The Penguin Concise Guide to Opera

Description: Everything you need to know about opera in one handy pocket guide. Part of our best-selling Pocket Guide series, The Pocket Guide to Opera contains A-Z synopses of operas and biographies of the characters, lyricists and composers. The book features the history of opera, setting it in the context of its day and discussing the influence of world events and influences such as the Freemasons and the composers' patrons. With factboxes highlighting some of the stranger sides to opera, With factboxes highlighting surprising, little known and often quirky operatic facts, this fascinating book is a must-buy guide for everyone who loves opera.

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ISBN: 9781844680863

Description: Opera is all about intense emotion, magical music and overwhelming theatrical spectacle. In this exciting new guide, the many myths that surround opera are exploded, while its transformation from inaccessible high art to affordable, dramatically realistic and easy-to-encounter drama is revealed. The powerful principal players in the opera world - the maestros, superstar divas and directors - are examined in fascinating detail, and questions are asked of opera's future in a world where such extravagant entertainment can seem at odds with the rest of today's popular culture. Whether you are completely new to the genre or a regular opera-goer wanting to learn more, Opera makes for essential reading.

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ISBN: 9781849496223

Description: Covering over 1500 singers from the origins of opera to the present day, this book is an essential resource for all serious opera lovers and an indispensable companion to the enormously successful Grove Book of Operas, with more than 40 specially commissioned articles on contemporary singers. The most comprehensive guide to opera singers ever produced.

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ISBN: 9780195337655

Description: Arranged in an easy-to-use A-Z form, THE NEW PENGUIN CONCISE THESAURUS offers a vast selection of synonyms for a whole host of words, ranging from the everyday to the comparatively esoteric and from standard vocabulary to contemporary slang and jargon ('e-tailer', 'chill out'). Each entry is simplicity itself to follow, and where a particular word has several different senses, these are clearly indicated and explained. A perfect companion to THE NEW PENGUIN CONCISE ENGLISH DICTIONARY.

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ISBN: 9780140515206

Description: Have you ever heard the beauty and power of an opera voice or felt moved by a story told in a language you don't even know? Highlighting 165 works and their composers, this guide is a perfect introduction to opera - one of the world's most dramatic art forms. This illustrated book is packed full of photography to showcase the greatest operas and will take you on a journey through the history of opera itself. Discover the basics: how opera developed, types of voices, and theatrical staging - including a look at stunning opera houses around the globe. See the composers who first moulded the art form and those who made it their own. Enjoy 400 years of musical drama from late-Renaissance Italy to works from contemporary names, and immerse yourself in the stories of more than 160 operas - including Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), Carmen, La Boheme, and Madama Butterfly - through act-by-act synopses. With operatic works throughout history organised by geographical region, Opera is essential reading, whether you are a season ticket-holder looking for a quick brush-up before a performance, or new to opera and want to know more.

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ISBN: 9781405312790

Description: A wide-ranging look at the interplay of opera and political ideas through the centuries The Politics of Opera takes readers on a fascinating journey into the entwined development of opera and politics, from the Renaissance through the turn of the nineteenth century. What political backdrops have shaped opera? How has opera conveyed the political ideas of its times? Delving into European history and thought and music by such greats as Monteverdi, Lully, Rameau, and Mozart, Mitchell Cohen reveals how politics-through story lines, symbols, harmonies, and musical motifs-has played an operatic role both robust and sotto voce. This is an engrossing book that will interest all who love opera and are intrigued by politics.

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ISBN: 9780691211510

Description: This new edition of leading opera critic Rupert Christiansen's perennially popular Pocket Guide has between extensively revised, and incorporates many more operas from all periods, including recent works by Philip Glass, Mark Anthony Turnage, Thomas Ades and George Benjamin. Whether you are a first-timer at La Boheme or a seasoned Wagnerian, every opera-goer can benefit from a little background information, and this book aims to provide just that. Accessible and easy-to-use, it contains entries for over a hundred works, both familiar and unfamiliar.

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ISBN: 9780571306824

Description: Instantly acquire all the knowledge you need to pass as an expert in the world of opera. Know what to say, where to say it, what not to say, where to be seen, and even what to wear. Never again confuse a castrato with a contralto, a prima donna with sopratitoli, or O Sole Mio with an ice cream advert. Bask in the admiration of your fellow opera lovers as you pronounce confidently on the merits of Donizetti's bel canto over Wagner's leitmotiv, and hold your own against the most sneering of opera buffs. Written by experts and offering readers the opportunity to pass off appropriated knowledge as their own, the Bluffer's Guides provide hard fact masquerading as frivolous observation in one witty, easy read.

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ISBN: 9781785212451

Description: 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 Supplement Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their scrupulous and provocative retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the means by which it communicates, and its societal role. In a new revision with an expanded examination of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century this book explores the tensions that have sustained opera over 400 years: between words and music, character and singer, inattention and absorption. Abbate and Parker argue that, though the genre's most popular and enduring works were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to transform the viewer with its enduring power.

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ISBN: 9780141009018

Description: 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 performed operas, including facts about the composer and the music, a plot outline, accounts of famous performers, and much more. This book is exactly what the title claims: an opera lover's companion. Reading it is like going to the opera with a knowledgeable friend who tells you enough to make you want to see the piece but not so much you're drowned in superfluous detail.-Richard Fawkes, Opera Now What this invaluable book contains is the ideal rundown on 175 operas from Auber's Fra Diavolo to Zimmerman's Die Soldaten, in each case putting the work in context within the composer's development, with a list of characters, a short synopsis and pointers towards the most imortant arias, duets and ensembles, all in a personal congenial tone, like unto an operatically wise and loving uncle.-Denby Richards, Musical Opinion An erudite, instructive and unpretentious guide.-Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph It's hard to imagine any other book on the subject more informative and helpful to the average enthusiast.. This book is one you'll cherish.-Books in Canada.

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ISBN: 9780300123739