Opera

by Brook, Stephen

• ISBN13: 9780140260731
• ISBN10: 0140260730
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-05-01
• Publisher: Penguin Group USA

Summary

A richly entertaining look at the sublimities and follies of the opera, both onstage and off. Gathering material from an impressively broad range of sources, the author provides the reader with sections on operatic history, practice, and issues, as well as regaling opera fans with amusing accounts of backstage antics. Anyone who has ever enjoyed an opera will relish these eyewitness recollections of opera's great singers, composers, conductors, and directors through three centures.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Permissions
Introduction
Opera in Italy	p. 1
Opera outside Italy	p. 24
Eighteenth-century Singers	p. 51
Pasta and Malibran	p. 59
Early-nineteenth-century Singers	p. 72
Late-nineteenth-century Singers	p. 88
Three Divas: Patti, Melba, Tetrazzini	p. 105
Caruso	p. 120
Chaliapin	p. 135
A Clutch of Tenors	p. 148
Lotte Lehmann	p. 160
Maria Callas	p. 171
Some Singers of the Twentieth Century	p. 186
The Art of Singing	p. 204
Operatic Composers	p. 231
Mozart	p. 248
Rossini	p. 256
Wagner	p. 264
Wagner at Bayreuth	p. 285
Verdi	p. 304
Puccini	p. 322
Richard Strauss	p. 329
Opera Directors	p. 341
Auditions	p. 368
Rehearsal	p. 374
Performances	p. 388
Audiences	p. 411
Opera and Money	p. 433
The Nature of Opera	p. 457
Opera and Ideology	p. 470
Words v. Music	p. 477
Anti-Opera	p. 483
Libretti and Translations	p. 488
Opera in Fiction	p. 497
Index	p. 512
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.