A clear, friendly, and truly complete handbook to learning how to listen to opera, whether on the radio, on recordings, or live at the opera house.If you've decided that the time has finally come to learn about opera and discover for yourself what it is about opera that sends your normally reserved friends into states of ecstatic abandon, this is the book for you.Opera 101 is recognized as the standard text in English for anyone who wants to become...

Opera is the fastest growing of all the performing arts, attracting audiences of all ages who are enthralled by the gorgeous music, vivid drama, and magnificent productions. If you’ve decided that the time has finally come to learn about opera and discover it for yourself, this is the book for you.Opera 101 is recognized as the standard text in English for anyone who wants to become an opera lover. It is a clear, friendly, and truly complete handbook for learning how to li...

The author who has taught tens of thousands of people to love opera now introduces readers to the rich and soul-stirring world of classical music.From the author of the bestselling Opera 101 comes a comprehensive and highly accessible guide to discovering the glories of classical music, based on the fundamental principle of developing the skills to truly listen. In clear and entertaining prose, Plotkin explores a thousand years of music, introducing listeners to more than ...

**One of the New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.In this New York Times bestseller, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan—read by Emmy and Golden Globe Award winner Sandra Oh.“Stunning.” —New York Times Book Review**In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger. When she discovers she is pregnant—...

**The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers • A New York Times “Readers’ Choice: Best Books of the 21st Century” PickFrom the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Table for Two, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel**In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to ...

Sex, drugs, and . . . bug stew? In the vein of The Glass Castle and Wild, Cea Sunrise Person’s compelling memoir of a childhood spent with her dysfunctional counter-culture family in the Canadian wilderness—a searing story of physical, emotional, and psychological survival.In the late 1960s, riding the crest of the counterculture movement, Cea’s family left a comfortable existence in California to live off the land in the Canadian wilderness. But unlike most commu...

Geralt the Witcher—revered and hated—holds the line against the monsters plaguing humanity in this collection of adventures, the first chapter in Andrzej Sapkowski’s groundbreaking epic fantasy series that inspired the hit Netflix show and the blockbuster video games.★ The New York Times bestselling series★ Over Fifteen Million Copies Sold Worldwide★ World Fantasy Award Winning Author★...

Puccini is the most beloved composer of opera in the world: one quarter of all opera performances in the U.S. are of his operas, his music pervades movie soundtracks, and his plots have infiltrated our popular culture. But, although Puccini’s art still captivates audiences and the popularity of such works as Tosca, La Bohéme, and Madama Butterfly has never waned, he has long been a victim of critical snobbery and cultural marginalization.In this witty and informat...

A newly translated LIBRETTO with foreign language and english translation side-by-side, AND Music Highlight Examples.

'I have so carefully mapped the corners of my mindThat I am forever waking in a lost country...'SUMMER REQUIEM traces the immutable shifting of the seasons, the relentless rhythms of a great world that both 'gifts and harms'. Luminous, resonant and profound, these poems trace the dying days of summer, 'the hour of rust', when memory is haunted by loss and decay. But in the silence that follows, as the soul is cast adrift, there is also reconciliation with t...

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...

A premier singer and master teacher here tells other singers how to get the most from 151 famous arias selected for their popularity or their greatness from 66 operas, ranging in time and style from Christopher Gluck to Carlisle Floyd, from Mozart to Menotti. “The most memorable thrills in an opera singer's life,” according to the author's Introduction, “may easily derive from the great arias in his or her repertoire.”This book continues the work Martial Singher has done, in perfor...