Search results for ""Author Charles Osborne""

Every opera lover enjoys a performance more when accompanied by a knowledgeable friend. In this indispensable guide, well-known opera critic Charles Osborne provides exactly that. Osborne fills in the details on 175 of the world’s most frequently performed operas, including facts about the composer and the music, a plot outline, accounts of famous performers, and much more."This book is exactly what the title claims: an opera lover's companion. Reading it is like going to the opera with a knowledgeable friend who tells you enough to make you want to see the piece but not so much you're drowned in superfluous detail."—Richard Fawkes, Opera Now"What this invaluable book contains is the ideal rundown on 175 operas from Auber's Fra Diavolo to Zimmerman's Die Soldaten, in each case putting the work in context within the composer's development, with a list of characters, a short synopsis and pointers towards the most imortant arias, duets and ensembles, all in a personal congenial tone, like unto an operatically wise and loving uncle."—Denby Richards, Musical Opinion“An erudite, instructive and unpretentious guide.”—Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph"It’s hard to imagine any other book on the subject more informative and helpful to the average enthusiast. . . . This book is one you’ll cherish."—Books in Canada

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A young man, broken down in the fog, witnesses a murder he is asked to conceal… A full-length novel adapted by Charles Osborne from Agatha Christie’s acclaimed play. When a stranger runs his car into a ditch in dense fog in South Wales and makes his way to an isolated house, he discovers a woman standing over the dead body of her wheelchair-bound husband, gun in her hand. She admits to murder, and the unexpected guest offers to help her concoct a cover story. But is it possible that Laura Warwick did not commit the murder after all? If so, who is she shielding? The victim’s young half-brother or his dying matriarchal mother? Laura’s lover? Perhaps the father of the little boy killed in an accident for which Warwick was responsible? The house seems full of possible suspects… THE UNEXPECTED GUEST is considered to be one of the finest of Christie’s plays. Hailed as ‘another Mousetrap’ when it opened on 12 August 1958 in the West End, it ran for 604 performances over the succeeding 18 months and has been staged many times around the world over the last 40 years.

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Frida Leider, the greatest Wagnerian soprano of the pre-war period, has a permanent place in operatic history. In this, her own memoirs, Leider recreates the fascinating operatic world of her day, and recounts her association with Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Lauritz Melchior, Lotte Lehmann, Maria Jeritza, Elisabeth Schumann, Erich Kleiber, as well as many other great musical figures of the twentieth century. Leider’s story embraces her entire career from her childhood in Berlin at the turn of the century, through her apprentice years in the provincial German opera houses, to her years of international triumph when she was acclaimed at Covent Garden, Bayreuth, the Berlin State Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. Her account of musical life in Nazi Germany adds yet another dimension to an autoEdition Biography which, by virtue of its charm and warmth, is already far removed from more conventional operatic memoirs.

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A comprehensive and authorised biographical companion to the works of Agatha Christie covering books, films, TV and plays – revised and updated edition. Agatha Christie was the author of over 100 plays, short story collections and novels which have been translated into 103 languages; she is outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Many have tried to copy her but none has succeeded. Attempts to capture her personality on paper, to discover her motivations or the reasons for her popularity, have usually failed. Charles Osborne, a lifelong student of Agatha Christie, has approached this most private of persons above all through her books, and the result is a fascinating companion to her life and work. This ‘professional life’ of Agatha Christie provides authoritative information on each book’s provenance, on the work itself and on its contemporary critical reception set against the background of the major events in the author’s life. Illustrated with many rare photographs, this comprehensive guide to the world of Agatha Christie has been fully updated to include details of all the publications, films and TV adaptations in the 25 years since her death.

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A full-length novel by Charles Osborne adapted from Agatha Christie’s stage play, in which a diplomat’s wife finds a body that mustn’t be discovered… Following BLACK COFFEE and THE UNEXPECTED GUEST comes the final Agatha Christie play novelisation, bringing her superb storytelling to a new legion of fans. Clarissa, the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat, is given to daydreaming. ‘Supposing I were to come down one morning and find a dead body in the library, what should I do?’ she muses. Clarissa has her chance to find out when she discovers a body in the drawing-room of her house in Kent. Desperate to dispose of the body before her husband comes home with an important foreign politician, Clarissa persuades her three house guests to become accessories and accomplices. It seems that the murdered man was not unknown to certain members of the house party (but which ones?), and the search begins for the murderer and the motive, while at the same time trying to persuade a police inspector that there has been no murder at all…

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Sugar and cream?Or a lethal dose of poison? The inventor of a powerful new explosive,Sir Claud Amory, is somewhat disconcerted when the chemical formula goes missing – the situation worsened by the knowledge that the thief is one of Sir Claud’s house-guests. A relative? Or a ‘friend’? Whoever the culprit, Sir Claud decides to give them a sporting chance – which is more than someone gives him. As the doors are locked and the lights turned off, rather than return the formula, one of the guests adds something to their host’s coffee . . . Adapted as a novel by Charles Osborne

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