A Night at the Opera

Author: Sir Denis Forman
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0307807827
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 980

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.

The Cambridge Verdi Encyclopedia

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

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 Extensive appendices list all of Verdi's known works, both published and unpublished, and the characters in his operas.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.

A Night at the Opera

Author: Bernadine Johnson
Publisher: Alfred Music Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 60

Book Description
Explore seven operas with piano arrangements, historical information, and fun activities.

A Night at the Opera

Author: Ray Smith
Publisher: Biblioasis
ISBN: 1926845706
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
Set in the small German city of Waltherrott, this novel is a madcap excursion from the 1980s back to 1848, the year of revolutions, then back to the time of the Black Death in the late 1340s. A startling comedy, A Night at the Opera is a tour de force in the unexpected, the bizarre, and the serendipitous.

The Queen Of The Night

Author: Alexander Chee
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0544106601
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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

A Night in at the Opera

Author: Jeremy Tambling
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780861964666
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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.

Vocal Apparitions

Author: Michal Grover-Friedlander
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691120089
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Book Description
Cinema and opera have become intertwined in a variety of powerful and unusual ways. Vocal Apparitions tells the story of this fascinating intersection, interprets how it occurred, and explores what happens when opera is projected onto the medium of film. Michal Grover-Friedlander finds striking affinities between film and opera--from Lon Chaney's classic silent film, The Phantom of the Opera, to the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera to Fellini's E la nave va. One of the guiding questions of this book is what occurs when what is aesthetically essential about one medium is transposed into the aesthetic field of the other. For example, Grover-Friedlander's comparison of an opera by Poulenc and a Rossellini film, both based on Cocteau's play The Human Voice, shows the relation of the vocal and the visual to be surprisingly affected by the choice of the medium. Her analysis of the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera demonstrates how, as a response to opera's infatuation with death, cinema comically acts out a correction of opera's fate. Grover-Friedlander argues that filmed operas such as Zeffirelli's Otello and Friedrich's Falstaff show the impossibility of a direct transformation of the operatic into the cinematic. Paradoxically, cinema at times can be more operatic than opera itself, thus capturing something essential that escapes opera's self-understanding. A remarkable look at how cinema has been haunted--and transformed--by opera, Vocal Apparitions reveals something original and important about each medium.

Bravo! Brava! A Night at the Opera

Author: Anne Siberell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190286148
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 64

Book Description
A delightful introduction to opera, Bravo! Brava! A Night at the Opera teaches elementary school children what opera is by showing how it is made. "Who writes the words?", "Who makes an opera happen? "Who is backstage?"--these questions and more are answered with easy-to-understand explanations and are illustrated with whimsical watercolors by the author. From composer, choreographer, and costume designers to the conductor, lighting and special effects crew, and, of course, the singers, the excitement builds as Anne Siberell explains each person's role in producing an opera. Bravo! Brava! A Night at the Opera reveals details of the most famous operas' plots and characters along the way and includes synopses of 27 popular operas, a glossary, suggestions for further reading, and an index.

At the Opera

Author: Ann Fiery
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 9780811827744
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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.

Animal Crackers

Author: George Simon Kaufman
Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
ISBN: 9780573681370
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 108

Book Description
"A stage vehicle for the Marx Brothers. The scene is the Long Island estate of Mrs. Rittenhouse, a wealthy patroness of the arts with a marriageable daughter. Her celebrity weekend guest is the renowned Captain Jeffrey Spaulding, the African Explorer. He arrives with his secretary, Horatio Jameson, followed by pair of "musicians": Ravelli and the Professor. What follows is typical Marxian lunacy, involving a stolen painting, a surreal bridge game, a Broadway gossip columnist named Wally Winston, a financial wizard formerly known as Abie the Fish Peddler, and a climatic burlesque of Marie Antoinette and the Three Musketeers."--George S. Kaufman website.