A history of opera : the last four hundred years /

Abbate, Carolyn,

A history of opera : the last four hundred years / Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker. - [New edition]. - xxi, 623 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (black and white, and colour)

Previous edition: London: Allen Lane, 2012.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Telling the entire story of what is in many ways the world's most extraordinary artistic medium of the last 400 years, 'A His of Opera' includes discussions of many works by the greatest composers, from Monteverdi, Handel and Mozart to Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Berg and Britten. Abbate and Parker's A History of Opera is the first full new history of opera in sixty years - now in paperback in an updated second edition 'The best single volume ever written on the subject' The Times Literary Supplement Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their scrupulous and provocative retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the means by which it communicates, and its societal role. In a new revision with an expanded examination of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century this book explores the tensions that have sustained opera over 400 years: between words and music, character and singer, inattention and absorption. Abbate and Parker argue that, though the genre's most popular and enduring works were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to transform the viewer with its enduring power.




Electronic reproduction.
Askews and Holts.
Mode of access: World Wide Web.

9781846147913 (ebook)


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