Ticket to the Opera: Discovering and Exploring 100 Famous Works, History, Lore, and Singers, With Recommended Recordings

Long cherished by music connoisseurs and high society, opera is in fact a wonderfully entertaining art form--a thrilling combination of magnificent music, high drama, gorgeous spectacle, and sheer theatrical magic. In Ticket to the Opera, Phil G. Goulding, the author of Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1000 Greatest Works, finally makes the magic and mystique of opera accessible to all.Ticket to the Opera offers a complete operatic education, including history, definitions of key musical terms, opera lore and gossip, portraits of famous singers and the roles they immortalized, as well as pithy introductions to the greatest operas of Europe and America and their composers. The book's centerpiece is what Phil Goulding terms "the collection"--85 classics, among them Aida, The Marriage of Figaro, Carmen, and Madama Butterfly, that have been packing the world's opera houses for years. This meticulously researched book also includes a fascinating chapter on American opera from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess to Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach and a discussion of the gems of twentieth century opera featuring works like Leos Jan cek's The Cunning Little Vixen, Alban Berg's Lulu, and Serge Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges.Witty and opinionated, Ticket to the Opera is an inspiring guide to the most sublime musical entertainment on earth. Whether you're a curious neophyte, a music lover interested in branching out, or an aficionado eager to compare notes with a brilliant fellow opera buff, you'll prize Ticket to the Opera as an essential volume in your music library.