Product Description: This book is a study of Mozart's Don Giovanni, his second opera to a libretto by da Ponte. Although it is one of the handful of best-known and most often performed operas of the last two hundred years, Don Giovanni is seldom given in an authentic form and arguments persist as to its nature...read more

Portrays the musical era between 1750 and 1830 against its intellectual and cultural background and describes both its famous and obscure composers

Product Description: Piccinni's first French opera was Roland (1778), an adaptation by Marmontel of a libretto by Quinault. Atys represents a more experienced and effective approach to the same genre, in which Quinault's texts were altered to acc ommodate the Italianate style in vogue at the time...read more

Product Description: Idomeneo, by common consent Mozart's greatest opera seria, is a rich synthesis of the dramatic potentialities of Italian opera seria, French tragédie lyrique, and recent German opera. It was composed for the finest orchestra in Germany and some excellent singers...read more

Product Description: Berlioz's "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette is regarded by many as his finest work; it is certainly among the most original. This book summarizes the complex genesis of the work before examining the music closely and always with a view to understanding its dramatic implications...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Elgar's Variations for Orchestra, commonly known as the 'Enigma' Variations, marked an epoch both in his career, and in the renaissance of English music at the turn of the century. The first extended study of the work, this Cambridge Music Handbook contains historical information concerning the conception and writing of the work, an extended musical discussion requiring only a little technical knowledge of music, and a fascinating survey of the "solutions" to the mystery implied by the title of Elgar's most famous work. (view table of contents)

This is the first full-length musical study of Berlioz to take into account the rediscovered Messe solennelle. Julian Rushton discusses all aspects of his work, without undue emphasis on a few more popular pieces. The first section consists of a comprehensive biography of Berlioz's musical works, tracing shifting patterns of productivity, approaches to genre, and the contrast between works which are aesthetically progressive or retrospective. The author then considers aspects of Berlioz's musical style, building upon earlier studies by the author and other recent scholarship. The final section offers a more substantial analysis of selected passages and an overall critical assessment. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Divided into three sections, this Companion explores Edward Elgar's early career, his major musical achievements, and the reception, performance and interpretation of his work. Placed in this wider perspective, Elgar emerges as a pivotal figure in the British cultural imagination at a defining historical moment for England's musical identity...read more

Product Description: Each entry in this New Grove series of composers and their operas is based on articles in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, that feature information on the lives of individual composers, their works, their librettists and interpreters, and the places where they performed...read more

Product Description: Book by Rushton, Julian

Product Description: This book is an analytical and critical study of Berlioz's unique musical style. It does not undertake to analyse all his works, but rather to separate characteristic elements and observe them in action. Berlioz's writings and those of his critics are called upon to help focus the discussion...read more

Product Description: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the great icons of Western music. An amazing prodigy who toured the capitals of Europe as a child, astonishing royalty and professional musicians with his precocious skills, in his adulthood he wrote some of the finest music in the European tradition...read more

Product Description: Following the great successes of Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte was the last of the three operas that Mozart wrote with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. Although well received at its premiere in Vienna in 1790, it was then largely neglected until the mid-twentieth century...read more