Written by an opera insider and featuring an introduction by Placido Domingo, here is a thorough, friendly, and truly complete guide to learning how to love and appreciate the opera. After a brief history of opera, the book includes a guide to operatic terms, a minute-by-minute listener's guide to 11 central works, a list of recommended books and ...
From La Traviata to Aida, from Carmen to Don Giovanni, here are the plots of the world's best-loved operas, recounted in an engaging, picturesque, and readable manner. In addition to highlighting the most important aspects of each opera, the author discusses main characters, famous plot twists, and the most significant arias.
When first published in 1947, A Short History of Opera immediately achieved international status as a classic in the field. Now, more than five decades later, this thoroughly revised and expanded fourth edition informs and entertains opera lovers just as its predecessors have.The fourth edition incorporates new scholarship that traces the most ...
A story of the criminal demimonde of 18th-century London. Peachum, a receiver of stolen goods, does most of his business with the highwayman Captain Macheath. Peachum's daughter Polly falls in love with Macheath, and when the two run off together, Peachum informs on Macheath to the police to spite his daughter for leaving him. Macheath is ...
Mozart's beloved comic romp, reprinted from a late (C. F. Peters, 1941) edition, which preserves Mozart's autograph manuscript and early translations of the libretto and includes passages that are often cut in other editions.
Luciano Pavarotti's ex-manager (for 36 years) and the man who made him world-famous writes a candid and entertaining insider account of the great tenor, from his early days as an unspoiled star on the way up, to the end of his career, when Pavarotti became a hulking and difficult man who should have retired earlier. Herbert Breslin doesn't take ...
"Pogue is a wonderful teacher...He can teach anybody." --Gay Talese, bestselling author of Honor Thy Father "Scott Speck is a great communicator of classical music...Concert audiences and readers alike can't help getting caught up in the joy of his subject." --David Styers, American Symphony Orchestra League Opera is weird. Everybody wears makeup ...
In this classic guide, the foremost Wagner expert of our century discusses ten of Wagner's most beloved operas, illuminates their key themes and the myths and literary sources behind the librettos, and demonstrates how the composer's style changed from work to work. Acclaimed as the most complete and intellectually satisfying analysis of the ...
Winifred Wagner's story is a remarkable one. The Welsh-born orphan became Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law, one of Adolf Hitler's closest personal friends. Brigitte Hamann presents the first major, unbiased biography of the First Lady of Hitler's Bayreuth. Born Winifred Williams in 1897, she was adopted, aged nine, by distant English relatives and ...
An essential volume for music lovers and opera buffs, this book chronicles the emergence of European opera in America following World War I and its development up to the end of the 20th century. Davis, a musician and composer, displays his love for opera and its major performers, including Maria Callas, Beverly Sills, Richard Tucker, and Lawrence ...
THE THREEPENNY OPERA, originally written in German, tells the story of the dashing highwayman Macheath (a.k.a. Mac the Knife) and his ill-fated romance with Polly Peachum, the daughter of a dealer in stolen goods. The 1954 Broadway production of the play, which starred Lotte Lenya and featured music by Kurt Weill, brought the sounds of jazz and ...
An encyclopedic handbook for experts and newcomers alike. A description of each of the 83 most popular operas on CD, including: casts of characters, synopses, Sir Denis's comments and grade, and contemporary news and gossip. Also included are detailed sections on composers, conductors and singers.
This work collates over 100 primary-source documents for students of the history of opera. The varied selections - which include letters, excerpts of journals, bits of libretti, and contemporary criticism - provide eye-witness commentary on the world of opera from its late-Renaissance infancy through modern times. Each selection is introduced by ...
A French courtier, secret agent, libertine and adventurer, Beaumarchais (1732-99) was also author of two sparkling plays about the scoundrelly valet Figaro - triumphant successes that were used as the basis of operas by Mozart and Rossini. A highly engaging comedy of intrigue, The Barber of Seville portrays the resourceful Figaro foiling a jealous ...
In this lavishly illustrated volume the history and social context of opera is explored by a group of leading British and American scholars, under the editorship of Roger Parker. The core of the book is a historical survey of opera, from its beginnings in Florence four hundred years ago, up to opera in the 1990s. The greatest coverage is given to ...
This one-volume study of all Verdi's operas provides a musical portrait of the composer as well as a guide to the music. The author looks at each opera from four different points of view: Verdi's life at the time it was written; the story, which is linked to the major musical features; information about the libretto, the librettist and Verdi's ...
The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan provides the complete text of all the Gilbert & Sullivan operas which are still performed today, together with extensive annotations covering 'lost' songs, alterations and additions, obscure allusions, production points, and comments of interest. Each opera has an introduction which places it in its ...
First published in 1996 to great critical and popular acclaim, the Grove Book of Operas, is a collection of synopses and descriptions of over 250 operas. Each succinct yet insightful entry is written by a leading authority on the opera and includes a full synopsis of the plot, a cast list, a note on the singers in the original production, and ...
Wagner's Ring is a great masterpiece. But because of the work's rich complexity it is difficult to think sensibly about its text and music. Deryck Cooke, author of The Language of Music and completer of Mahler's Tenth Symphony, displays his masterly common sense in this study of how and why The Ring took the shape it did. It is only a portion of ...
Acclaimed author and Jungian analyst Bolen reveals the archetypal truths and liberating insights in Wagner's ever-popular Ring Cycle operas. Bolen's interpretations evoke the reader's associations, memories, and emotions to prompt insight and healing for both the psyche and society caught in the "Ring Cycle" of destruction and dysfunction.
James Hepokoski provides a reliable summary of what is currently known about Otello, along with an interpretation of the significance of the work within Verdi's career. The book begins with a detailed synopsis which interweaves some of the specific stage action from the 1887 Milanese premiere. There follows a close consideration of how the opera ...
Ten years and 60,000 copies after its initial release, a revised and expanded edition of this classic spoof on musical history. The expanded edition contains new material by David Barber as well as supplementary material by two famous singers.
National Public Radio presents a comprehensive guide to the music that launched and continues to play on many NPR stations--opera. Profiles of major composers are buttressed by helpful tips for opera listening, biographies of the major singers, a discussion of theoretical and stylistic concerns, and a survey of classic operas.
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