A bold, engaging exploration of opera’s fundamental nature and enduring appeal, from the sixteenth century to the present.

A History of Opera, the first new, full-length, single-volume ...

Buy Now From Amazon

A bold, engaging exploration of opera’s fundamental nature and enduring appeal, from the sixteenth century to the present.

A History of Opera, the first new, full-length, single-volume history of opera for more than a generation, provokes in-depth discussions of many works by the greatest opera composers, from Monteverdi, Handel, and Mozart to Verdi and Wagner, to Strauss, Puccini, Berg, and Britten. There are lively discussions of opera’s social, political, and literary backgrounds, its economic cicumstances, and the almost continual polemics that have accompanied its development through the centuries. Central to the book is an exploration of the tensions―between words and music, character and singer―that have always sustained and enlivened opera. In a polemical final chapter, Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker examine the problems that opera has faced in the last half century, when new works―once opera’s lifeblood―have shrunk to a tiny minority and have largely failed to find a permanent place in the repertoire.

Yet the book’s message is one of celebration. Even if the majority of opera’s most popular and enduring works were written in what is now a remote European past and in circumstances very different from our own, and even if the viability of contemporary opera is ever more in question, opera as an art form remains extraordinarily buoyant and challenging. It continues to transform people physically, emotionally, and intellectually, and to articulate human experience in ways no other art form can match.

24 pages of illustrations, including four-color

  • Used Book in Good Condition
  • Used Book in Good Condition

Similar Products

The Most Beautiful Opera Houses in the WorldOpera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera100 Great Operas And Their Stories: Act-By-Act SynopsesFrom the Score to the Stage: An Illustrated History of Continental Opera Production and StagingIn Character: Opera PortraitureThe Grove Book of OperasWagner Without Fear:  Learning to Love--and Even Enjoy--Opera's Most Demanding Genius