Enjoy the passion and power of 145 arias from 50 operas by Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, Donizetti, Bellini, 12 other composers. Selections from Rigoletto, The Marriage of Figaro, Il Trovatore, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, La Bohème, many more. Original Italian librettos with excellent line-for-line literal English translations in facing columns. Introduction.
Italian Literature before 1900 in English Translation provides the most complete record possible of texts from the early periods that have been translated into English, and published between 1929 and 2008. It lists works from all genres and subjects, and includes translations wherever they have appeared across the globe. In this annotated bibliography, Robin Healey covers over 5,200 distinct editions of pre-1900 Italian writings. Most entries are accompanied by useful notes providing information on authors, works, translators, and how the translations were received. Among the works by over 1,500 authors represented in this volume are hundreds of editions by Italy's most translated authors – Dante Alighieri, Machiavelli, and Boccaccio – and other hundreds which represent the author's only English translation. A significant number of entries describe works originally published in Latin. Together with Healey's Twentieth-Century Italian Literature in English Translation, this volume makes comprehensive information on translations accessible for schools, libraries, and those interested in comparative literature.
Have you been holding back? Have you always wanted to dip a toe into the seductive world of corpulent divas, voluptuous vowels, spaghetti-like plot twists, and encores that make the crowd shudder with cry after cry of bravissimo? Are you curious to find out just why Mozart would have made a wonderful dinner guest? Have you always wanted to know at what time of day it is inappropriate to order a cappuccino in Italy, or whom you should never greet with a friendly "Ciao!"? Despite its title, Italian for Opera Lovers is geared towards people who may have no experience studying Italian, nor even more than a cursory familiarity with opera. The book is meant as an introduction to the Italian language. As we cover the basics, we will be focusing on close readings from nine Italian operas. It is my hope that this book whets your appetite for more adventures with both Italian and opera--two one-way tickets to a life of passion.
This anthology highlights the rich range of modern Italian fiction, presenting the first English translations of works by many famous authors. Contents include fables and stories by Italo Calvino, Elsa Morante, Alberto Moravia, and Cesare Pavese; historical fiction by Leonardo Sciascia and Mario Rigoni Stern; and little-known tales by Luigi Pirandello and Carlo Emilio Gadda. No further apparatus or reference is necessary for this self-contained text. Appropriate for high school and college courses as well as for self-study, this volume will prove a fine companion for teachers and intermediate-level students of Italian language and literature as well as readers wishing to brush up on their language skills. Dover (2013) original publication. See every Dover book in print at www.doverpublications.com
(Instrumental Play-Along). Who needs a singer? With Play Puccini flutists can bathe themselves in luxurious Italian melody! These ten opera arias are among the composer's most famous and distinctive achievements, here transcribed for intermediate level solo flute and piano. The book includes a biography of Puccini, notes about the plot of each opera, and the dramatic context of the selected aria. The companion CD features excellent performances, as well as piano accompaniments for practice. Includes arias from: La Boheme , La Fanciulla Del West , Gianni Schicchi , Madama Butterfly , Manon Lescaut , Suor Angelica , Tosca and Turandot .
Winner of the 2007 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society and the 2007 Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Divas and Scholars is a dazzling and beguiling account of how opera comes to the stage, filled with Philip Gossett’s personal experiences of triumphant—and even failed—performances and suffused with his towering and tonic passion for music. Writing as a fan, a musician, and a scholar, Gossett, the world's leading authority on the performance of Italian opera, brings colorfully to life the problems, and occasionally the scandals, that attend the production of some of our most favorite operas. Gossett begins by tracing the social history of nineteenth-century Italian theaters in order to explain the nature of the musical scores from which performers have long worked. He then illuminates the often hidden but crucial negotiations opera scholars and opera conductors and performers: What does it mean to talk about performing from a critical edition? How does one determine what music to perform when multiple versions of an opera exist? What are the implications of omitting passages from an opera in a performance? In addition to vexing questions such as these, Gossett also tackles issues of ornamentation and transposition in vocal style, the matters of translation and adaptation, and even aspects of stage direction and set design. Throughout this extensive and passionate work, Gossett enlivens his history with reports from his own experiences with major opera companies at venues ranging from the Metropolitan and Santa Fe operas to the Rossini Opera Festival at Pesaro. The result is a book that will enthrall both aficionados of Italian opera and newcomers seeking a reliable introduction to it—in all its incomparable grandeur and timeless allure.
Unfinished at Puccini's death in 1924, Turandot was not only his most ambitious work, but it became the last Italian opera to enter the international repertory. In this colorful study two renowned music scholars demonstrate that this work, despite the modern climate in which it was written, was a fitting finale for the centuries-old Great Tradition of Italian opera. Here they provide concrete instances of how a listener might encounter the dramatic and musical structures of Turandot in light of the Italian melodramma, and firmly establish Puccini's last work within the tradition of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. In a summary of the sounds, sights, and symbolism of Turandot, the authors touch on earlier treatments of the subject, outline the conception, birth, and reception of the work, and analyze its coordinated dramatic and musical design. Showing how the evolution of the libretto documents Puccini's reversion to large musical forms typical of the Great Tradition in the late nineteenth century, they give particular attention to his use of contrasting Romantic, modernist, and two kinds of orientalist coloration in the general musical structure. They suggest that Puccini's inability to complete the opera resulted mainly from inadequate dramatic buildup for Turandot's last-minute change of heart combined with an overly successful treatment of the secondary character.
