Opera category: 14844 books

David Beard presents the first definitive survey of Harrison Birtwistle's music for the opera house and theatre, from his smaller-scale works, such as Down by the Greenwood Side and Bow Down, to the full-length operas, such as Punch and Judy, The Mask of Orpheus and Gawain. Blending source study with...

The stage works of Saint-Saëns range from grand open-air pageants to one-act comic operas, and include the first composed film score. Yet, with the exception of Samson et Dalila, his twelve operas have lain in the shadows since the composer's death in 1921. Widely performed in his lifetime, they...

Ombra is the term which applies to an operatic scene involving the appearance of an oracle or demon, witches, or ghosts. Such scenes can be traced back to the early days of opera and were commonplace in the seventeenth century in Italy and France. Operas based on the legends of Orpheus, Iphigenia,...

Of all the great composers of the eighteenth century, Handel was the supreme cosmopolitan, an early and extraordinarily successful example of a freelance composer. For thirty years the opera-house was the principal focus of his creative work and he composed more than forty operas over this period....

Cathy Berberian (1925-1983) was a vocal performance artist, singer and composer who pioneered a way of composing with the voice in the musical worlds of Europe, North America and beyond. As a modernist muse for many avant-garde composers, Cathy Berberian went on to embody the principles of postmodern...

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...

The second volume of Carl Friedrich Glasenapp's Life of Richard Wagner.

"His pictures, which seemed to me then [aged 13] to be the very music made visible, plunged me a few fathoms deeper into my delight. I have seldom coveted anything as I coveted that book." — C.S. LewisBefore portraying Wagner's "Ring," Arthur Rackham (1867–1939) had become England's leading illustrator...

This file includes: Adelaide di Borgogna, in Italian; Adina, in Italian; Armida, in Italian; Aureliano in Palmira, in Italian; Bianca e Falliero, in Italian; Ciro in Babilonia, in Italian; Le Comte Ory, in French; Demetrio e Polibio, in Italian; Eduardo e Christina, in Italian; Elisabetta Regina d'Inggilterra,...

A vivid grasp of the story and the characters in "The Ring of Niebelung" brings Richard Wagner's mythic four-opera cycle to life. The Ring Cycle has a hold on our imagination like no other operatic work because it is archetypal and has the power of myth as well as music to reverberate in the psyche....

AIDA - Opera in four Acts (Full Text / Libretto EN-IT), Synopsis, Libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni (ENGLISH – Italian), Comments, VIDEO-Links to YouTube, Giuseppe Verdi (Biography), Friezes and drawings of ancient Egypt, Pictures of VERONA and Arena, small Candles.

Tempesta is a term coined in this book applying to music that exhibits agitated or violent characteristics in order to evoke terror and chaos, involving ideas like rapid scale passages, driving rhythmic figurations, strong accents, full textures, and robust instrumentation including prominent brass...

Richard Wagner is one of the most controversial figures in Western cultural history. He revolutionized not only opera but the very concept of art, and his works and ideas have had an immeasurable impact on both the cultural and political landscapes of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From...

This is the complete orchestral and vocal score of Mozart's Don Giovanni, considered by many to be the greatest opera ever written. This edition contains all the music Mozart wrote for Don Giovanni, both for the original version performed in Prague (1787) and the alterations―Don Ottavio's aria "Dalla...