Music-Genres & Styles-Opera

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...

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...

Franco Alfano: Transcending Turandot is the first fully documented biography in any language of Italy's last verismo composer, Franco Alfano (1875-1954), the composer chosen to complete Giacomo Puccini's swansong, Turandot, in 1924. Alfano remains one of the most undervalued composers, despite arguably representing the...

The transition from silent to synchronized sound film was one of the most dramatic transformations in cinema's history, as it radically changed the technology, practices, and aesthetics of filmmaking within a few short years. In France, debates about sound cinema were fierce and widespread....

"Don Giovanni" Captured considers the life of a single opera, engaging with the entire history of its recorded performance. Mozart's opera Don Giovanni has long inspired myths about eros and masculinity. Over time, its performance history has revealed a growing trend toward critique--an increasing...

Philip Glass and Robert Wilson's most celebrated collaboration, the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, had its premiere at the Avignon Festival in 1976. During its initial European tour, Metropolitan Opera premiere, and revivals in 1984 and 1992, Einstein provoked opposed reactions from both...

A powerful and thought provoking memoir from one of the world's most successful orchestral conductors, whose life story, talent and dedication to music is an inspiration to read. A tragic car accident when Welser-Moest was a student shaped both his career and approach to...

The psychiatrist John Cordingly examines twelve operatic heroes under six sub-categories of personality disorder, placing them within the histories of mental disorder, sexuality, Byronismand their cultural contexts. The retired psychiatrist and former music graduate John Cordingly examines twelve operatic heroes under six sub-categories of...

These essays illuminate the changing nature of text-music relationships from the time of Petrarch to Guarini and, in music, from the madrigals of Giovanni da Cascia to those of Gesualdo da Venosa. Haar traces a line of development from the stylized rhetoric of Trecento...

These essays illuminate the changing nature of text-music relationships from the time of Petrarch to Guarini and, in music, from the madrigals of Giovanni da Cascia to those of Gesualdo da Venosa. Haar traces a line of development from the stylized rhetoric of Trecento...

Franco Alfano: Transcending Turandot is the first fully documented biography in any language of Italy's last verismo composer, Franco Alfano (1875-1954), the composer chosen to complete Giacomo Puccini's swansong, Turandot, in 1924. Alfano remains one of the most undervalued composers, despite arguably representing the...

Winner of the 2007 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society and the 2007 Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Divas and Scholars is a dazzling and beguiling account of how opera comes to the stage, filled...

In this colorful and detailed history, Joshua Goldstein describes the formation of the Peking opera in late Qing and its subsequent rise and re-creation as the epitome of the Chinese national culture in Republican era China. Providing a fascinating look into the lives of...