Opera category: 14844 books

Puccini is one of the most beloved of all opera composers La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot play to packed opera houses the world over. In his lifetime he achieved an international celebrity accorded to only a few, yet the critics were rarely impressed. He was nevertheless a creative...

A half century after his death in 1960, Swedish tenor Jussi Björling remains one of the most beloved singers in the world. He spent forty-five of his forty-nine years performing in public, rapidly conquering opera-house and concert stages on both sides of the Atlantic. Along the way, he left a vast...

Tosca’s première in Rome in January 1900 was nearly disrupted by a terrorist threat to blow up Italy’s King Umberto. Victorien Sardou had written the melodrama for the great actress Sarah Bernhardt. Giacomo Puccini’s popular opera is a tale of sadism and brutality, torture, attempted rape,...

"Lois Alba is a master teacher, ...I have never seen a vocal instructor who got such remarkable results in such a short time." - Irene Dalis, General Director, Opera San Jose Achieving a successful singing career, especially in opera, can seem almost impossible to many singers because...

A premier singer and master teacher here tells other singers how to get the most from 151 famous arias selected for their popularity or their greatness from 66 operas, ranging in time and style from Christopher Gluck to Carlisle Floyd, from Mozart to Menotti. “The most memorable thrills in an opera...

"The purpose of this volume is to offer to the English reader a short study of the lyric drama in Italy prior to the birth of opera, and to note in its history the growth of the artistic elements and influences which finally led the Florentine reformers to resort to the ancient drama in their search...

This Companion celebrates the extraordinary riches of the twentieth-century operatic repertoire in a collection of specially commissioned essays written by a distinguished team of academics, critics and practitioners. Beginning with a discussion of the century's vital inheritance from late-romantic...

Virginia Woolf famously claimed that, around December 1910, human character changed. Aesthetic Technologies addresses how music (especially opera), the phonograph, and film served as cultural agents facilitating the many extraordinary social, artistic, and cultural shifts that characterized the new...

Opera is often perceived to be characterised by excessive passions, sumptuous costumes, lavish sets, and ill-mannered divas. In reality, operas address the most fundamental and universal human concerns – love, death, jealousy, greed and power. In this timeless introduction, Alexandra Wilson rescues the art form from fading into insignificance and reveals the reasons behind its lasting appeal.

Ranging from the dawn of Italian opera through the late 19th century, this rich selection of soprano-range arias includes works by Caccini, Rameau, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Verdi, Bizet, and many others. Lyrics appear in the original languages, with English translations in back. Includes a scholarly introduction by musicologist H. E. Krehbiel and a new Preface by Roelof Oostwoud.

The turning point of Madame Bovary, which Flaubert memorably set at the opera, is only the most famous example of a surprisingly long tradition, one common to a range of French literary styles and sub-genres. In the first book-length study of that tradition to appear in English, Cormac Newark examines...

The man, the myth, the scoundrel. A far-future space opera from Bestselling author James David Victor Eliard Martin is the wayward son of House Martin. When an illegal deathrace ends in tragedy, he is blamed and sent to the prestigious military academy, Trevalyn, to learn responsibility...

This file includes (in the original German): Das Liebesverbot; Der Fliegende Holländer; Die Feen; Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg; Lohengrin Der Ring des Nibelungen" (Das Rheingold; Die Walküre; Siegfried; Götterdämmerung); Parsifal; Rienzi; Tannhäuser; Tristan und Isolde. According to Wikipedia:...

In Dramaturgical Leaves: Essays about Musical Works for the Stage and Queries about the Stage, Its Composers and Performers, the third volume in Janita R. Hall-Swadley’s The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt, Liszt heralds his admiration for early nineteenth-century opera and musical stage works....