Opera from the Greek

Perhaps it will be enough to tell you that I wasnít halfway through this book before I searched the web for a copy of Professor Ewansís study of Wagner and Aeschylusís Oresteia, and ordered it forthwith: It has to be good.

Along the Roaring River

Chinese bass Hao Jiang Tian was 30, when he enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Denver 1983.

Books ‘n Things

Two excellent books on opera have come to hand, providing many hours of entertaining reading. I combine notice of them with a few thoughts about composer Paul Moravecís CDs, and his forthcoming opera premiere at Santa Fe Opera in 2009.

On Venetian Opera: a new edition of Monteverdi’s Ritorno, and Eleanor Selfridge-Field on Time and Opera in Venice.

Claudio Monteverdi. Il Ritorno díUlisse in patria. Edited by Rinaldo Alessandrini. Urtext. Kassel: B‰renreiter, 2007. BA 8791. A vocal score is available as 8791a.

Handel’s Riccardo primo, Re díInghilterra (HWV 23) and Tolomeo, Re díEgitto (HWV 25) from B‰renreiter

Published in 2007, Riccardo primo, Re díInghilterra (HWV 23) and Tolomeo, Re díEgitto (HWV 25) mark two of the latest installments of vocal-score editions of Handelís operas based upon B‰renreiterís Urtext editions.

Miles Davis, Miles Smiles and the Invention of Post-Bop

It is a measure of the classic status that the music of Miles Davis has acquired in American culture that a single LP produced for Columbia in the 1960s (Miles Smiles) is the focus of a short monograph from Indiana University Press.

SALIERI: Prima la musica e poi le parole

In 1786, Habsburg Emperor Joseph II commissioned a pair of short operas from two of the biggest names in Viennese musical theater: Salieri and Mozart.

Oper als Gesch‰ft

This book is in German, which may make it of limited interest to people who are not sufficiently familiar with the language.

La Nilsson: My Life in Opera

Birgit Nilsson probably never heard of “the Protestant work ethic,” but she didn’t need to know it.

HAYNES: The End of Early Music ó A Period Performer’s History of Music for the Twenty-First Century

Once upon a time, there was something known as early music. This was not so much a repertoire, a musico-historical epoch, as an attitude, a counter-cultural group.