Classical Opera category: 1804 books

With its powerful combination of music and theatre, opera is one of the most complex and yet immediate of all art forms. Once opera was studied only as 'a stepchild of musicology', but in the past two decades opera studies have experienced an explosion of energy with the introduction of new approaches...

"La Bohème is perhaps Puccini's most nearly perfect opera." — Hughes, Famous Puccini Operas. It has long been one of the world's most beloved musical works — an instantly enchanting blend of charm, warmth, gaiety, and pathos, brought to vibrant life by Puccini's sparkling, lighthearted...

So You Want to Sing Light Opera is a concise handbook for performers, teachers, and directors who want to learn more about the delightful genre of light opera, including Viennese operetta, English comic opera, French opéra bouffe, and Spanish zarzuela. Award-winning opera director and singer Linda...

Composer, conductor, and pianist, Thomas Adès is one of the most diversely talented musical figures of his generation. His music is performed by great opera companies, symphony orchestras, chamber groups, and music festivals throughout the world. But Adès has resisted public discussion of the creative...

Handel is one of the most remarkable figures in the history of western music. His compositions form one of the peaks of creative achievement in the Baroque period, and cover a remarkable range: full-scale Italian operas and English oratorios (including Messiah), but also shorter works such as the...

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 desire to hobnob with the upper crust...

The History of Opera For Beginners is a humorous, little book which starts with the radical assumption that Opera is just plain old music, rather than the highbrow, inaccessible music that everyone assumes it to be. The reader will learn the difference between Italian and German Opera and why you...

The Bab Ballads by the English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator, W. S. Gilbert.This book is a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert,illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan.

The Amato Opera Company has delighted music lovers throughout the years, establishing an extraordinary artistic tradition in New York City. -- Bill Clinton The Amato Opera theatre is a truly extraordinary New York cultural institution and it is a priceless addition to our great Citys...

A new and popular biography that will appeal to all those who love the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and who would like to know more about his operas and the life he lived. Perhaps Mozart's operas -- more than any of the other forms in which he composed -- hint most at his "divine discontent",...

Opera can reveal something fundamental about a film, and film can do the same for an opera, argues Marcia J. Citron. Structured by the categories of Style, Subjectivity, and Desire, this volume advances our understanding of the aesthetics of the opera/film encounter. Case studies of a diverse array...

With nearly three thousand new entries, the revised edition of Operas in German: A Dictionary is the most current encyclopedic treatment of operas written specifically to a German text from the seventeenth century through 2016. Musicologist Margaret Ross Griffel details the operas’ composers,...

You are getting ready for a performance of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and you have a few questions. How many clarinets are in the orchestra? How many orchestra members appear onstage? How many different sets are there? How long does the opera typically run? What are the key arias? Are any...

Opera is often regarded as the pinnacle of high art. A "Western" genre with global reach, it is where music and drama come together in unique ways, supported by stellar singers and spectacular scenic effects. Yet it is also patently absurd -- why should anyone break into song on the dramatic stage?...