Opera

A superb new translation of the libretto to Wagner's Ring cycle'Smiling in sorrowI sing of love'The Ring of the Nibelung, Wagner's epic cycle of four musical dramas about primal envy, cosmic conflict, the search for glory, spectacular self-sacrifice,...

The witches of the Discworld are back! An hysterical exploration of the magical world of the opera, brimming with Sir Terry Pratchett's stylish wit'Pratchett uses his other world to hold up a distorting mirror to our own' The TimesTHE SHOW MUST GO ON, AS...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781250800084Author Alex RossFormat PaperbackPage Count 784Imprint Picador USAPublisher Picador USAWeight(grams) 662gDimensions(mm) 209mm * 140mm * 35mm

While Puccini wrote only twelve operas during a long life,three of them one-acters designed to be performed together,he has to be ranked today as the world's most popular composer of opera. His La Boheme and Tosca are more frequently performed in the...

A colourful and concise telling of the fascinating story behind Richard Wagner's extraordinary masterpiece, Ring of the Nibelung.The Ring is one of the most epic and compelling stories of the nineteenth century, created by a composer who was, alongside...

Look out for a new book from Garry Wills, What the Qur'an Meant, coming fall 2017."Riveting . . . a double-barreled salvo that hits two bull's-eyes." -The New York Times Book ReviewThis dazzling study of the three operas that Giuseppe Verdi adapted from...

Ian Bradley's Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan has established itself across the world as the authorized and definitive 'Bible' for all those interested in the Savoy operas. Originally published in two Penguin paperbacks in the 1980's, a...

"Things like this are written only for people who have good powers of endurance (so really for nobody!)", wrote Wagner about Die Walkure. Yet, as Geoffrey Skelton points out, the opera has enjoyed a separate popularity and existence from the Ring Cycle...

Opera Choruses is a collection of 35 classic opera choruses, skilfully arranged as separate concert works, all with excellent English singing translations and practical keyboard reductions. The accompanying orchestral material for all titles in the...

This 2004 Companion provides a biographical, theatrical and social-cultural background for Verdi's music, examines in detail important general aspects of its style and method of composing, and synthesizes stylistic themes in discussions of representative...

For millions of people, the great soprano Maria Callas (1923-1977) remains the focus of such unparalleled fascination that there is still no higher praise for singers than "...the best since Callas." In this biography, Callas' career is brought...

The Oxford Classical Texts, or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus criticus at the front of each page. There are...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780312310028Author Anne EdwardsFormat PaperbackPage Count 368Imprint St Martin's PressPublisher St Martin's PressWeight(grams) 522gDimensions(mm) 231mm *...

Experience the passion and drama of the world's greatest operas with this sumptuously illustrated visual guide.Immerse yourself in more than 400 years of the world's most celebrated operas and discover the fascinating stories behind them. Explore the...

Czech composer Leos Janacek's most famous opera, Jenufa is a harrowing tale of forbidden love, abandonment, hypocrisy, desperation, and tragic infanticide. As today's second most frequently performed Czech opera (following Dvorak's Rusalka), Jenufa holds...

Every opera lover enjoys a performance more when accompanied by a knowledgeable friend. In this indispensable guide, well-known opera critic Charles Osborne provides exactly that. Osborne fills in the details on 175 of the world's most frequently...

Abitare la battaglia, Gabriele Baldini's study of the operas of Verdi from Oberto to Un ballo in maschera, has, since its posthumous publication in 1970, received much critical acclaim both in Italy and elsewhere. Its lack of technical language makes it...

Combining fact and fiction, each of the one hundred and two tales of Alexander Kluge's Temple of the Scapegoat (dotted with photos of famous operas and their stars) compresses a lifetime of feeling and thought: Kluge is deeply engaged with the opera and...

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 really about patriotism - an issue of burning importance to Verdi and his contemporaries. Music critic William...

At once the most light-hearted and most disturbing of Mozart and Da Ponte's Italian comic operas, Cosi fan tutte has provoked widely differing reactions from listeners for more than two centuries. Bruce Alan Brown offers several paths towards a closer...

A superbly insightful and moving exploration of Wagner's last opera, by one of Britain's leading intellectuals Wagner's last music-drama tells the story of Parsifal, the 'pure fool, knowing through compassion', who has been called to rescue the Kingdom...

Richard Wagner remains, almost 130 years after his death, the most controversial composer in the history of music. Creator of huge and hugely ambitious operas, which have an immense immediate impact, as well as providing food for endless thought and...

Richard Strauss is a composer much loved among audiences throughout the world, both in the opera house and the concert hall. Despite this popularity, Strauss was for many years ignored by scholars, who considered his commercial success and his continued...

Without Beethoven, music as we know it wouldn't exist. Who was this titan of world culture? 'You want to build a Beethoven library? There can be no better starting point... Brilliant.' John Suchet, Classic FM presenter Through 100 recordings,...

A brand-new look at the life and music of renowned composer Erich Wolfgang KorngoldErich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was the last compositional prodigy to emerge from the Austro-German tradition of Mozart and Mendelssohn. He was lauded in his youth by...

The tale of Peachum, thief-taker and informer, conspiring to send the dashing and promiscuous highwayman Macheath to the gallows, became the theatrical sensation of the eighteenth century.In THE BEGGAR'S OPERA, John Gay turned conventions of Italian...

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 Ring of the Nibelung has no precedent and no successor. It preoccupied Wagner for much of his adult life...

Le nozze di Figaro (1786) was Mozart's first mature opera buffa. It was also the first of his three major collaborations with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. Unlike Don Giovanni (1787) and Cosi fan tutte (1790), Figaro has few obvious problems, and even...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780375707124Author Manuela HoelterhoffFormat PaperbackPage Count 304Imprint VintagePublisher VintageWeight(grams) 408g

Abbate and Parker's A History of Opera is the first full new history of opera in sixty years - now in paperback in an updated second edition'The best single volume ever written on the subject' The Times Literary SupplementWhy has opera transfixed and...

The man whom W.H. Auden called `perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived' has inspired extremes of adulation and loathing. In this penetrating analysis, Bryan Magee outlines the range and depth of Wagner's achievement, and shows how his sensational...

In this Guide to Pelleas and Melisande, Maeterlinck's original play is reprinted in full, so that the opera lover can read the scenes that Debussy did not set to music. Hugh Macdonald's much praised English translation is published here for the first...

A revised and enlarged paperback edition to mark the centenary of the much-loved singer's birth. In 1953, at the age of 41, Kathleen Ferrier, England's greatest lyric contralto, lost her courageous battle with breast cancer. Her huge appeal to a wide...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780879101930Author Nigel DouglasFormat HardbackPage Count 342Imprint Limelight EditionsPublisher Limelight EditionsWeight(grams) 454gDimensions(mm) 254mm *...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781847498052Author Wolfgang Amadeus MozartFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Oneworld Classics LtdPublisher Alma Books LtdWeight(grams) 302g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781847497079Author Wolfgang Amadeus MozartFormat PaperbackPage Count 361Imprint Oneworld Classics LtdPublisher Alma Books LtdWeight(grams) 389g

Rossini is one of the great operatic composers and a major innovator in the field of serious and comic operas. Moise et Pharaon is a score which he revised for Paris ten years after it had been composed for Naples; the result shows the evolution of his...

The Gilded Stage is a comprehensive tour of the world of opera. From its origins in the courts of northern Italy, to its internationally recognised position in modern culture, Snowman explores the social history of opera houses and impresarios,...

China has over three hundred distinct styles of music drama, from exorcism theatre to farce, historical romance, and shadow puppetry. This study considers one of the newer operatic forms. Established just two centuries ago, huju (Shanghai opera), is...

Schindler's List meets The Sound of Music as best-selling New York Post investigative journalist Isabel Vincent delves into pre-World-War-II history to recover the amazing story of two British spinsters who masterminded a plan to spirit dozens of Jewish...