Michael Steen: 24 books
by Michael Steen
Language: English
Release Date: April 22, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: April 22, 2016
In volume II of self-standing Short Guides to 25 of the world’s greatest operas, Michael Steen, author of the acclaimed The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, and Great Operas provides another compendium in his ebook series. Much more than a standard reference book, this ranges across influential...
by Michael Steen
Language: English
Release Date: July 1, 2011
Language: English
Release Date: July 1, 2011
**'A glorious plum-pudding of a book, to be consulted, with pleasure and profit, over and over again' Sir Jeremy Isaacs **
Michael Steen's 'Great Composers' was originally published in 2003. A lifetime's work and almost 1000 pages long, it has since become 'the' reference point and key read...
by Jim Baggott, Stephen Fender, Maryanne Woolf
Language: English
Release Date: March 20, 2013
Language: English
Release Date: March 20, 2013
Icon Books is an independent British publisher which publishes popular and engaging non-fiction for adults. We’re proud to be part of the Independent Alliance in the UK, publishing companies who share a common vision of editorial excellence and original, diverse publishing. This ebook sampler –...
Bizet's Carmen
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: February 20, 2013
The Paris audience in 1875 was shocked by the sexually explicit realism of Bizet’s exotic operatic masterpiece, its ‘verismo’ depiction of low life and brutal passion. But since the disastrous première – a sensational failure which hastened Bizet’s premature death – it has been the greatest...
Rossini's The Barber of Seville
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: February 20, 2013
The première in 1816 in Rome of Gioachino Rossini’s famous opera was a fiasco comparable to those of Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Bizet’s Carmen. But Il barbiere di Siviglia was soon recognised as being among the greatest of comic operas, comparable to those of Mozart. Even Beethoven was enthusiastic....
Britten's Peter Grimes
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: July 16, 2012
Britten’s opera Peter Grimes is based on George Crabbe’s horrifying poem The Borough about early 19th century Aldeburgh, a North Sea fishing town in East Anglia. Its premiere at Sadlers Wells in 1945, shortly after VE Day, was a landmark moment in British operatic history. Britten’s partner...
Mozart's Marriage of Figaro
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: May 31, 2012
Although the story of Figaro’s success in preventing the Count of Almaviva’s seduction of his fiancée Susanna was politically explosive, it was tolerated in the court of the relatively enlightened Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. Mozart’s opera, Le Nozze di Figaro, uses a libretto by Lorenzo...
Mozart’s Don Giovanni
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: May 17, 2012
With a wealth of famous tunes and meticulous characterisation, Don Giovanni is an undisputed masterpiece created by Mozart out of a thread-bare fairground gig. The Don – for whom both sexes have a sneaking admiration – gatecrashes proceedings, serenading and seducing as he goes. As wily as he...
Verdi's La Traviata
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: February 20, 2013
Verdi’s now-popular opera was a fiasco in Venice in 1853, attributable perhaps to the prima donna being noticeably obese, despite apparently wasting with tuberculosis. Soon, however, Verdi’s scandalous love story was on stage contemporaneously at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Covent Garden and Drury...
Rossini’s La Cenerentola
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: May 18, 2012
Rossini’s La Cenerentola (or Cinderella) is one of the most popular comic operas in the classical repertoire – the timeless fairy tale about the triumph of virtue over snobbery. Its first performance at Rome’s Teatro Valle in January 1817 – when the composer was not yet 25 – was the customary...
Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: May 25, 2012
Sir Walter Scott’s story of a Scottish girl forced by her family into an arranged marriage still resonates today, two centuries after it was published. Donizetti’s opera, which premièred in Naples in 1835, is famous particularly for the Mad Scene when Lucia, after leaving for her nuptials, reappears...
Puccini’s La Bohème
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: May 17, 2012
Puccini’s obsession with detail ensured the success of La Bohème, his opera about the impoverished ‘artistes’ in Paris in the 1830s. Soon after its première, people started calling their baby daughters Mimi. The story of this seamstress, her hectic but fraught love affair with the poet Rodolfo...
Verdi's Rigoletto
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: February 20, 2013
From the première of Rigoletto at Venice’s La Fenice in 1851, the Duke’s La donna è mobile caught on with the public and has done much to ensure the ongoing popularity of Verdi’s opera about the body in the sack. Rigoletto, the sarcastic court jester, is cursed by a nobleman who he has mocked....
Mozart's Così Fan Tutte
A Short Guide to a Great Opera
Language: English
Release Date: May 25, 2012
A couple of smooth army officers in metropolitan Naples become increasingly horrified as they find that they are losing their bet with a misogynist philosopher. The wager? That their fiancées will be faithful. Their disguise as Albanians in an attempt to entrap their fiancées, and the complicity...
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