Flute" and Beethoven's "Fidelio," Verdi... View More...
Winton Dean has long been regarded as the foremost British expert on Handel and Bizet, as well as an outstanding writer on opera in general. In this wide-ranging volume, Dean brings together his best writing over the past thirty-five years, each essay a small masterpiece of opera connoisseurship. The thirty pieces included here cover a diversity of opera-related subjects, ranging from shorter articles from The Listener to substantial surveys such as "Shakespeare in the Opera House." There are also important writings on the performance of recitative in late Baroque opera and on the controversia... View More...
Opera is the fastest growing of all the performing arts, attracting audiences of all ages who are enthralled by the gorgeous music, vivid drama, and magnificent production values. If you've decided that the time has finally come to learn about opera and discover for yourself what it is about opera that sends your normally reserved friends into states of ecstatic abandon, this is the book for you.Opera 101 is recognized as the standard text in English for anyone who wants to become an opera lover--a clear, friendly, and truly complete handbook to learning how to listen to opera, whether on the ... View More...
Robert Donington, the noted musicologist, performer, and writer, is famous for his influential and provocative book Wagner's "Ring" and Its Symbols, and for his indispensable reference work The Interpretation of Early Music. In this book he discusses the workings of symbolism in opera and the importance of staging opera in keeping with the composer's intentions. Only in this way, says Donington, can we be faithful to the conscious or unconscious symbolism invested in the work by the composer and librettist. Starting form Carlyle's premise that it is through symbols that man, consciously or un... View More...
Surveys the history of opera from its beginnings in the late 16th century to the present, and focuses on the changes in the styles, conditions, and architecture of the theater. View More...
Unfinished at Puccini's death in 1924, Turandot was not only his most ambitious work, but it became the last Italian opera to enter the international repertory. In this colorful study two renowned music scholars demonstrate that this work, despite the modern climate in which it was written, was a fitting finale for the centuries-old Great Tradition of Italian opera. Here they provide concrete instances of how a listener might encounter the dramatic and musical structures of Turandot in light of the Italian melodramma, and firmly establish Puccini's last work within the tradition of Rossini, Be... View More...
Goethe failed to appreciate the songs which would link his poems to musical immortality. Schubert's tonal innovations and passionate insight into the great lyrics disconcerted the poet, but brought Schubert fame as master composer long before public recognition of his symphonies.The prolific Schubert (over 600 songs in 10 years) was inspired by Goethe's verse as a prodigious young songwriter ("Gretchen am Spinnrade," his first masterpiece, was set at age 17) and stayed with the poems all his short life. The new edition includes all his versions for every lied to Goethe texts from the standard ... View More...
The listener, to understand the opera fully, should understand the situations, the shades of emotion, the nuances of characterization described in the music. William Weaver's translations of seven of the greatest Verdi operas are designed for maximum fidelity to the immediate word. Eschewing artistic renderings, Mr. Weaver offers, on facing pages, exact translations and the corresponding Italian text. The operas chosen for this edition represent Verdi's major achievements in each of the significant periods of his creative life: the first trio of masterpieces, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Tr... View More...
The Rough Guide to Opera is a handbook on the most thrilling of art forms, spanning four hundred years of music drama. Features include: lively biographical sketches of some 150 composers, from Claudio Monteverdi to Poul Ruders, detailing the main events of their careers and revealing their social and musical context; entertaining accounts of hundreds of operas, both the famous and neglected, each with a clear synopsis and a lively essay; CD reviews, covering the latest digital recordings as well as dozens of classic historical sets; and a who's who of the finest singers and conductors on reco... View More...
In "The Ring And The Wolf", Gottfried Wagner chronicles his family's connection with National Socialism, from his great-grandfather's anti-Semitic pamphlets to his father's, uncle's and grandparent's close relationship with Adolf Hitler.Gottfried's grandmother, Winifred, formed a special closeness to Hitler. It was Winifred who reportedly supplied the paper on which Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Her two sons, Wieland and Wolfgang (Gottfried's father), called Hitler "Uncle Wolf".As a young child, Gottfried discovered his family's controversial past, which has lead him on an impassioned crusade as an... View More...
Contemporary, comprehensive, cunning, and occasionally downright crazy, What's Your Opera I.Q.? will provide hours of fun for opera aficionados who think they know all the answers...and those who still have many musical questions of their own. Written to reflect what has been happening in the operatic world during the last two decades, more than 120 quizzes range over every imaginable topic from early and bel canto works, American composers and singers, avant-garde stagings, and -- thanks to increased understanding via surtitles and subtitles -- the words as well as the music.So test yourself ... View More...
Here is a delightfully arbitrary and irreverent look at the magical world of opera for anyone who has been intimidated, overwhelmed, or just plain confused by it View More...
