Product Description: Norma is by common consent the finest of the ten operas composed during Vincenzo Bellini's short career. Professor Kimbell provides the biographical and cultural context of the opera, examines its artistic qualities and suggests something of the impression Norma has made on our imaginations and sensibilities in the 165 years since it was first produced in Milan...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Professor Kimbell's classic study illuminates the first fifteen years of Verdi's composing career, the era that culminated in his trio of masterpieces, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata. Verdi had become an acknowledged master of the peculiar brand of Romanticism that flourished in Italy in the 1830s and 40s; this background is examined in its political, social and literary light, and his consequent transformation of Italian operatic conventions is analysed...read more