'A glorious plum-pudding of a book, to be consulted, with pleasure and profit, over and over again' Sir Jeremy IsaacsMichael Steen's 'Great Composers' was originally published in 2003. A lifetime's work and almost 1000 pages long, it has since become 'the' reference point and key read on the biographical backgrounds to classical music's biggest names.Authoritative and hugely detailed - but nonetheless a joy to read - this new edition will expand its readershi...

With a wealth of famous tunes and meticulous characterisation, Don Giovanni is an undisputed masterpiece created by Mozart out of a thread-bare fairground gig. The Don – for whom both sexes have a sneaking admiration – gatecrashes proceedings, serenading and seducing as he goes. As wily as he is insatiable, he outclasses all who are out to get him, including a jealous bumpkin and the down-at-heel Elvira. But a stone statue seals his doom and drags him down into hellfire. From the Champagne...

With four famous operas each from Mozart, Verdi and Puccini, and two each from Rossini and Donizetti, there is a feast of information. Here are short guides to The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni; to the splendour of Aïda, the heart-breaking La Traviata; the drama of Tosca. The range is very broad. There is Wagner's great love story Tristan und Isolde; there is Johann Strauss's light comedy Die Fledermaus. On the way you can be briefed about such favourites as Handel's Giulio Cesare, B...

This compendium of short guides to all twelve Puccini's operas is part of the author's series A Short Guide to a Great Opera. Puccini's highly-charged music provides an unforgettable experience for those enjoying it socially, in an opera-house or cinema, or at home on TV, radio etc. He has been the largest contributor to the hundred best tunes, including Nessun dorma (Turandot), O mio babbino caro(Gianni Schicchi) or Chi il bel sogno (La Rondine). Some of his operas are full of them, like ...

Sir Walter Scott's story of a Scottish girl forced by her family into an arranged marriage still resonates today, two centuries after it was published. Donizetti's opera, which premièred in Naples in 1835, is famous particularly for the Mad Scene when Lucia, after leaving for her nuptials, reappears having murdered the man she has just married, the unfortunate Arturo. She truly loves Edgardo, sworn enemy of her family, who turned up moments too late to stop the wedding.The story unfolds in...

Even Salieri, the notorious villain of Peter Shaffer's drama Amadeus, admired Mozart's comic opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), which was premièred in Vienna a few weeks before Mozart's death in December 1791. Though sometimes enjoyed as a children's opera, this is not a pantomime: rooted in Freemasonry, the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, it promotes the ideals of progress, virtue, self-betterment, truth and justice. Tamino, an Egyptian Prince, has a magic flute to take him and...

Although the story of Figaro's success in preventing the Count of Almaviva's seduction of his fiancée Susanna was politically explosive, it was tolerated in the court of the relatively enlightened Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. Mozart's opera, Le Nozze di Figaro, uses a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, and was premièred in Vienna in 1786. It was based on a famous play by the Frenchman Beaumarchais, a sequel to The Barber of Seville. Characters including Figaro, the Countess, Cherubino the page, ...

A couple of smooth army officers in metropolitan Naples become increasingly horrified as they find that they are losing their bet with a misogynist philosopher. The wager? That their fiancées will be faithful. Their disguise as Albanians in an attempt to entrap their fiancées, and the complicity of the naughty maid, who feigns as a lawyer organising their 'marriage', provide hilarious moments in an opera full of favourite tunes. Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto was long considered indecent and ...

Britten's opera Peter Grimes is based on George Crabbe's horrifying poem The Borough about early 19th century Aldeburgh, a North Sea fishing town in East Anglia. Its premiere at Sadlers Wells in 1945, shortly after VE Day, was a landmark moment in British operatic history. Britten's partner Peter Pears – like Britten a pacifist and conscientious objector – was in the title role. Britten and Pears, together with Montagu Slater, a communist journalist, created the libretto.Grimes, a fisherma...

Butterfly is a delicate and impressionable geisha who thinks she has married Pinkerton, a US naval officer briefly stationed in Japan. Naive and loving as she is, she does not realise that for him the marriage is a sham, an extended 'date'. It's not long before he goes away, leaving her pregnant. Still, she trusts that he will return one fine day (Un bel dì). He does, but it is not the homecoming of which Madame Butterfly dreamed: she is devastated to discover that the callous Pinkerton is...

The première in 1816 in Rome of Gioachino Rossini's famous opera was a fiasco comparable to those of Wagner's Tannhäuser and Bizet's Carmen. But Il barbiere di Siviglia was soon recognised as being among the greatest of comic operas, comparable to those of Mozart. Even Beethoven was enthusiastic.Figaro, Seville's barber, is confident of a good pay-off for facilitating the elopement of Rosina with the Count of Almaviva. Her guardian also has designs on her and her fortune. Who will g...

Verdi's now-popular opera was a fiasco in Venice in 1853, attributable perhaps to the prima donna being noticeably obese, despite apparently wasting with tuberculosis. Soon, however, Verdi's scandalous love story was on stage contemporaneously at Her Majesty's Theatre, Covent Garden and Drury Lane.Piave's libretto depicts Violetta and Alfredo Germont, the Marguerite and Armand of The Lady with the Camelias by Alexandre Dumas (son of the author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Th...