Description

Book Synopsis

Abbate and Parker''s A History of Opera is the first full new history of opera in sixty years - now in paperback in an updated second edition

''The best single volume ever written on the subject'' The Times Literary Supplement

Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their scrupulous and provocative retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the means by which it communicates, and its societal role. In a new revision with an expanded examination of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century this book explores the tensions that have sustained opera over 400 years: between words and music, character and singer, inattention and absorption. Abbate and Parker argue that, though the genre''s most popular and enduring works were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to transform the viewer with its enduring power.

A History of Opera The Last Four Hundred Years

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A Paperback / softback by Carolyn Abbate, Roger Parker

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    View other formats and editions of A History of Opera The Last Four Hundred Years by Carolyn Abbate

    Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
    Publication Date: 06/08/2015
    ISBN13: 9780141009018, 978-0141009018
    ISBN10: 0141009012
    Also in:
    Opera

    Description

    Book Synopsis

    Abbate and Parker''s A History of Opera is the first full new history of opera in sixty years - now in paperback in an updated second edition

    ''The best single volume ever written on the subject'' The Times Literary Supplement

    Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their scrupulous and provocative retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the means by which it communicates, and its societal role. In a new revision with an expanded examination of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century this book explores the tensions that have sustained opera over 400 years: between words and music, character and singer, inattention and absorption. Abbate and Parker argue that, though the genre''s most popular and enduring works were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to transform the viewer with its enduring power.

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