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This monograph presents original research based on Wagner's theoretical writings and demonstrates that there is a precise logic to his tonal structures. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Absolutely superb
A SUPERB book.Would take forever to list all the positives, but briefly...

The author does a lot of very technical analysis of Wagner's mature works (mostly Ring, Tristan, Parsifal) and shows that so much of Wagner's harmony can be interpreted in terms of standard harmonic analysis.He thus rejects the universal claim that so much of Wagner's music is atonal or at least cannot be analyzed in terms of standard Western Harmony.So Wagner's harmony is indeed incredibly complex and profound, but it CAN be analyzed properly!

Many examples are analyzed, and so many insights are given into the interpretation of the works too.

Again: simply superb.If you love Wagner's music (like I) and want more technical analysis without the copious amounts of drivel on interpretation ignoring the music, then this is possibly the best and deepest book ever written on this, I think. ... Read more

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Chapters: 1913 Musicals, 1913 Operas, 1913 Songs, Musical Groups Established in 1913, Danny Boy, the Fair at Sorochyntsi, That International Rag, Sweethearts, I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone, the Girl From Utah, L'amore Dei Tre Re, You Made Me Love You, Nigger Blues, Julien, Erie Philharmonic, the Girl on the Film, Pénélope, La Vida Breve, the Tramp, San Carlo Opera Company, Victory Over the Sun, Peg O' My Heart, Adele, Ballin' the Jack, the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Panurge, Gasoline, He'd Have to Get Under - Get Out and Get Under, Daddy, Come Home. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 109. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: "Danny Boy" is a ballad written by Frederick Weatherly and usually set to the tune of the Londonderry Air; it is most closely associated with Irish communities. The lyrics to "Danny Boy" were written by the English lawyer and lyricist Frederick Weatherly in 1910. Although the lyrics were originally written for a different tune, Weatherly modified them to fit "Londonderry Air" in 1913 when his sister-in-law in America sent him a copy. Ernestine Schumann-Heink made the first recording in 1915. Weatherly gave the song to the vocalist Elsie Griffin, who in turn made it one of the most popular songs in the new century. In 1928, Weatherly suggested that the second verse would provide a fitting requiem for the actress Ellen Terry. "Danny Boy" was originally said to be intended as a message from a woman to a man, and Weatherly provided the alternative "Eily dear" for male singers in his 1918 authorised lyrics. However, the song is actually sung by men as much as, or possibly more than, women. The song has been interpreted by some listeners as a message from a parent to a son going off to war or leaving as part of the Irish diaspora. The song is widely considered an I...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=1279066 ... Read more

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Chapters: 1905 Musicals, 1905 Operas, 1905 Songs, Musical Groups Established in 1905, Record Labels Established in 1905, Gothenburg Symphony, the Merry Widow, Salome, Chérubin, Warszawianka, Mlle. Modiste, the Spring Chicken, the White Chrysanthemum, Nellie Dean, Low Bridge, Nobody, in My Merry Oldsmobile, Bach-Elgar Choir, in the Shade of the Old Apple Tree, Wait 'till the Sun Shines, Nellie, Gül Baba, Silvertone Records, Everybody Works but Father, College Life, Greater Grand Forks Symphony Orchestra, the Bravest Hussar. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 91. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Merry Widow (1905)Der Graf von Luxemburg (1909)Der Zarewitsch (1927)The Land of Smiles (1929)Giuditta (1934) The Merry Widow (German: ) is an operetta by the AustroHungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband on an 1861 comedy play, L'attaché d'ambassade (The Embassy Attaché) by Henri Meilhac. The operetta has enjoyed extraordinary international success since its 1905 premiere in Vienna and continues to be frequently revived. Well-known music from the score includes the "Vilja Song", "Da geh' ich zu Maxim" ("You'll Find Me at Maxim's"), and the "Merry Widow Waltz". The operetta was first performed at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 30 December 1905 with Mizzi Günther as Hanna, Louis Treumann as Danilo, Siegmund Natzler as Baron Zeta and Annie Wünsch as Valencienne. It was Lehár's first major success, becoming internationally the best-known operetta of its era. Lehár subsequently made changes for productions in London in 1907 (two new numbers), and Berlin in the 1920s, but the definitive version is basically that of t...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=560587 ... Read more

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Chapters: 1936 Musicals, 1936 Operas, 1936 Songs, Musical Groups Disestablished in 1936, Musical Groups Established in 1936, Good Shepherd, Dust My Broom, Smile, on Your Toes, Mary From Dungloe, Sing, Sing, Sing, Œdipe, Sweet Home Chicago, Cara Al Sol, I Love to Singa, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Come on in My Kitchen, Il Campiello, Red, Hot and Blue, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, a Las Barricadas, the Way You Look Tonight, Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, Why Don't You Do Right?, Steel Guitar Rag, I've Got You Under My Skin, Bewildered, Johnny Johnson, Homat El Diyar, Washington National Opera, le Testament de La Tante Caroline, Hawaiian War Chant, le Fanion de La Légion, Cyrano de Bergerac, Victoria Police Pipe Band, Pick Yourself Up, You Turned the Tables on Me, Careless Rapture, Terraplane Blues, Ofunam, State Academic Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation, the Great Speckled Bird, There's a Small Hotel, the Glory of Love, There Is No Greater Love, Billie's Blues, a Fine Romance, Pennies From Heaven, Let's Face the Music and Dance, Glad to Be Unhappy, No Depression in Heaven, Goody Goody, Mon Légionnaire, in the Chapel in the Moonlight, Organ Grinder's Swing, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, 1936 in Country Music, Until the Real Thing Comes Along, It's a Sin to Tell a Lie, Down in the Depths, Never Gonna Dance, the Poisoned Kiss, ou Chant, by Strauss, if I Should Lose You, Kaiserin Josephine, Kingston Symphony Orchestra, Get Thee Behind Me Satan, You'd Be So Easy to Love, I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket, Gee, but You're Swell, Goodnight My Love, Ridin' High, Let Yourself Go, for Sentimental Reasons, Moonburn, Too Good to Be True. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 226. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: "Good Shepherd" is a traditional song, most known as recorded by Jeffer...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=23728672 ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Chapters: 1902 Musicals, 1902 Operas, 1902 Songs, Musical Groups Established in 1902, Record Labels Established in 1902, Pelléas et Mélisande, the Wizard of Oz, Adriana Lecouvreur, a Country Girl, Merrie England, Rca Red Seal Records, Kashchey the Deathless, Tessie, Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey, Two Little Boys, My Lady Molly, the Girl From Kays, Foden's Band, le Jongleur de Notre-Dame, Three Little Maids, Merlin, the Glow-Worm, the Ragtime Dance, Saul Og David, Leeds Talk-O-Phone, in the Good Old Summer Time, Torna a Surriento, Flonzaley Quartet, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Western Australia Police Pipe Band, Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Servilia, Germania, Los Amores de La Inés, Prince Bob. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 159. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Pelléas et Mélisande (Pelléas and Mélisande) is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique, Paris on 30 April 1902. The French libretto was adapted from the Symbolist play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck. It was the only opera Debussy completed and is a landmark in 20th-century music. The plot concerns a love triangle. Prince Golaud finds a mysterious young woman, Mélisande, lost in a forest. He marries her and brings her back to the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel of Allemonde. Here Mélisande becomes increasingly attached to Golauds younger half-brother Pelléas, arousing Golauds jealousy. Golaud goes to excessive lengths to find out the truth about Pelléas and Mélisandes relationship, even forcing his own child, Yniold, to spy on the couple. Pelléas decides to leave the castle but arranges to meet Mélisande one last time and the two finally confess their love for one another. Golaud, who has been eavesdropping, rushes out and kills Pelléa...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=354433 ... Read more

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Chapters: 1868 Musicals, 1868 Operas, 1868 Songs, Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg, Mefistofele, La Périchole, Robert the Devil, Zhenitba, in the Sweet by and By, Dalibor, le Premier Jour de Bonheur, Ten Little Injuns, Chilpéric, L'île de Tulipatan. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 66. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) is an opera in three acts, written and composed by Richard Wagner. It is one of the most popular operas in the repertory, and is among the longest still commonly performed today, usually taking around four and a half hours. It was first performed at the Königliches Hof- und National-Theater in Munich, on June 21, 1868. The conductor at the premiere was Hans von Bülow. The story takes place in Nuremberg during the middle of the 16th century. At the time, Nuremberg was an Imperial Free City, and one of the centers of the Renaissance in Northern Europe. The story revolves around the real-life guild of Meistersinger (Master Singers), an association of amateur poets and musicians, mostly from the middle class and often master craftsmen in their main professions. The Mastersingers developed a craftsmanlike approach to music-making, with an intricate system of rules for composing and performing songs. The work draws much of its charm from its faithful depiction of the Nuremberg of the era and the traditions of the Mastersinger guild. One of the main characters, the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs, is based on an actual historical figure: Hans Sachs (14941576), the most famous of the historical Mastersingers. In the first Act, the town goldsmith Veit Pogner announces that the winner of the St. John's Feast Day (Midsummer's Day) song contest will win the hand in marriage of his daughter, Eva. The only stipulation is that the...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=37915 ... Read more

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Publisher: [Los Angeles?Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
Have you heard of the first American musical, The Black Crook, which opened in 1866 and had fifteen revivals? Do you know Oscar Straus's hilarious parody of Wagner's Ring cycle, Die lustigen Nibelungen (The Merry Nibelungs)? Do you know who the Ricci brothers, the Piccinni family, Edmond Audran, David Braham, or Francois-Joseph Gossec were? Look them up in this remarkable, thoroughly researched, lively book. Packed with nearly 1,800 entries, this is a must-have research tool and handy reference for the theater and music lover, student, teacher, professional singer, director, and producer! Meant as a supplement and companion to Blumenfeld's Dictionary of Acting and Show Business (Limelight, 2009), this unique dictionary is chock-full of information about all the various genres of musical theater; thumbnail plot summaries of works well-known and obscure; thumbnail biographies of composers and writers; and dance, theatrical, singing, and music terminology. Historical terms and foreign terms (with pronunciations) are included along with information on available recordings of many obscure pieces. Convenient lists of the works of Verdi, Puccini, Wagner, Gilbert and Sullivan, Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and many others are provided. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

both a super reference book and a delightful journey
The erudite Robert Blumenfeld has done it again! This book is a must for everyone interested in musical theater in any of its rich and infinitely varying forms. More delightfully, it is a book to browse where you will discover in one page many things you never knew about rare operettas, or current musicals, or that there are several versions of the Orpheus legend in musical form. Obscure musical or dance terms are easily explained; composers and legendary performers come to life. It's a perfect gift as well, written with knowledge and sometimes dry wit. Though you may find yourself ordering a lot of cds of musicals and operas you never knew existed and now can't live without, your world will be amazingly enriched by this four hundred page tour of the musical drama. ... Read more

Product Description
Opera on Screen is both a historical survey of this hybrid genre and an illuminating analysis of its conventions.The book focuses on such issues as how the original works are altered in the process of adaptation, the relationship between sound and image, how film directors manipulate time through techniques such as updating ahd flashback, and how we as spectators adapt our patters of listening to (and looking at) opera on screen.Amazon.com Review
For many opera fans, a live performance is a rare luxury. Film and television are infinitely more accessible, with new productions out on video all the time. How do we square a long, slow art form with the agitated media of the 21st century?

Marcia J. Citron, a musicologist at Rice University, finds a richly varied field. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Parsifal exploits film's ability to produce cognitive gaps, such as a man's voice emerging from a woman's mouth. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's Tales of Hoffmann uses a cast of dancers while unseen singers carry the vocal line; the split between sound and image gives it a silent movie's abstractness. Looking at Peter Sellars's productions of Don Giovanni on video, Citron shows how the camera enhances these contemporary settings of 18th-century works. Sellars rethinks Mozartian ensemble numbers--which normally function to bring characters onto common ground--by trapping his performers in isolated close-ups. A good deal of Citron's analysis of Sellars, though, pertains to his original staging, not the video treatments as such, begging the question of exactly when a screen version can be considered a distinct work. The blurry line between a screen opera and the mere opera it originated from is one she crosses repeatedly.

Citron, whose prose is marred by academic jargon, is at her best when she's enthusiastic. Discussing Francesco Rosi's Georges Bizet's Carmen, she documents the way the nonnaturalistic conventions of opera fit into an "everyday" film context: the layer of nonmusical sounds that grounds the story in a recognizable world; the score that at times recedes from the foreground, like a soundtrack; the dusty palette that undercuts the "idealizing travelogue" effect of the Andalusian settings.

Rosi's movie may not be part of a separate discipline but simply an interpretation that draws on the techniques at its disposal. Still, if film and video offer new ways of conceiving opera, of bringing it to more people in an evening than fit into La Scala in a year, who can complain? --David Olivenbaum ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

"Must" reading for opera fans and film buffs.
How does an opera change when it becomes a movie or a video? Opera on Screen examination is the first to explore how opera is treated on the screen, blending musical with film analysis and including ideas from genderstudies and other disciplines to examine connections between art and itsreproduction and depiction in other media. ... Read more

Product Description
Extracted from the anthology Opera Choruses, this work contains accompaniments suitable for piano or orchestra. ... Read more

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The Black Dog Opera Library is the most popular, informative, and budget-friendly way to enjoy all the great operas. Each book contains a history of the opera, a synopsis of the story, a complete libretto in its originallanguage as well as in English, dozens of photos, and a world-class Angel/EMI recording of the entire opera on two CDs. All of this for under twenty dollars! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Maybe this goes without saying, but...
Maybe this goes without saying, but I don't think that the libretto and music combined are enough to bring this opera fully to life. In my opinion, the set, costuming, and possibilities for great comedic acting are what makes this opera special. There are tons of videos on youtube of this opera: watch them with this book in hand, but do not read this without watching the opera first or unless you plan on seeing the opera very soon. While humor can be derived solely from the libretto, it really sparkles when brought to life on stage. If you can see it with Peter Mattei and Juan Diego Florez, then all the better in my opinion (on youtube, search "barber of seville met": the one I'm referencing played at the Metropolitan Opera). While for many the advice in this review may seem rudimentary, I just wanted to point out to anyone who may be as inexperienced in the realm of opera as myself that there are many layers to an opera, visual as well as auditory, and that in order to do this magnificent opera justice you must see it as well as hear it and read about it. I do love this book though, and the recordings are excellent.

Outstanding guide for opera novices!
The CD correlates well with the small, easily-held book so the novice can track which elements to listen for...one has the Italian arias as well as the English translation.A bonus is the worthy background material on composer Rossini.This small volume was the best preparation for attending the Verona Opera Festival in July 2009; now it serves as a wonderful way to conjure memories of the elegantly-clad cast and lilting melodies of Rossini's charming romantic comedy.

Great Seller...really
Great seller, Shipped and arrived on time as described, doing business was a pleasure and I dont say this just because...I say it because you are a great person to buy from.

These Black Dog books are terrific!
I highly recommend the Black Dog opera books.They're the perfect way to learn about an opera:They include cd's of the opera by outstanding singers, photos of performances, historical and critical commentary, a scene-by-scene summary of the plot, and the complete libretto in both English and the original language, so you can play around with the translation if you're interested.They can't be beat.

Amazon "Looks Inside" the wrong book
Be aware that the book shown when you take a "Look Inside" is NOT the book you get. What they show is a bound copy of the musical score with the libretto added. What you get is the libretto described in the written review, no musical score. That having been said, the book you get is useful and of interest, and the CD is a great recording. ... Read more