Music: Styles & Genres

How do you create a style of opera that speaks to everyone, when no one agrees on what it should say -- or how? French and Italian varieties of op...

I want to give my country a model of perfection. My country needs cheering up. I'm the man to do it.A man of great passions, John Christie wooed hi...

Stravinskys genius for the stage is here represented by two very different works. Oedipus Rex (1927) is the fruit of a collaboration with Jean Coct...

Puccinis La bohème is one of the most beloved and enduring operas of all time. In this guide, William Ashbrook evaluates the operas initial recepti...

These Opera Guides are ideal companions to the opera. They provide stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text of each opera ...

A superb new translation of one of the greatest nineteenth century poems: the libretto to Wagner's Ring cycleThe scale and grandeur of Wagner's The...

In its revised third edition, this volume argues that an appreciation of opera is based on understanding of several key aspects: history, langua...

Richard Wagner remains, almost 130 years after his death, the most controversial composer in the history of music. Creator of huge and hugely ambit...

These Opera Guides are ideal com-panions to the opera. They provide stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text of each opera...

Inspired by the fast-moving scenes and vulnerable, complex characters of Elizabethan drama, this new opera by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp cons...

On 632 pages, Ioan Holender, former director of the Vienna State Opera, recollects all 118 premieres of his term, which lasted from 1991 to 2010, r...

This handbook contains famous operas from fourteen Italian, French, and German composers. The text is designed to help listeners understand and app...

'Idiosyncratic, humorous, enlightening and written by one of the finest conductors alive ... This is the book to buy if you are going to see Wagner...

Some of classical music's most famous works are found in opera, and from film soundtracks to football stadiums, it reaches a vast worldwide audienc...

The Real Traviata is the rags-to-riches story of a tragic young woman whose life inspired one of the most famous operas of all time, Verdi's master...

In the fall of 1938, following Kristallnacht, the symphonic orchestra in Palestine cancelled the performance of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. No ...

The story of Manon Lescaut has become part of the European imagination: she is the fun-loving woman who is irresistible to men. Of Massenets many o...

Madama Butterfly is one of the most popular operas of all time, despite its disastrous premiere, after which it was immediately withdrawn and revis...