A Guide to the Opera; Description & Interpretaton of the Words & Music of the Most Celebrated Operas - Softcover

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This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1899. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... N the following pages I have endeavoured to present a clear and comprehensive view of some of the principal operas. So far as I know, there is no work that exactly covers this field. At the best, librettos, even when worthily translated and complete, elucidate only one side of a composition, and the majority of librettos arbitrarily omit whole scenes (sometimes, indeed, whole Acts) that are often important connecting links in the action. The average libretto is untrustworthy as a full presentment of the composer's meaning. It is merely a given manager's version of a certain opera. Of course, if we know the whole work, we can understand any version; but if we only know mutilated versions, our ideas of the work are apt to be very confused. Moreover, it is hard for some people to construct the course of the action exclusively from the dialogue and bare stage-directions. Furthermore, the Argument is usually misleading, for it always tells some of the incidents out of the order in which they occur on the stage, and sometimes mentions occurrences as part of the action, whereas they are really only referred to in the dialogue. Frequently, also, the Argument relates and describes matter that is not to be found in the opera at all, but only in the story upon which the opera is founded. Thus the Faust legend has inspired many operas, and in studying any one of these we only care about the special incidents and situations that are represented on the stage in that special work. To consider anything beyond that only leaves the mind in hopeless confusion. For complete enjoyment, it is as necessary to understand the music as the words and action, for it is incontestable that every great composer considered his part in the work at least of equa...

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