Mitchell Beazley Pocket Guide: Opera

Don't go to the opera without it! Portable, informative, and easy to use, this pocket companion to 150 masterpieces contains both the repertoire standards (Carmen, Die Fledermaus, Don Giovanni, and La Boh'me) and more unusual fare-like Rimsky Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel, Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage, and Kurt Weill's Street Scene. Entries range from Handel's Agrippina to Mozart's magical Die Zauberflte (The Magic Flute), and each one includes information on the composer and librettist; a description of the work's premiere; a list of principal characters; and synopses that reveal the mood and style of each piece, scene by scene. Among the operas covered are: Beethoven's Fidelio, Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice, Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, Philip Glass's Akhnaten, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman, Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, and Verdi's La Traviata.