Norma is considered one of the finest of the ten operas composed during Vincenzo Bellini's short career, representing his genius more comprehensively than is usually the case with any single work by an operatic composer. This handbook provides the biographical and cultural context of the opera. It gives a full synopsis and an examination of the music and poetry, which is rooted in the aesthetics of early 19th-century Italian opera. Professor Kimbell suggests something of the impression Norma has made on our imaginations and sensibilities in the 165 years since it was first produced in Milan...

The story of Samuel Crawford's life and the turbulent events he experienced help us understand the Civil War period from the viewpoint of a complex and compassionate doctor-turned-general.

Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes is one of the few operas of the last half-century to have gained a secure place in the repertory. Its appearance in 1945 shortly after the end of the war in Europe was a milestone in operatic history as well as in British music. But the origins of the work lie in the United States, where Britten and his friend Peter Pears (the first Grimes) spent the years 1939 42. In 1941 they read an evocative essay by the novelist E. M. Forster on the Suffolk poet George Crabbe (1754 1832); this precipitated Britten's decision to return to his native country, and sent them...

The volume examines the many facets of one of Richard Strauss's most complex operas.

Richard Wagner was a 19th century German composer known for his operas. Wagner wrote both the music and libretto for every one of his works. A Pilgrimage to Beethoven was written in 1850, while Wagner was in Paris. In this work Wagner emphasized Germanic qualities in his music and defined his opposition to the music of France and Italy.