Opera Books

E NewmanInstructor: James KurtzThe Wagner OperasErnest Newman

The Complete Operas of Verdi is the first full-length study of all of Verdi's operas. This work of the brilliant British music critic Charles Osbor...

Passionate, witty, and brilliant, Opera as Drama has been lauded as one of the most controversial, thought-provoking, and entertaining works of ope...

Heidi Waleson From the Wall Street Journal's opera critic, a wide-ranging narrative history of how and why the New York City Opera went bankrupt—an...

Makes available in reliable English translation Wagner's original Siegfried libretto and his early essay on the Nibelung myth. In 1848 Richard Wag...

by Winton Dean Detailed overview of Handel's final 22 operas - including major masterpieces such as Orlando, Ariodante and Alcina and the brilliant...

“The best single volume ever written on the subject, such is its range, authority, and readability.”―Times Literary Supplement Why has opera transf...

Andrew Davis Giacomo Puccini is one of the most frequently performed and best loved of all operatic composers. In Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccin...

Opera Coaching: Professional Techniques for the Répétiteur, Second Edition, is an update to the first practical guide for opera coaches when work...

"Ach ich fühl's - German for opera Singers in Three Acts: Studying, Speaking, Singing" is the first German language book that makes its readers lau...

Opera is the fastest growing of all the performing arts, attracting audiences of all ages who are enthralled by the gorgeous music, vivid drama, an...

French opera is second only to Italian opera in the length, breadth, and diversity of its history. Yet most people, if asked to come up with titles...

Translating the text of Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung is a monumental task that few have successfully undertaken. Here, however, Stewart Sp...

One of the most significant developments in 19th-century Italian opera was the genesis of the Verdi baritone. The authors argue that the composer's...

From operas presented in reconfigured army barracks to those mounted on a stage rivaling that of New York's Metropolitan Opera House, Indiana Unive...

In this bold recasting of operatic history, Gary Tomlinson connects opera to shifting visions of metaphysics and selfhood across the last four h...

Mozart’s comic operas are among the masterworks of Western civilization, and yet the musical environment in which Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo...

In these essays, Roger Parker brings a series of valuable insights to bear on Verdian analysis and criticism, and does so in a way that responds...

The History of Opera For Beginners is a humorous, little book which starts with the radical assumption that Opera is just plain old music, rather t...

The "keys" provided by Hervé Lacombe in this richly informed book open the door to understanding the essence of nineteenth-century French lyric the...

An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement is a groundbreaking and imaginative treatm...

(40 Years of Musical Mishaps)By Andrew Foldi A collection of humorous reminiscences by the famous basso who has performed in virtually every major...