1882. This volume contains The Rhine-Gold (Das Rheingold), the prelude to Wagner's trilogy: The Nibelung's Ring. Acknowledged as the master of German opera, and one of the most progressive composers in history, his monumental cycle of four musical dramas, collectively titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungs) and comprised of Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried and Die Gotterdammerung, took 22 years to complete, and stands as one of the most remarkable and influential achievements in Western music.

PRAISE FOR THE PREVIOUS EDITIONS: "If you are for opera, this book is for you."--"New York Times Book Review"The most influential recent book on opera criticism. . . in the English-speaking world"--"New Grove Dictionary of Opera"Affords the serious reader and listener an absorbing encounter with a sensitive and superbly trained intelligence in the act of thinking about music and music criticism. . . . We come away remembering the sound of Kerman's prose voice, mellifluous, elegant, eminently civilized, beneath its cool control a ground bass of urgent feeling."--"San Francisco Chronicle Book Review"The author's clarity and pungency...make for enjoyable, challenging reading. It is a collection that can tease the person who is primarily interested in opera into wanting to explore the song literature of the English Renaissance or to listen more knowledgeably to Mozart's piano concertos and Beethoven's symphonies."--William Ashbrook, "Opera Quarterly ""Kerman's musicological activity is technical without neglecting the importance of text, cultural context, meaning, expression, and value, and is likely to appeal to educated lay people.... Kerman's scholarship is careful and sensitive, and often subtle and witty. Yet this subtle scholarship has evoked strong and widespread reaction and provided significant leadership within musicology and beyond."--Renee Cox Lorraine, "Notes ""Lucid, lively.... Many aspects of his work can provide inspiration."--Oliver Neighbour, "Music and Letters"

In the sometimes faulty and incomplete records of the American stage to which writers on musical history have hitherto been forced to repair, 1750 is set down as the natal year for English ballad opera in America. It is thought that it was in that year that "The Beggar's Opera" found its way to New York, after having, in all probability, been given by the same company of comedians in Philadelphia in the middle of the year preceding. But it is as little likely that these were the first performances of ballad operas on this side of the Atlantic as that the people of New York were oblivious of the nature of operatic music of the Italian type until Garcia's troupe came with Rossini's "Barber of Seville," in 1825.

John Hunt was born in Windsor and Graduated from University College London, in German language and literature. He has worked in personnel administration, record retailing and bibliographic research for a government agency and is on the lecture panel of the National Federation of Music Societies. In his capacity as Chairman of the Furtwangler Society UK, John Hunt has attended conventions in Rome, Paris and Zurich and has contributed to important reference works about Furtwangler by John Ardoin and Joachim Matzner. He has also translated from the German Jurgen Kesting's important monograph on Maria Callas. John Hunt has published discographies of over 80 performing artists, several of which have run into two or more editions.

1909. The author examines the following operas: Il Barbiere di Siviglia; Le Nozze di Figaro; Die Zauberflote; Don Giovanni; Fidelio; Faust; Mefistofele; La Damnation de Faust; La Traviata; Aida; Der Freischutz; Tannhauser; Tristan und Isolde; Parsifal; Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg; Lohengrin; and Hansel und Gretel.

To what extent do operas express the political and cultural ideas of their age? How do they reflect the composer's view of the changing relations among art, politics, and society? In this book John Bokina focuses on political aspects and meanings of operas from the baroque to postmodern period, showing the varied ways that operas become sensuous vehicles for the articulation of political ideas. Bokina begins with an analysis of Monteverdi's three extant operas, which address in an oblique way the political and ideological dualities of aristocratic rule in the seventeenth-century Italy. He then moves to Mozart's "Don Giovanni", which he views as a celebration of the demise of a predatory aristocracy. He presents Beethoven's "Fidelio" as an example of the political spirit of a revolution based on republican virtue, and Wagner's "Parsifal" as a utopian music drama that projects romantic anticapitalist ideals onto an imagined past. He shows that Strauss's "Elektra" and Schoenberg's "Erwartung" transform the traditional operatic depiction of madness by reflecting the emerging Freudian psychoanalysis of that era. And he argues that operas by Pfitzner, Hindemith, and Schoenberg explore the political roles of art and the artists, each couching contemporary conditions in an allegory about the fate of art in a historical period of transition. Finally, Bokina offers a reappraisal of Henze's "The Bassarids" as a political opera that confronts the promise and limits of the sensual-sexual revolt of the twentieth-century.

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1898. With illustrations and diagrams. From the Preface: In writing the thousand and first book on Richard Wagner and his work, I do not pretend to accomplish anything better than has yet been done. My aim has been something quite different, -a real practical guide to Bayreuth for the French which will answer the needs and satisfy the curiosity of those of our nation who have not yet taken that little journey, which is so easy and attractive. I have also desired to indicate what state of mind it should be undertaken and what seductive preliminary studies are necessary to the complete enjoyment of the trip; finally, it has been my desire to present the Wagnerian style in its own proper light, by dissipating the clouds with which it has been enveloped by certain of its commentators, who, far from smoothing the way, have made it bristle with difficulties. This is the sole criticism I will allow myself: they write for Wagnerians, not for neophytes.

Wagner's Tristan has often--even by Lichtenberger--been described as a philosophic work; and as abstract thought or philosophy, it is said, is foreign to art, a work which admits it must be condemned. Let us first understand what is meant by philosophy. It is surely a train of thought in the mind of the spectator, not in the object which he contemplates. Anything in the world may be the subject of philosophic thought, or may suggest it; there is plenty of philosophy to be drawn from a daisy, but we do not therefore call a daisy a philosophic flower. So, too, we may philosophize about Wagner's Tristan, but the philosophy is our own; it is not in the work.

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Found in this work are descriptions of the text and music of some of the most famous masterpieces. The opera is never more enjoyed than by a music lover who is incapable of criticism from lack of musical knowledge: music being first and last an emotional art; and as our emotions are refined it requires compositions of a more and more elevated character to appeal to them. The history of opera should be known and composers classified, just as it is desirable to know and to classify authors, painters, sculptors and actors. Contents: Balfe: The Bohemian Girl; Beethoven: Fidelio; Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust; Bizet: Carmen; DeKoven: Robin Hood; Flotow: Martha; Humperdinck: Hansel land Gretel; Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana; Meyerbeer: The Prophet; Mozart: The Magic Flute; Sullivan: Pinafore; Verdi: Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, Aida; Wagner: The Nibelung Ring, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, Lohengrin.

This tremendous reference is in dictionary style for the easy reference and use by researchers, scholars, and any reader interested in the opera. It is an excellent source for looking up anything from specific data on a particular opera to which aria is connected with which opera. This volume is generously cross-referenced and should prove invaluable in answering many questions on the opera.

Trapes. There it is now! Whoever heard a man of fortune in England talk of the necessaries of life? If the necessaries of life would have satisfy'd such a poor body as me, to be sure I had never come to mend my fortune to the Plantations. Whether we can afford it or no, we must have superfluities. We never stint our Expence to our own fortunes, but are miserable, if we do not live up to the profuseness of our neighbours.

Imagine learning Italian through opera. L'italiano con l'opera: Lingua, cultura e conversazione is a book that can help students do just that. Designed to supplement intermediate level programs, the book is rich enough to be used in courses emphasizing language, conversation, and/or culture. Six operas are examined: Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Boheme, Pagliacci, Otello, Tosca, and La traviata. L'italiano con l'opera offers serious fun for students, familiarizing them with great operas through discussion of well-known characters, plots, settings, themes, criticism, and interpretation while they acquire vocabulary, accuracy, and fluency.

Each richly detailed opera unit contains many interactive speaking activities, reading comprehension, contemporary vocabulary, grammar, and writing activities as well as a section focusing on a specific aria or duet. Students are encouraged to tell stories, interpret characters, express and react to opinions, use appropriate vocabulary, and analyze themes using modern Italian. The book includes recommended lists of high-quality opera recordings on videocassette, DVD, audiotape, and CD. Units of study are designed to be used with excerpts from English-subtitled opera videos or DVDs.

Studies in mythology and romance. Regarding Wagner and his works, so much had already been written and published, however there was one branch of the subject which could hardly be said to have received the full attention which it undoubtedly deserves. This work aims deals with the relation of Wagner's work to the literary and legendary sources upon which it is founded. It is with the hope of leading others to examine these legends for themselves that these studies were written.

(Limelight). For well over twenty years, M. Owen Lee has been offering intermission talks during the Saturday afternoon Texaco Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, which now reach countries on six continents. In this book, Father Lee covers various operas of Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and Richard Strauss, as well as a selection of French operas, including Faust, Carmen and Les Contes d'Hoffman. In all, his repertory contains 23 operatic masterworks, to all of which he brings insight, learning and the most infectious enthusiasm. "One just cannot get enough of Father Lee's] brilliant, stimulating, thought-provoking insights...I feel there is no one more knowledgeable or qualified in the entire field of opera commentary. No one." The Opera Quarterly

Stock's study offers the first book-length account of Huju, a Shanghai operatic tradition which blends music and acting with portrayal of the lives of ordinary people. Richly informed by first-hand accounts, the book follows the genre as it develops in China's largest city from rural entertainment to urban ballad, revolutionary drama, and contemporary opera. An innovative combination of urban and historical ethnomusicology, the book will engage the historian of China and general scholar of music alike.

Maria Callas continues to mesmerize us twenty years after her death, not only because she was indisputably the greatest opera diva of the 20th century, but also because both her life and death were shrouded in a Machiavellian web of scandal, mystery and deception. Now Anne Edwards, well known for her revealing and insightful biographies of some of the world’s most noted women, tells the intimate story of Maria Callas—her loves, her life, and her music, revealing the true woman behind the headlines, gossip and speculation.

The second daughter of Greek immigrant parents, Maria found herself in the grasp of an overwhelmingly ambitious mother who took her away from her native New York and the father she loved, to a Greece on the eve of the Second World War. From there, we learn of the hardships, loves and triumphs Maria experienced in her professional and personal life. We are introduced to the men who marked Callas forever—Luchino Visconti, the brilliant homosexual director who she loved hopelessly, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, the husband thirty years her senior who used her for his own ambitions, as had her mother, and Aristotle Onassis, who put an end to their historic love affair by discarding her for the widowed Jacqueline Kennedy. Throughout her life, Callas waged a constant battle with her weight, a battle she eventually won, transforming herself from an ugly duckling into the slim and glamorous diva who transformed opera forever, whose recordings are legend, and whose life is the stuff of which tabloids are made.

Anne Edwards goes deeper than previous biographies of Maria Callas have dared. She draws upon intensive research to refute the story of Callas’s “mystery child” by Onassis, and she reveals the true circumstances of the years preceding Callas’s death, including the deception perpetrated by her close and trusted friend. As in her portraits of other brilliant, star-crossed women, Edwards brings Maria Callas—the intimate Callas—alive.

This book is about the drama that takes place within the world of opera and provides an insight into how opera has evolved and functions. The Creators describes some of the ways that composers use the language of music, and liaise with their librettists. The Re-Creators explains the functions of conductors, producers, designers, repetiteurs, the chorus and orchestra, singers, the Fach system (by which voice types are categorised), understudies, and the prompter. Information is provided on Training, the Audition Process, Competitions, the Rehearsal Schedule, Opera Administration and the Audience (including its effect on the performers), as well as on the claque system, types of applause, and music critics (and their effect on the artist). Opera companies (festival, seasonal and touring), television opera and video performances are all fully explored. A final Overview explains how opera has adapted to changing social conditions from Monteverdi to the present day, and points to what the future might hold. An Interlude includes a number of humorous incidents and cautionary tales, and a comprehensive Glossary unravels the jargon of the most frequently used operatic terms.

This book is about the drama that takes place within the world of opera and provides an insight into how opera has evolved and functions. The Creators describes some of the ways that composers use the language of music, and liaise with their librettists. The Re-Creators explains the functions of conductors, producers, designers, repetiteurs, the chorus and orchestra, singers, the Fach system (by which voice types are categorised), understudies, and the prompter. Information is provided on Training, the Audition Process, Competitions, the Rehearsal Schedule, Opera Administration and the Audience (including its effect on the performers), as well as on the claque system, types of applause, and music critics (and their effect on the artist). Opera companies (festival, seasonal and touring), television opera and video performances are all fully explored. A final Overview explains how opera has adapted to changing social conditions from Monteverdi to the present day, and points to what the future might hold. An Interlude includes a number of humorous incidents and cautionary tales, and a comprehensive Glossary unravels the jargon of the most frequently used operatic terms.

Parisian theatrical, artistic, social, and political life comes alive in Mark Everist's impressive institutional history of the Paris Odeon, an opera house that flourished during the Bourbon Restoration. Everist traces the complete arc of the Odeon's short but highly successful life from ascent to triumph, decline, and closure. He outlines the role it played in expanding operatic repertoire and in changing the face of musical life in Paris.
Everist reconstructs the political power structures that controlled the world of Parisian music drama, the internal administration of the theater, and its relationship with composers and librettists, and with the city of Paris itself. His rich depiction of French cultural life and the artistic contexts that allowed the Odeon to flourish highlights the benefit of close and innovative examination of society's institutions.