This specially priced two volume set includes a reissue of the first volume, covering Handel's operatic works from 1704-1726 and originally published by Oxford University Press in 1995, and Winton Dean's acclaimed second volume (1726-1741), which first appeared in 2006. These volumes contributed to the revival of interest in these long-neglected works and are essential reading for anyone interested in Handel or the development of the opera as an art form.

This first of the classic two-volume survey of Handel's operas was first published in 1987 and reissued in a revised paperback edition in 1995. Now it is brought back into print in a year which has seen numerous productions and recordings of the operas and which marks the 250th anniversary of Handel's death. Their revival in the modern theatre - not a single opera was staged or performed anywhere between 1754 and 1920 - has been among the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the art, and is due in no small measure to the painstaking research of Dean and Knapp in volume one, and Dean...

Dent's lectures here show that romantic opera had its origins not in Germany but in the music-dramas of revolutionary France.