Opera category: 14844 books
Giovanni Battista Rubini and the Bel Canto Tenors
History and Technique
Language: English
Release Date: June 6, 2013
Giovanni Battista Rubini (1794-1854) was a legendary tenor and the first 19th-century non-castrati male singer to become an international star of opera. The previous two centuries had been the era of the castrati, with tenors and basses relegated to character and supporting roles in the operas of...
by Lotfi Mansouri
Language: English
Release Date: October 6, 2012
Language: English
Release Date: October 6, 2012
Everything about opera is larger than life, but the bigger the art form, the bigger the potential for disaster. When things go wrong at the opera house, they really go wrong. No one has a greater or more intimate knowledge of such moments than Lotfi Mansouri. Over the course of a career that has spanned...
by Carolyn Abbate, Roger Parker
Language: English
Release Date: September 8, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: September 8, 2015
“The best single volume ever written on the subject, such is its range, authority, and readability.”—Times Literary Supplement
Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their “effervescent, witty” (Die...
Grand Opera
The Story of the Met
Language: English
Release Date: September 22, 2014
The Metropolitan has stood among the grandest of opera companies since its birth in 1883. Tracing the offstage/onstage workings of this famed New York institution, Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron tell how the Met became and remains a powerful actor on the global cultural scene. In this first...
by Thomas McGeary
Language: English
Release Date: April 25, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: April 25, 2013
The Politics of Opera in Handel's Britain examines the involvement of Italian opera in British partisan politics in the first half of the eighteenth century, which saw Sir Robert Walpole's rise to power and George Frideric Handel's greatest period of opera production. McGeary argues that the conventional...
Rusalka
A Performance Guide with Translations and Pronunciation
Language: English
Release Date: November 2, 2012
Known worldwide as a composer of symphonies and chamber music, Czech composer Antonín Dvorák declared toward the end of his life that his main love was writing operas. Written in 1900 at the height of Dvorák’s creative powers, his fairy tale opera Rusalka is a masterpiece firmly established in...
Women Opera Composers
Biographies from the 1500s to the 21st Century
Language: English
Release Date: August 4, 2016
The history of women in the opera is a grand story. Women were singers and patrons, of course, but from opera’s beginnings in Renaissance Italy, they were also opera composers and librettists. At first it was exclusively for the nobility. In the 19th century, with the emergence of the middle class...
Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera
A History
Language: English
Release Date: October 27, 2016
Since its inception, French opera has embraced dance, yet all too often operatic dancing is treated as mere decoration. Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera exposes the multiple and meaningful roles that dance has played, starting from Jean-Baptiste Lully's first opera in 1672. It counters prevailing...
Staging Scenes from the Operas of Mozart
A Guide for Teachers and Singers
Language: English
Release Date: May 8, 2014
In Staging Scenes from the Operas of Mozart: A Guide for Teachers and Singers, opera director William Ferrara offers the perfect resource for the dramatic preparation of opera scenes for directors and student performers. Topics include study and research, rehearsal planning, blocking, characterization,...
Black Opera
History, Power, Engagement
Language: English
Release Date: May 4, 2018
From classic films like Carmen Jones to contemporary works like The Diary of Sally Hemings and U-Carmen eKhayelitsa, American and South African artists and composers have used opera to reclaim black people's place in history. Naomi André draws on the experiences of performers and audiences to explore...
by Robert Cannon
Language: English
Release Date: February 16, 2012
Language: English
Release Date: February 16, 2012
What is opera and how does it work? How has this dramatic form developed and what is its relevance in the modern world? Perfect for music students and opera-goers, this introductory guide addresses these questions and many more, exploring opera as a complete theatrical experience. Organised chronologically...
Drama Kings
Players and Publics in the Re-creation of Peking Opera, 1870-1937
Language: English
Release Date: February 13, 2007
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 some of the opera’s key...
by Michael White, Elaine Henderson
Language: English
Release Date: May 31, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: May 31, 2018
Originally published in 1997, Collins Opera & Operetta is an invaluable guide to this fascinating but sometimes misunderstood art form, presenting essential information on over 180 major operas and operettas in an accessible, yet scholarly, way. The entry for each opera includes: • The composer,...
Inventing the Opera House
Theater Architecture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy
Language: English
Release Date: May 17, 2018
In this book, Eugene J. Johnson traces the invention of the opera house, a building type of world wide importance. Italy laid the foundation theater buildings in the West, in architectural spaces invented for the commedia dell'arte in the sixteenth century, and theaters built to present the new art...