Product Description: One of the most original and engaging composers of the twentieth century, Leos Janáçek is now regarded as one of its major musical dramatists. His operas have become a regular part of the repertory, but a full understanding of their diverse subjects and backgrounds has been hampered by the lack of source materials in English...read more

Janacek's fortunes were transformed by the Prague production of Jenufa. This led to international fame and fortune and to the magnificent creative flowering in which the elderly composer wrote most of his best-known works. His personal life was affected by his public affair with Gabriela Horvatova and his friendship with Kamila Stosslova.

Opera is the grandest and most potent cultural expression of the nationalist movement which led to the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. During this period Czech opera developed into a genre of major artistic importance cultivated by composers of the stature of Smetana, Dvorák and Janácek. Czech Opera examines opera in its national contexts, and is a study not only of operas written in Czech, but also of the specific circumstances which shaped them. These include the historical and political background to the period, the theatres in which Czech plays and operas were first performed, and the composers and performers who worked in them. The role of the librettists is given particular prominence and is complemented by a detailed chapter on the subject matter of the librettos shedding light on the subject matter of the historical and mythic background of the genre.

Product Description: The weather's impact on the Irish Rebellion. Reveals just how important a role the weather played, especially as it affected the military action. ""It must join the library of everyone interested in the convulsions of 1798.""--History Ireland...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)

Product Description: These are the letters of a great love story. In 1917, the Czech composer Leos Janáçek met Kamila Stösslová while on holiday at Luhaçovice, a spa resort in Moravia. He was sixty-three and locked in a loveless marriage; she was twenty-six, the wife of an antique dealer frequently away from home...read more

Product Description: Kát'a Kabanová is both the first Janácek opera to have been performed in Britain and the one which has received the most productions in Britain and the USA. In this book John Tyrrell brings together letters, early reviews and other documents (most of them translated from Czech for the first time) on the opera's composition and its early performances...read more