Author:
Langford, Jeffrey Alan.
Imprint:Milwaukee, WI : Amadeus Press, 2011.
Descriptionxii, 376 p. : ill. (some col.) ; 23 cm.
Note:The evolution of comic opera. Mozart the serious comic : Don Giovanni ; Rossini's La Cenerentola : the renewal of comic opera ; Verdi's Falstaff : the final frontier -- Bel canto and beyond. Rossini's Semiramide : the rebirth of Italian opera seria ; Bellini's I puritani : hybrid opera ; Verdi's Nabucco : the beginning of the end -- Italian opera in revolution. Verdi's Rigoletto : new directions in Italian opera -- Opera as autobiography. Beethoven's Fidelio : a case of self-salvation ; Berlioz's La damnation de Faust : when is opera not opera? -- Shakespearean opera. Gounod's Roméo et Juliette : rewriting Shakespeare ; Verdi's Otello : adaptation and form in late-nineteenth-century opera -- From literature to opera. Gounod's Faust : a hero's transformation ; Massenet vs. Puccini : two (of the three) Manons -- Symphonic opera. Wagner, Strauss, and the question of operatic form -- French grand opera. Verdi's Don Carlos : a foreigner's view ; Berlioz's Les Troyens : a misjudged masterpiece -- Verismo opera. Bizet's Carmen : a sociological interpretation ; Puccini's Tosca : the not-so-"shabby little shocker" -- Fairy-tale opera. Puccini's Turandot : the (un)solved riddle -- The influence of Wagner. Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande : the exorcism of Wagner -- Approaches to twentieth-century opera. Looking ahead while looking back : Bartók, Berg, and Britten.
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (p. [369]-370) and index.
