Perhaps the oddest and most influential collaboration in the history of American modernism was hatched in 1926, when a young Virgil Thomson knocked on Gertrude Stein's door in Paris. Eight years later, their opera Four Saints in Three Acts became a sensation--the longest-running opera in Broadway history to date and the most widely reported cultural event of its time.Four Saints was proclaimed the birth of a new art form, a cellophane fantasy, "cubism on stage." It swept the public ...

This book presents 37 pieces of Renaissance guitar music transcribed for solo fingerstyle ukulele together with the author’s recordings of every transcription. Moreover, a generous introduction provides a brief history of the Renaissance guitar, tips on period ornamentation and musicianship, recommended recordings, and invaluable resources for further research of your own.Throughout Europe, the Renaissance guitar was a popular instrument in the middle of the sixteenth century. Its ...

Robert Johnson (c. 1583 – 1633) was the last of the great English lutenists; he served Prince Henry and was later a prominent figure in the court of Charles I. He wrote music for many plays and masques of the time, including several by Shakespeare. Decades after Johnson’s death, in a “Dialogue between the Author and His Lute” within Musick’s Monument and the persona of the Lute, writer and lutenist Thomas Mace described John Dowland and Robert Johnson as “Two famous men; Great Masters in M...

Everything about opera is larger than life, but the bigger the art form, the bigger the potential for disaster. When things go wrong at the opera house, they really go wrong. No one has a greater or more intimate knowledge of such moments than Lotfi Mansouri. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, Mansouri has directed nearly 500 productions at major opera houses around the globe.Mansouri has gathered a collection of discrete vignettes that recount unforgettable...

This short biography of the famous composer Ludwig van Beethoven details his life, his works and gives the reader an interesting guide to the style that defined this master of symphonies and other musical works. It also discusses the influence he had on Wagner's style. This version has been specifically edited and formatted for today's e-readers, and makes an excellent addition to any music-related book collection.

The story of an Australian girl who defied convention and became the most famous singer of her era.Growing up in Melbourne, Nellie Mitchell dreamed of fame, but her devout father disapproved. When a chance arose to go to Paris, she trusted in her musical talent and hoped for a lucky break.Within a few years, reborn as Nellie Melba, she was performing to overflowing concert halls, hobnobbing with European royalty and collaborating with some of the most renow...

La traviata was Giuseppe Verdi’s eighteenth opera and shows him at the height of his middle-period powers. Adapted from La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils, it portrays the love between the courtesan Violetta Valéry and the young Alfredo Germont in fashionable Parisian society, with its inevitable tragic outcome. It had its premiere at La Fenice in Venice in 1853 and has gone on to become one of the most performed and greatly loved of all operas.There are articles in the guide abo...

A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's arms. While critics have lauded Wagner's Tristan and Isolde for the originality and subtlety of the music, they have denounced the drama as a "mere trifle"--a rendering of Wagner's forbidden love for Matilde Wesendonck, the wife of a banker who supported him during his exile in Switzerland. Death-...

Rossini's La Cenerentola (or Cinderella) is one of the most popular comic operas in the classical repertoire – the timeless fairy tale about the triumph of virtue over snobbery. Its first performance at Rome's Teatro Valle in January 1817 – when the composer was not yet 25 – was the customary fiasco. More recently, audiences have laughed at Rossini's wit, gasped at the momentum of his crescendos and marvelled at dazzling coloratura from great sopranos such as Cecilia Bartoli. The opera mov...

The Modern Castrato: Gaetano Guadagni and the Coming of a New Operatic Age chronicles the career of the most significant castrato of the second half of the eighteenth-century. Through a coincidence of time and place, Gaetano Guadagni was on the forefront of the heroic opera reform, and many forward-thinking composers of the age created roles for him. Author Patricia Howard reveals that Guadagni may have been the only singer of the time fully able to understand the demands and oppo...

Setting opera within a variety of contexts - social, aesthetic, historical - Lindenberger illuminates a form that has persisted in recognizable shape for over four centuries. The study examines the social entanglements of opera, for example the relation of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio and Verdi's Il trovatore to its initial and later audiences. It shows how modernist opera rethought the nature of theatricality and often challenged its viewers by means of both musical and theatrical...

Tosca's première in Rome in January 1900 was nearly disrupted by a terrorist threat to blow up Italy's King Umberto. Victorien Sardou had written the melodrama for the great actress Sarah Bernhardt. Giacomo Puccini's popular opera is a tale of sadism and brutality, torture, attempted rape, murder, an execution and two suicides. 'Realism' was in vogue: Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana had been a great success, as had Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. With sharp practice, the publisher Giulio Ricordi ...