Music: Styles & Genres

With four famous operas each from Mozart, Verdi and Puccini, and two each from Rossini and Donizetti, there is a feast of information. Here are sho...

This famous opera has had a chequered performance history, and Professor Laurel E. Fay, in an illuminating musical analysis, points out that the in...

Der Rosenkavalier has one of the longest and most exquisitely crafted texts of all opera. The depth and subtlety of the characterization can only b...

Opera is often dismissed as outdated and excessive, and perceived to be characterised by excessive passions, sumptuous costumes, and ill-mannered d...

Makes available in reliable English translation Wagner's original Siegfried libretto and his early essay on the Nibelung myth. In 1848 Richard W...

John Wells introduces the opera with a high-spirited account of the action-packed career of the author, in many respects the prototype of Figaro hi...

This opera has been described as the longest single smile in the German language. But Roland Matthews indicates that violence is not far beneath th...

'A Landmark in Musical History' is John Luke Rose's title for the introduction to this extraordinary piece of theatre. It belongs to the German tra...

Bizet describes himself as 'pagan', and Carmen has a savage Mediterranean beauty quite unique in music. The essays included in this guide suggest s...

In this guide, Julian Budden reviews the difficulties that faced the management that had commissioned La Traviata and how, in some previously unpub...

Fidelio is Beethoven's only opera, and the composition he is said to have loved the most. Elizabeth Forbes introduces the background and compositio...

Aida is, for most of us, the quintessence of Ancient Egypt but it is certainly not just for archaeologists. Michael Rose points out that it is real...

This new edition of leading opera critic Rupert Christiansen's perennially popular Pocket Guide has between extensively revised, and incorporates m...

'A Landmark in Musical History' is John Luke Rose's title for the introduction to this extraordinary piece of theatre. It belongs to the German tra...

Monteverdis 1607 version of the legend of Orpheus is arguably the first masterpiece of opera. Composed for the court of Mantua, where Monteverdi wa...

One Chance is the remarkable and inspirational true story of Paul Potts. When Potts, a shy, bullied shop assistant by day and an amateur opera sing...

This second volume of Meyerbeer''s non-operatic work is devoted to his secular choral writing for male voices, solo songs with chorus, and later so...

For the last 25 years Jonathan Veira has been a star of the world of opera, handling a wide range of character parts as a comic baritone. A virtuos...

This edition of Messa da Requiem is based on Verdi's autograph score and other authentic sources. The appendixes include two pieces from the compos...

In 1883, three of the masterminds of Viennese operetta collaborated on a new masterpiece; A Trip to Africa or Die Afrikareise in the original Germ...

The Story of Opera explores the centuries-old tradition in which the emotional power of music is linked to the human issues that can be enacted as ...