Download or read book The Complete Operas of Verdi written by Charles Osborne and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Complete Operas Of Puccini written by Charles Osborne and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1983-08-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Puccini wrote only twelve operas during a long life—three of them one-acters designed to be performed together—he has to be ranked today as the world's most popular composer of opera. His La Bohème and Tosca are more frequently performed in the major opera houses than works by other composers, and Madame Butterfly and Manon Lescaut rank not far behind. What is the explanation for Puccini's enormous success? How do his operas work as music and drama? What was he like to contemporaries such as Verdi, Toscanini, and Caruso? Charles Osborne, author of highly successful Complete Operas of Verdi and Complete Operas of Mozart, here analyzes the entire Puccini oeuvre—from Tosca and Turandot to the less-often performed Edgar, La Fanciulla del West, and La Rondine. His fourfold approach—linking biography with musical, textual, and dramatic analysis—is especially valuable for Puccini, who revealed many of his personal contradictions in his music and whose sense of detail can be appreciated by close study of the scores and characters. For the legions of Puccini lovers everywhere, this guide to his life and work can serve as an ideal reference source and opera companion.
Download or read book The Complete Operas of Puccini written by Charles Osborne and published by Atheneum Books. This book was released on 1982 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Puccini wrote only twelve operas during a long life--three of them one-acters designed to be performed together--he has to be ranked today as the world's most popular composer of opera. His La Boh
Download or read book Puccini written by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2002-10-03 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This masterful biography provides the most authentic and revealing portrait to date of this major operatic composer
Download or read book Giacomo Puccini written by Roger Flury and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2012-06-21 with total page 937 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opera recordings have been with us since the creation of the first wax cylinders. Now at a time when the 25-year reign of the compact disc appears to be coming to an end is the moment to take stock of the history of recordings of arguably the most popular composer of operas, Giacomo Puccini. In Giacomo Puccini: A Discography, librarian and music historian Roger Flury looks at each opera chronologically from Le Villi to Turandot, followed by sections on Puccini's instrumental, chamber, orchestral, and solo vocal works. Details of each complete opera are listed by recording date, followed by excerpts in the order in which they occur in the opera. Recordings of each aria are listed alphabetically by the name of the artist. For ease of use, Flury establishes as the main criteria for inclusion those recordings assigned a commercial issue number and available for purchase. This book does not limit itself to mainstream recordings but includes as well 'unofficial' recordings taken from broadcasts or illegally recorded in theaters, ensuring that the audio recording history of Puccini is free of gaps. (Video and DVD issues, whether of staged performances or excerpts in concert, are not included unless they have been issued in a sound-only format.) This volume brings together information on nearly 10,000 recordings of Puccini's music. It provides a comprehensive overview of the recorded history of the composer's works and serves as a useful guide for the transfer of recordings from one format to another.
Download or read book Puccini written by Julian Budden and published by Master Musicians. This book was released on 2005 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julian Budden provides a look at the process of putting an opera together, the cut-and-slash of nineteenth-century Italian opera, -the struggle to find the right performers for the debut of La Boheme, Puccini's anxiety about completing Turandot (he in fact died of cancer before he did so), and his animosity toward his rival Leoncavallo (whom he called Leonasino or "lion-ass"). Budden provides an analysis of the operas themselves, examining the music act by act. He highlights, among other things, the influence of Wagner on Puccini--alone among his Italian contemporaries, Puccini followed Wagner's example in bringing the motif into the forefront of his narrative, sometimes voicing the singer's unexpressed thoughts, sometimes sending out a signal to the audience of which the character is unaware. And Budden also paints a portrait of Puccini the man--talented but modest, a man who had friends from every walk of life: shopkeepers, priests, wealthy landowners, fellow artists. --From publisher's description.
Download or read book Puccini s Turandot written by William Ashbrook and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-25 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unfinished at Puccini's death in 1924, Turandot was not only his most ambitious work, but it became the last Italian opera to enter the international repertory. In this colorful study two renowned music scholars demonstrate that this work, despite the modern climate in which it was written, was a fitting finale for the centuries-old Great Tradition of Italian opera. Here they provide concrete instances of how a listener might encounter the dramatic and musical structures of Turandot in light of the Italian melodramma, and firmly establish Puccini's last work within the tradition of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. In a summary of the sounds, sights, and symbolism of Turandot, the authors touch on earlier treatments of the subject, outline the conception, birth, and reception of the work, and analyze its coordinated dramatic and musical design. Showing how the evolution of the libretto documents Puccini's reversion to large musical forms typical of the Great Tradition in the late nineteenth century, they give particular attention to his use of contrasting Romantic, modernist, and two kinds of orientalist coloration in the general musical structure. They suggest that Puccini's inability to complete the opera resulted mainly from inadequate dramatic buildup for Turandot's last-minute change of heart combined with an overly successful treatment of the secondary character.
Download or read book Puccini Without Excuses written by William Berger and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Puccini is the most beloved composer of opera in the world: one quarter of all opera performances in the U.S. are of his operas, his music pervades movie soundtracks, and his plots have infiltrated our popular culture. But, although Puccini’s art still captivates audiences and the popularity of such works as Tosca, La Bohéme, and Madama Butterfly has never waned, he has long been a victim of critical snobbery and cultural marginalization. In this witty and informative guide for beginners and fans alike, William Berger sets the record straight, reclaiming Puccini as a serious artist. Combining his trademark irreverent humor with passionate enthusiasm, Berger strikes just the right balance of introductory information and thought-provoking analysis. He includes a biography, discussions of each opera, a glossary, fun facts and anecdotes, and above all keen insight into Puccini’s enduring power. For anyone who loves Puccini and for anyone who just wonders what all the fuss is about, Puccini Without Excuses is funny, challenging, and always a pleasure to read. INCLUDES: • Why Puccini’s art and its message of hope is crucial to our world today • How Anglo audiences often miss the mythic significance of his operas • The use of his music as shorthand in films, from A Room with a View to Fatal Attraction • A scene-by scene analysis of each opera • A guide to the wealth of available recordings, books, and videos
Download or read book Puccini written by Michele Girardi and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Puccini's operas are among the most popular and widely performed in the world, yet few books have examined his body of work from an analytical perspective. This volume remedies that lack in lively prose accessible to scholars and opera enthusiasts alike.
Download or read book Puccini s La Boheme the Dover Opera Libretto Series written by Giacomo Puccini and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 1984-01-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Next to Verdi's Ada, Giacomo Puccini's La Bohme is the most popular opera ever written. Performances of Ada, La Bohme, Carmen, and Don Giovanni ? the four operas most often performed ? constitute approximately 75 percent of the yearly schedule of operas throughout the world. This volume contains everything the opera goer needs to derive full satisfaction from La Bohme except the musical score itself. Most important, it provides the complete text of the Italian libretto, just as it is actually sung; that is, where a singer repeats a phrase several times, each of the repetitions is given here. And facing the Italian text is a completely new translation of the libretto into modern, idiomatic English. In addition to the libretto and English translation, this edition provides a careful, concise summary of the plot of La Bohme and a complete list of the opera's characters. There is also a brief, highly informative introduction by the translator that traces Puccini's masterpiece back to its source in Henry Murger's autobiographical novel La Vie Bohme, illuminating the early history of the opera and its later development. Opera lovers can use this book with their own recordings of the opera, read it before attending a performance, or can easily take it along to the performance itself. Those who have regretted the lack of a good, authentic, readable edition of the Italian libretto of La Bohme, and have complained of the stodginess of existing English translations, will recognize in this book a first-rate aid to the understanding of one of Puccini's most celebrated operas.
Download or read book Giacomo Puccini Tosca written by Mosco Carner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1985-09-05 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide for opera goers to Tosca, which includes a synopsis of the plot and discussions on style.
Download or read book La Boheme written by and published by Black Dog & Leventhal Pub. This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains the complete text of the libretto with annotations in both English and Italian and a critical historical commentary. The text also includes the background of the composer, biographies of the principal singers and conductor. The two accompanying CDs contain the complete opera sung in Italian.
Download or read book Recondite Harmony written by Deborah Burton and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is Puccini? Most debates about the composer are focused on his cultural and musical identity: is his music traditional or progressive? The thesis of this volume is that the diametrically opposed forces of the traditional and the progressive live together in Puccini's music, embedded deeply within his harmonic constructs and in many musical parameters. Recondite Harmony is a study of all of Puccini's operas examined through a primarily analytic lens. It offers essays on salient aspects of each of the operas while tracing in them both progressive and traditional elements. The volume is divided into two parts: in the first, approaches that inform the entire corpus of Puccini's operas are examined. The second half of the book is devoted to brief essays discussing interesting aspects of each of his operas. Techniques in each opus that merit analytic attention are highlighted and discussed in relation to the drama at hand, individuating more fully musical aspects special to each score. Included are also previously unpublished source material and autograph sketches.
Download or read book Giacomo Puccini and His World written by Arman Schwartz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) is the world's most frequently performed operatic composer, yet he is only beginning to receive serious scholarly attention. In Giacomo Puccini and His World, an international roster of music specialists, several writing on Puccini for the first time, offers a variety of new critical perspectives on the composer and his works. Containing discussions of all of Puccini’s operas from Manon Lescaut (1893) to Turandot (1926), this volume aims to move beyond clichés of the composer as a Romantic epigone and to resituate him at the heart of early twentieth-century musical modernity. This collection’s essays explore Puccini’s engagement with spoken theater and operetta, and with new technologies like photography and cinema. Other essays consider the philosophical problems raised by "realist" opera, discuss the composer’s place in a variety of cosmopolitan formations, and reevaluate Puccini’s orientalism and his complex interactions with the Italian fascist state. A rich array of primary source material, including previously unpublished letters and documents, provides vital information on Puccini’s interactions with singers, conductors, and stage directors, and on the early reception of the verismo movement. Excerpts from Fausto Torrefranca’s notorious Giacomo Puccini and International Opera, perhaps the most vicious diatribe ever directed against the composer, appear here in English for the first time. The contributors are Micaela Baranello, Leon Botstein, Alessandra Campana, Delia Casadei, Ben Earle, Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Walter Frisch, Michele Girardi, Arthur Groos, Steven Huebner, Ellen Lockhart, Christopher Morris, Arman Schwartz, Emanuele Senici, and Alexandra Wilson.
Download or read book Puccini and The Girl written by Annie Janeiro Randall and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in the American West during the California Gold Rush, La fanciulla del West marked a significant departure from Giacomo Puccini's previous and best- known works. Puccini and the Girl is the first book to explore this important but often misunderstood opera that became the earliest work by a major European composer to receive an American premiere when it opened at New York's Metropolitan Opera House in 1910. Adapted from American playwright David Belasco's Broadway production, The Girl of the Golden West, Fanciulla was Puccini's most consciously modern work, and its Met debut received mixed reviews. Annie J. Randall and Rosalind Gray Davis base their account of its creation on previously unknown letters from Puccini to his main librettist, Carlo Zangarini. They mine musical materials, newspaper accounts, and rare photographs and illustrations to tell the full story of this controversial opera. Puccini and the Girl considers the production and reception of Puccini's "cowboy" opera in the light of contemporary criticism, providing both fascinating insight into its history and a look to the future as its centenary approaches. “Engrossing. . . . An eminently readable, ideally direct and information-packed book.”—William Fregosi, Opera Today
Download or read book The Puccini Problem written by Alexandra Wilson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-03-08 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed investigation of the reception and cultural contexts of Puccini's music, this book offers a fresh view of this historically important but frequently overlooked composer. Wilson's study explores the ways in which Puccini's music and persona were held up as both the antidote to and the embodiment of the decadence widely felt to be afflicting late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy, a nation which although politically unified remained culturally divided. The book focuses upon two central, related questions that were debated throughout Puccini's career: his status as a national or international composer, and his status as a traditionalist or modernist. In addition, Wilson examines how Puccini's operas became caught up in a wide range of extra-musical controversies concerning such issues as gender and class. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of both the history of opera and of the wider artistic and intellectual life of turn-of-the-century Italy.
Download or read book Opera 101 written by Fred Plotkin and published by Hyperion. This book was released on 1994-12 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an opera insider and featuring an introduction by Placido Domingo, here is a thorough, friendly, and truly complete guide to learning how to love and appreciate the opera. After a brief history of opera, the book includes a guide to operatic terms, a minute-by-minute listener's guide to 11 central works, a list of recommended books and recordings and much more.
