This book presents a detailed investigation of the singing technique that is generally known as the "inhaling the voice" technique. In addition, it explores the usage of vowels in spoken and sung variants, offering advice to singers regarding how they can improve their pronunciation of vowels and consonants, so as to enhance their professional performance.

This book is the first structured and complete research work undertaken on opera theatres across the entire Middle East and North Africa. Until now, no single study has looked at every theatrical and musical institute in these countries. Many of the opera theatres that are examined here have had very little written about them at all in Italian or English. This work fills this void in order to provide scholars and practitioners in the sector with the first reference work on the subject that will help our understanding of the evolutionary process that has led-and continues to lead-all the countries in the Arab world to equip themselves with an opera theatre.

Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime hardly rivalled by any of his contemporaries. This ten volume set provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts offer the most complete versions available. Each libretto is translated into modern English by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's libretti, the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. The eleventh volume presents the fourth of Meyerbeer's grands operas, and his final work. By 1860 long-imposed labor had started to tell upon the composer's health: he knew that he must concentrate on the "navigator project" which he had started twenty years earlier if he intended to finish it. Meyerbeer died on 2 May 1864, the day after the completion of the copying of the full score of this his last opera, Vasco da Gama. Minna Meyerbeer and Cesar-Victor Perrin, the director of the Opera, entrusted the editing of a performing edition to the famous Belgian musicologist Francois-Joseph Fetis, while the libretto was revised by Melesville. The original title of L'Africaine was restored out of deference to public expectation. Much of the music and action was suppressed, in spite of the strain this inflicted on the internal logic of the story.While L'Africaine is not lacking in the grandeur of statement and stirring climaxes for which the composer was so famous, there is a new intimacy, a new intensity of melancholic lyricism. Like its famous predecessors, it is basically an historical work, derived from the period of sixteenth-century Renaissance. The account of Vasco da Gama's voyage of discovery around the Cape of Good Hope and conquest of Calicut (1497-98) is subjected to a fictional treatment that raises many interesting issues. The framework is historical, but most of the characters and course of action are not; in fact the end of the opera, in the suicide of the heroine, suddenly leaves the terra firma of reality, and transports us into the mystical realms of the spirit. It is this mixture of modes that is central to the dramaturgy of L'Africaine, a confusion of history and fairytale, ancient certainties and challenging discoveries, in the creation of a new mythology. There is also originality in formal developments, with the great tenor scene in act 4 providing a new malleability in handling the constraints of shape and genre: recitative, arioso and cabaletta have a fluent integration in trying to explore the text more pointedly. L'Africaine was produced on 28 April 1865, a great posthumous tribute to its famous creators. The Ship Scene, the exotic Indian act, and the Scene of the Manchineel Tree exerted a fascination on audiences, and elicited new praise. The work full of melodic beauty and rapturous lyricism, began a triumphal progress through the world, beginning with the big stages of London and Berlin.

A versatile and prolific composer whose works dominated opera houses in the late 1830s and 1840s, Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) had an enormous influence on subsequent opera composers, including Verdi. Yet the texts of many of his operas pose numerous problems, partly due to the accumulation of changes made by generations of interpreters. With the renewed popularity of his operas, the need for a critical edition became keenly felt. This highly acclaimed edition does not aim to publish all his works, but should offer a variety of operas, from those still in repertory to a selection of titles that are especially significant for historical or musical reasons. The critical edition of "Maria Stuarda", based principally on the rediscovered autograph score, restores the two-act structure, the original opening chorus, a substantial part of the first finale, and Donizetti's original phrasing and orchestration. Appendices include an overture (1835) and original vocal variants. One of Donizetti's most brilliant comedies, "Il Campanello" was initially written as a farce with spoken dialogues, but was revised by the composer with recitatives and new pieces. Based on several newly examined sources, the critical edition presents both the original and revised versions. "La Favorite" was a huge success from the start and a mainstay of the Paris Opera for decades. Yet the version known in this century reflects a coarsely manipulated Italian adaptation of the original. The critical edition reconstructs the 1840 French version from autograph material that in many cases has been examined for the first time. Appendices include an alternate cabaletta in Act Three and contemporary vocal variants.

"Linda di Chamounix" provides a fascinating case study of Donizetti's habit of frequent rewriting, as it underwent three significant revisions in the year following its 1842 permiere. This critical edition of Linda di Chamounix, using sources that in some cases have never before been studied, allows performers and scholars to reconstruct all three versions. Appendixes include a contemporary orchestration of the stage band part and an early version of the first-act tenor aria which was replaced before the premiere and never performed.

A versatile and prolific composer whose works dominated opera houses in the late 1830s and 1840s, Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) had an enormous influence on subsequent opera composers, including Verdi. Yet the texts of many of his operas pose numerous problems, partly due to the accumulation of changes made by generations of interpreters. With the renewed popularity of his operas, the need for a critical edition became keenly felt. This highly acclaimed edition does not aim to publish all his works, but should offer a variety of operas, from those still in repertory to a selection of titles that are especially significant for historical or musical reasons. The critical edition of "Maria Stuarda", based principally on the rediscovered autograph score, restores the two-act structure, the original opening chorus, a substantial part of the first finale, and Donizetti's original phrasing and orchestration. Appendices include an overture (1835) and original vocal variants. One of Donizetti's most brilliant comedies, "Il Campanello" was initially written as a farce with spoken dialogues, but was revised by the composer with recitatives and new pieces. Based on several newly examined sources, the critical edition presents both the original and revised versions. "La Favorite" was a huge success from the start and a mainstay of the Paris Opera for decades. Yet the version known in this century reflects a coarsely manipulated Italian adaptation of the original. The critical edition reconstructs the 1840 French version from autograph material that in many cases has been examined for the first time. Appendices include an alternate cabaletta in Act Three and contemporary vocal variants.