This book is designed to introduce the non-specialist music lover to Britten's opera, The Turn of the Screw.

This addition to the Cambridge Opera Handbooks series is also the first full-length study of Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail. It aims to familiarize the reader with all aspect of the work: Mozart's writing of the opera and its literary antecedents, its plot, its musical structure, its reception and performance history. The reader will find much that is new in Thomas Bauman's study. He discusses the opera in relation to other Oriental operas, in the light of eighteenth-centruy apprehensions of the East, and as an attempt to reconcile the conventions of German opera in the early 1780s...

Few operas have had more written about them than Die Zauberflote, yet few are as often exposed to misguided comment--or to idiosyncratic productions. This book sets out to provide a straightforward account of Mozart's most beloved opera, exposing the half-truths and legends that have proliferated since its first production in 1791. The sources for the opera are discussed, and there are chapters devoted to composition of the work, the authorship and qualities of the libretto, the music (analyzed by Erik Smith), early productions and performance history, and the practical problems of directing...

This book is exceptional amongst those that have appeared so far in this well-established series, in that it is largely written by those who worked with the composer and assisted him during the period in which the opera was composed and first put on the stage. It will thus remain a source of first-hand information on Britten's final operatic achievement. Donald Mitchell was Britten's publisher at the time of Death in Venice and his Introduction includes many personal observations on the genesis of the work. The latter part of the book contains essays by T. J. Reed and Patrick Carnegy on the...

Caryl Emerson and Robert Oldani take a comprehensive look at the most famous Russian opera, Modest Musorgsky's Boris Godunov.

Billy Budd, based on Herman Melville's nautical allegory, is one of Britten's most challenging operas. This comprehensive guide considers the work from both literary and musical viewpoints. Melville's novella is discussed, as is the interpretation given to the novella by the librettists E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier. A detailed synopsis guides the reader through the musical and dramatic action of the opera and in a chapter devoted to the music, Britten's distinctive technique of tonal symbolism is analyzed to demonstrate the effectiveness of his musical response to the dramatic suggestions...

Bizet's Carmen is probably the best known opera of the standard repertoire, yet its very familiarity often prevents us from approaching it with the seriousness it deserves. This Handbook explores the opera in a number of contexts, bringing to the surface the controversies over gender, race, class and musical propriety. After a study of Merimee's story Carmen by Peter Robinson, Susan McClary examines the social tensions in nineteenth-century France that inform both that story and the opera, and traces the opera through its genesis and reception. The Handbook concludes with discussions of four...

At once the most light-hearted and most disturbing of Mozart and Da Ponte's Italian comic operas, Cosi fan tutte has provoked widely differing reactions from listeners for more than two centuries. Bruce Alan Brown offers several paths toward a closer understanding of the work, providing a detailed account of the libretto's complex origins in myth and Italian literary classics. The Handbook also reveals surprising new information on the role played by Mozart's rival Salieri. It contains a full synopsis, performance history, illustrations from key productions, and a bibliography,

This book presents a lively and informative account of Die Meistersinger von NUrnberg, including its literary sources and the evolution of the text from a light comic opera into its final form. John Warrack examines the music and historical tradition of the Mastersingers; Lucy Beckett analyzes the Hans Sachs character and reveals how Wagner communicates with his audience, both musically and dramatically; Michael Tanner suggests new ways to interpret Meistersinger as a reflection of Wagner's overall view of opera; while Patrick Carnegy provides a history of key productions. The volume contains...

Fidelio is Beethoven's only complete opera and one of the most admired, and problematic, in the repertoire. This Opera Handbook explores the fascinating musical and dramatic elements within the work as well as the debt to the traditions of French opera in the late eighteenth century and the French Revolution. Winton Dean offers a comparison of the opera's first (1805) and final (1814) versions. Essays by Michael Tusa and Joseph Kerman consider its musical idiom and the challenges Beethoven faced as an instrumental composer trying his hand at opera. A final chapter examines the opera's...