Music-Genres & Styles-Opera

Verdi's enduring presence on the opera stages of the world and as a subject for scholarly study by researchers in various disciplines has placed him as a central figure within modern culture. The composer's undisputed popularity from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day,...

Norma is considered one of the finest of the ten operas composed during Vincenzo Bellini's short career, representing his genius more comprehensively than is usually the case with any single work by an operatic composer. This handbook provides the biographical and cultural context of...

This book presents a lively and informative account of Die Meistersinger von N rnberg, including its literary sources and the evolution of the text from a light comic opera into its final form. John Warrack examines the music and historical tradition of the Mastersingers;...

Adelina Patti was the most highly regarded singer in the 19th century. She earned nearly $5000 a night and had her own railway carriage; yet during the same period a minor comic singer would perform for the cost of his food and a pair...

Bizet's Carmen is probably the best known opera of the standard repertoire, yet its very familiarity often prevents us from approaching it with the seriousness it deserves. This Handbook explores the opera in a number of contexts, bringing to the surface the controversies over...

This is the first book to be devoted to Mozart's opera, La clemenza di Tito. Rice considers the opera from a variety of historical and critical viewpoints. Tito is a political opera. The author examines its origins in the politically unstable Habsburg Empire of...

The contributions to this handbook bring together a full-length study of Elektra in English. The volume examines the many facets of one of Richard Strauss's most complex operas. First, P. E. Easterling surveys the mythological background, while Karen Forsyth discusses Hofmannsthal's adaptation of his...

This full-length study of Salome is the first in English since Lawrence Gilman's introductory guide of 1907. The handbook presents an informative collection of historical, critical and analytical studies of one of Strauss's most familiar operas. Classic essays by Mario Praz and Richard Ellmann...

This is a book on the best known of the Weill-Brecht collaborations which explores the extent and significance of the composer's contribution. After a detailed reconstruction of the work's genesis and continued revision over three decades, Stephen Hinton examines the spin-offs on which Weill...

Le nozze di Figaro (1786) was Mozart's first mature opera buffa. It was also the first of his three major collaborations with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. Unlike Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790), Figaro has few obvious problems, and even if...

Originally published in 1981, this is a one-volume paperback edition of Dr von Westernhagen's distinguished biography, first published in English by Cambridge University Press as a hardcover edition in two volumes. Its distinction was that it made use of fresh archive material, and took...

This book is a compact, up-to-date guide to the history and construction of Verdi's last - and possibly greatest - opera. Incorporating the findings of the most recent research, it provides performers, opera enthusiasts, students and scholars alike with a reliable summary of what...

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...

The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of...

Ellen Rosand shows how opera, born of courtly entertainment, took root in the special social and economic environment of seventeenth-century Venice and there developed the stylistic and aesthetic characteristics we recognize as opera today. With ninety-one music examples, most of them complete pieces nowhere...

Is The Marriage of Figaro just about Figaro? Is Don Giovanni's story the only one--or even the most interesting one--in the opera that bears his name? For generations of critics, historians, and directors, it's Mozart's men who have mattered most. Too often, the female...

There had long been a need for a modern English translation of Wagner's Ring--a version that would be reliable and readable yet at the same time be a true reflection of the literary quality of the German libretto. First published in 1993, this acclaimed...

Opera's greatest love story, set to music of incomparable beauty, Tristan und Isolde represents one of the nineteenth century's most revolutionary scores. Wagner's 1865 adaptation of a popular medieval legend changed the course of musical history and opened the door to twentieth-century innovations. Inspired...

This is the last of nearly 100 operettas created by French composer Jacques Offenbach, a native of Germany whose works were most prominent in the latter half of the nineteenth century. His three-act drama Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann), which includes a...

Don Giovanni has been called the greatest opera ever composed, an almost perfect work. Along with Aida, La Boh鑪e, and Carmen, Mozart's masterpiece is one of the most often performed operas. The work is so admired that when the Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini was...

Distinguished by its sure and economical craftsmanship, Pelleas et Melisande is Debussy's only opera -- a perfect marriage of music and verse that ranks as one of the great landmarks in the history of the form, so sublimely does the musical style fit Maeterlinck's...

The first and only guide to the history and architecture ofAmerica's famous opera houses The American opera scene has grown with the country, spawning aproliferation of beautiful and enchanting opera houses. This uniqueguided tour covers almost 100 historical and contemporary operahouses dating from 1765...

Opera: The Basics offers an excellent introduction to four centuries of opera. Its easy to follow sections explore topics including: the origins of opera basic terminology the history of major opera genres including: serious opera, comic opera, semi-serious opera and vernacular opera. With key...

The Social Media Handbook explores how social media are changing disciplinary understandings of the internet and our everyday lives. In addition to person-to-person social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, this volume considers a broad range of networked information services that support in-depth social...

The opera-goer's indispensable guide. About to see Rossini's William Tell, Verdi's I Lombardi, Gluck's Alceste, Philzner's Palestrina, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream? The stories of these operas and 120 others are told, clearly and concisely, in this companion volume to the highly successful Metropolitan...

Do you cringe when your opera-loving friends start raving about the latest production of Tristan? Do you feel faint just thinking about the six-hour performance of Parsifal you were given tickets to? Does your mate accuse you of having a Tannh user complex? If...

Ian Bradley's Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan has established itself across the world as the authorized and definitive 'Bible' for all those interested in the Savoy operas. Originally published in two Penguin paperbacks in the 1980's, a single-volume comprehensive compendium, hailed widely as "easily...

Sounding American: Hollywood, Opera, and Jazz tells the story of the interaction between musical form, film technology, and ideas about race, ethnicity, and the nation during the American cinema's conversion to sound. Contrary to most accepted narratives about the conversion, which tend to explain...

The Real Traviata is the rags-to-riches story of a tragic young woman whose life inspired one of the most famous operas of all time, Verdi's masterpiece La traviata, as well as one of the most scandalous and successful French novels of the nineteenth century,...

Tambling draws on the insights of Adorno, Benjamin, Theweleit, Bataille, Kristeva, and others to read nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera as part of a culture which produced fascism as a crisis-state, and threatened to extinguish the genre as an influential and contemporary form of...

This is the only extensive study of the Monteverdi Vespers, vastly expanding on the author's 1978 set of essays on the subject, long since out-of-print. The volume studies the Vespers from the perspectives of its musical and liturgical origins and context, presents analytical essays...

Marked by extraordinary research and enhanced by hundreds of musical illustrations, this monumental study follows the development of Verdi's oeuvre from his earliest opera Oberto to his final work, Falstaff. In writing the first edition of this classic work--which appeared to great acclaim in...

In mid seventeenth-century Venice, opera first emerged from courts and private drawing rooms to become a form of public entertainment. Early commercial operas were elaborate spectacles, featuring ornate costumes and set design along with dancing and music. As ambitious works of theater, these productions...

During the years preceding the composition of Tristan and Isolde, Wagner's aesthetics underwent a momentous turnaround, principally as a result of his discovery of Schopenhauer. Many of Schopenhauer's ideas, especially those regarding music's metaphysical significance, resonated with patterns of thought that had long been...

In Opera: A History in Documents, Piero Weiss presents a wide-ranging, vivid, and carefully researched tour of operatic history. A unique anthology of primary source material, this survey includes 115 chronologically organized selections--passages from private letters, public decrees, descriptions of first performances, portions of...

The Singer's Guide to German Diction is the essential foundation for a complete course in German diction for singers, vocal coaches, choral conductors, and anyone wishing to learn the proper pronunciation of High German. Written by Valentin Lanzrein and Richard Cross, who each have...

Opera has often used classical literature as a means of expressing the most vital concerns of the period in which the operas were written. Sing Sorrow explores the classical roots of many noted operas, illustrating the ways in which the operas reflected the political...

This encyclopaedia of operas, ballets, composers and performers begins with an introductory essay which aims to provide an appropriate overview and a necessary framework within which the detailed entries may be placed. It emphasizes entries for works, including operas, diverse lyric compositions and ballets,...

A compendium of Richard Wagner's prose works. Selected and arranged, and with an introduction by Albert Goldman and Evert SprinchornAuthor: Albert Goldman, Evert SprinchornISBN-10: 0306803194ISBN-13: 9780306803192Publisher: Da Capo PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/22/1988Pages: 447Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.26lbsSize: 8.04h x 5.78w x 1.08d

This wise and friendly guide to Mozart's operas encompasses the full range of his most popular works - Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi, Magic Flute, Seraglio, Clemenza di Tito - as well as less known works like Mithridate and Il re pastore. Music historian Mary...

Every opera lover enjoys a performance more when accompanied by a knowledgeable friend. In this indispensable guide, well-known opera critic Charles Osborne provides exactly that. Osborne fills in the details on 175 of the world's most frequently performed operas, including facts about the composer...

"I hear the chorus, it is a grand opera, Ah this indeed is music-this suits me."-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" America has had a love affair with opera in all its forms since it was first performed here in colonial times. This book-the first...

These 301 letters between Giuseppe Verdi and his last, most gifted librettist, Arrigo Boito, document an extraordinary chapter in musical history. Now available for the first time in English, this correspondence records both a unique friendship and its creative legacy. This new edition of...

Though some dismiss opera as old-fashioned, it shows no sign of disappearing from the world's stage. So why do audiences continue to flock to it? Given its association with wealth, one might imagine that opera tickets function as a status symbol. But while a...

Since the release of Wayne Koestenbaum's book, The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, gender studies has begun to take an active interest in music. Opera, long viewed as strictly an establishment tradition, has in particular been given a second look...

In this first detailed study of seventeenth-century sepolcri--sacred operas written for court performance on Holy Thursday and Good Friday--Robert L. Kendrick delves into the political and artistic world of Habsburg Vienna, in which music and ritual combined on the stage to produce a thoroughly...

Dreaming with Open Eyes examines visual symbolism in late seventeenth-century Italian opera, contextualizing the genre amid the broad ocularcentric debates emerging at the crossroads of the early modern period and the Enlightenment. Ayana O. Smith reevaluates significant aspects of the Arcadian reform aesthetic and...

Singing princesses from tall towers, temper tantrums gone awry, unconventional love affairs, and shepherds who can't catch a break are just a few of many things you'll find within the operas and ballets of Debussy, Dukas, and Ravel. This edition combines volumes 2 and...

Scholars have long recognized Carl Maria von Weber as the father of the German Romantic and Nationalist music. The success of his opera Der Freisch?z almost single handedly brought German operatic style onto the world stage, competing with and challenging established operatic traditions in...

Young offers a marvelous account of the 150 years of successes and failures by a great many people and diverse organizations striving to create appreciative audiences for opera in Denver. (Music)Author: Allen YoungISBN-10: 0974959782ISBN-13: 9780974959788Publisher: Pilgrims' ProcessLanguage: EnglishPublished: 05/15/2006Pages: 252Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.82lbsSize: 9.00h x...