Performing Opera

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 production values. 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.

Immerse yourself in more than 400 years of the world's most celebrated operas and discover the fascinating stories behind them. Explore the lives of singers such as Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, and Jonas Kaufmann. Meet composers like Mozart, Wagner, and Britten, and the librettists with whom they collaborated to create the magical blend of words and music that make up opera.

Powerful women in Viking helmets, heroic males with incredible voices, and epic themes of life and death -this is opera! Opera is an art form that tells a story through singing, music, dancing and acting. It began in 1597 when an Italian artist, Jacopo Peri, tried to reproduce the ancient Greek dramas. After noticing that the Greeks used music and speech together in these dramas, Peri chose to do the same but with signing.

Here is the colorful story of sometimes temperamental composers and even more temperamental singers working in an art form which has produced some of man's noblest artistic creations. This absorbing history is illustrated by over 100 musical examples by Naxos artists as well as some of the greatest singers of the 20th century, including Enrico Caruso and Fyodor Chaliapin.

Classically trained singers learn how to act with their voice but are taught very little awareness about their bodies as equally expressive instruments. This handbook offers singers of all levels a new, holistic approach to learning how to incorporate meaningful gesture, posture, and body language in their work and become confident end engaging actors in opera and on the concert stage. Performing in Opera and Concert is the first installment of The Lyrical Stage Trilogy, a series about the craft, the repertoire and the value of opera and the classical recital in the 21st Century.

Mention The Phantom of the Opera at a dinner party, and each guest will have his or her own vivid, almost visceral, recollection of the tale of a disfigured musical genius and his unrequited love for a beautiful, young singer. Someone will undoubtedly pantomime the famous scene from the silent era film in which Mary Philbin (as Christine Daae) sneaks up behind the Phantom, while he is playing the organ in his subterranean lair, and unmasks the great Lon Chaney, revealing his horribly disfigured face to the audience and her.

Known as opera’s “disrupter-in-residence,” director Yuval Sharon has never adhered to the art form’s conventions. In his many productions in both the United States and Europe, he constantly challenges the perception of opera as aloof by urging, among other things: performing operas in “non-places,” such as parking lots; encouraging the use of amplification; and shuffling the traditional structure of classic works, like performing Puccini’s La bohème in reverse order, ending not with the tubercular heroine Mimi’s death but with her first falling in love.

Through a deft compilation of primary sources—letters, memoirs, and personal accounts from composers, librettists, and performers—Michael Rose re-creates for his readers the circumstances that gave rise to fifteen operatic milestones. From Monteverdi and Mozart to Puccini and Berg, each chapter focuses on a well-known opera and tells the story that lies behind its creation.

"De niño no tenía televisión. La música a través de la radio era la mitad de mi mundo, ya que el otro lo formaba la literatura, devorar libros. Muchas noches me quedaba a escuchar las óperas que retransmitía Radio Nacional de España en directo. Cuando el locutor describía el siguiente acto, mi imaginación volaba libre."

"De niño no tenía televisión. La música a través de la radio era la mitad de mi mundo, ya que el otro lo formaba la literatura, devorar libros. Muchas noches me quedaba a escuchar las óperas que retransmitía Radio Nacional de España en directo. Cuando el locutor describía el siguiente acto, mi imaginación volaba libre."

Watch as the curtains open and the opera begins. The seven operatic stories in this beautiful collection are each proceeded by an introduction about the origins of the story. There are also extensive notes about opera houses, behind-the-scenes terminology, famous opera houses and composers, and more.