The Limelight Book of Opera

By Stanley Sadie and Arthur Jacobs

(Limelight). A concise and comprehensive guide to the great operatic masterworks from Monteverdi, Purcell and Handel to Berg, Gershwin and Britten. It's an ideal handbook for the newcomer to opera and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879100443
• ISBN13: 9780879100445
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation
• Length: 563 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

This book has served me well for 11 years.

I bought this book when I started attending the opera regularly. Composers are listed chronologically with a brief summary of their place in history and their works, followed by summaries of their best known operas, including musical notation excerpts from the most famous arias. Of 58 operas I've attended, only 6 were not in the book. It has also become the place I record "when and where I saw what." Another great source book is THE CHRONICLE OF OPERA by Michael Raeburn, 1998. Enriched with many pictures, it chronicles performances beginning in 1589, with historical references and composers biographies.

The concise opera guide

Reference books are easy to review. They are either good and useful or worthless. We are in the first category here. The authors chose a by author system to review the main operas, for each of which a good synopsis is given. One could rise an eyebrow at some inclusions or gasp at some omissions. But Opera has its fads and fashions and the choices of the authors reflect certainly the ideas of opera in 1964 when the first edition came out. One would have liked a little bit more of musical notes but that would have perhaps scared away the neophyte. As it is, the book is an excellent introductory book, and always a convenient reference for the more knowledgeable opera fanatic. A must have book, even if you already own other opera books.