A Night at the Opera

A Night at the Opera PDF Author: Sir Denis Forman
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0307807827
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 980

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Book Description
“Delightful and anti-reverential”—Sunday Times (London) With an encyclopedic knowledge of opera and a delightful dash of irreverence, Sir Denis Forman throws open the world of opera—its structure, composers, conductors, and artists—in this hugely informative guide. A Night at the Opera dissects the eighty-three most popular operas recorded on compact disc, from Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur to Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. For each opera, Sir Denis details the plot and cast of characters, awarding stars to parts that are “worth looking out for,” “really good,” or, occasionally, “stunning.” He goes on to tell the history of each opera and its early reception. Finally, each work is graded from alpha to gamma (although the Ring cycle gets an “X”), and Sir Denis has no qualms about voicing his opinion: the first act of Fidelio is “a bit of a mess,” while the last scene of Don Giovanni “towers above the comic finales of Figaro and Così and whether or not [it] is Mozart's greatest opera, it is certainly his most powerful finale.” The guide also presents brief biographies of the great composers, conductors, and singers. A glossary of musical terms is included, as well as Operatica, or the essential elements of opera, from the proper place and style of the audience's applause (and boos) to the use of subtitles. A Night at the Opera is for connoisseurs and neophytes alike. It will entertain and inform, delight and (perhaps) infuriate, providing a subject for lively debate and ready reference for years to come.

A Night at the Opera

A Night at the Opera PDF Author: Sir Denis Forman
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0307807827
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 980

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Delightful and anti-reverential”—Sunday Times (London) With an encyclopedic knowledge of opera and a delightful dash of irreverence, Sir Denis Forman throws open the world of opera—its structure, composers, conductors, and artists—in this hugely informative guide. A Night at the Opera dissects the eighty-three most popular operas recorded on compact disc, from Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur to Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. For each opera, Sir Denis details the plot and cast of characters, awarding stars to parts that are “worth looking out for,” “really good,” or, occasionally, “stunning.” He goes on to tell the history of each opera and its early reception. Finally, each work is graded from alpha to gamma (although the Ring cycle gets an “X”), and Sir Denis has no qualms about voicing his opinion: the first act of Fidelio is “a bit of a mess,” while the last scene of Don Giovanni “towers above the comic finales of Figaro and Così and whether or not [it] is Mozart's greatest opera, it is certainly his most powerful finale.” The guide also presents brief biographies of the great composers, conductors, and singers. A glossary of musical terms is included, as well as Operatica, or the essential elements of opera, from the proper place and style of the audience's applause (and boos) to the use of subtitles. A Night at the Opera is for connoisseurs and neophytes alike. It will entertain and inform, delight and (perhaps) infuriate, providing a subject for lively debate and ready reference for years to come.

A Night in at the Opera

A Night in at the Opera PDF Author: Jeremy Tambling
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780861964666
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Offering an arresting range of accounts by specialists in music, media, and popular culture on how the popular arts have represented opera, this book raises issues about the sociology of music and its implications for television and video culture.

Bravo! Brava! A Night at the Opera

Bravo! Brava! A Night at the Opera PDF Author: Anne Siberell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195139666
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
Introduces the directors, musicians, designers, stagehands and many other people who make the magic happen. Singers work with all others to create a performance.

The Cambridge Verdi Encyclopedia

The Cambridge Verdi Encyclopedia PDF Author: Roberta Montemorra Marvin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108814140
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Verdi's enduring presence on the opera stages of the world and as a subject for scholarly study by researchers in various disciplines has placed him as a central figure within modern culture. The composer's undisputed popularity from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, among enthusiasts and scholars alike, lies at the heart of The Cambridge Verdi Encyclopedia. This comprehensive resource covers all aspects of Verdi's music and his world, including the people he knew and worked with, his compositions, and their reception. Extensive appendices list all of Verdi's known works, both published and unpublished, and the characters in his operas. As a starting point for information on specific works, people, places, and concepts, the Encyclopedia reflects the very latest scholarship, presented by an international array of experts in a manner that will have a broad appeal for opera lovers, students, and scholars.

At the Opera

At the Opera PDF Author: Ann Fiery
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 9780811827744
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
A tribute to thirty renowned operas shares the plots and theatrical backgrounds of each, in a volume that covers such productions as Figaro and Turandot.

Sing Me a Story

Sing Me a Story PDF Author: Jane Rosenberg
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 9780500278734
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
An illustrated retelling of the plots of fifteen well-known operas.

A History of Opera

A History of Opera PDF Author: Carolyn Abbate
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393089533
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 648

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Book Description
“The best single volume ever written on the subject, such is its range, authority, and readability.”—Times Literary Supplement Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their “effervescent, witty” (Die Welt, Germany) retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the musical and dramatic means by which it communicates, and its role in society. Now with an expanded examination of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century, this “lucid and sweeping” (Boston Globe) narrative explores the tensions that have sustained opera over four hundred 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 change the viewer— physically, emotionally, intellectually—with its enduring power.

Bonfire Opera

Bonfire Opera PDF Author: Danusha Laméris
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987287
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
Sometimes the most compelling landscapes are the ones where worlds collide: where a desert meets the sea, a civilization, no-man’s land. Here in Bonfire Opera, grief and Eros grapple in the same domain. A bullet-hole through the heart, a house full of ripe persimmons, a ghost in a garden. Coyotes cry out on the hill, and lovers find themselves kissing, “bee-stung, drunk” in the middle of road. Here, the dust is holy, as is the dark, unknown. These are poems that praise the impossible, wild world, finding beauty in its wake. Excerpt from “Bonfire Opera” In those days, there was a woman in our circle who was known, not only for her beauty, but also for taking off all her clothes and singing opera. And sure enough, as the night wore on and the stars emerged to stare at their reflections on the sea, and everyone had drunk a little wine, she began to disrobe, loose her great bosom and the tender belly, pale in the moonlight, the Viking hips, and to let her torn raiment fall to the sand as we looked up from the flames.

Garbage Night at the Opera

Garbage Night at the Opera PDF Author: Valerie Fioravanti
Publisher: BkMk Press of the University of Missouri-Kansas City
ISBN: 9781886157842
Category : Short stories
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Fiction. The linked stories in GARBAGE NIGHT AT THE OPERA depict an extended Italian-American family living collectively in one apartment building in Brooklyn, New York, across decades as their neighborhood suddenly loses the factory jobs that support it, languishes for a generation, then gentrifies. "GARBAGE NIGHT AT THE OPERA is among the most accomplished and emotionally resonant story collections I have read in years, writes fiction writer Peter Orner. Novelist Kevin McIlvoy writes, "These interrelated stories are a group of small, intense fires that form a large-scale conflagration. Fioravanti's working-class characters try to reverse the spell of hopelessness they have been cast under by family members or by lovers or by the broken promises of Brooklyn."

The Queen Of The Night

The Queen Of The Night PDF Author: Alexander Chee
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0544106601
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER, New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and a Best Book of the Year from NPR, Boston Globe, BuzzFeed, and others. The mesmerizing story of one woman's rise from circus rider to courtesan to world-renowned diva—"a brilliant performance" (Washington Post). The Queen of the Night tells the captivating story of Lilliet Berne, an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept into the glamour and terror of Second Empire France. She became a sensation of the Paris Opera, with every accolade but an original role—her chance at immortality. When one is offered to her, she finds the libretto is based on her deepest secret, something only four people have ever known. But who betrayed her? With epic sweep, gorgeous language, and haunting details, Alexander Chee shares Lilliet’s cunning transformation from circus rider to courtesan to legendary soprano, retracing the path that led to the role that could secure her reputation—or destroy her with the secrets it reveals. “It just sounds terrific. It sounds like opera.”—The New Yorker “Sprawling, soaring, bawdy, and plotted like a fine embroidery.”—NPR