"The Rough Guide to Opera" is a handbook on the most thrilling of art forms, spanning four hundred years of music drama. Features include: lively biographical sketches of some 150 composers, from Claudio Monteverdi to Poul Ruders, detailing the main events of their careers and revealing their social and musical context; entertaining accounts of hundreds of operas, both the famous and neglected, each with a clear synopsis and a lively essay; CD reviews, covering the latest digital recordings as well as dozens of classic historical sets; and a who's who of the finest singers and conductors on record, from historical figures like Caruso, Callas and Toscanini to present-day stars like Bryn Terfel, Renee Fleming and Daniel Barenboim.

Table of Contents

The birth of opera - Monteverdi to Purcell; Baroque opera -Vivaldi to Handel; the Reformation of opera - Gluck to Mozart; the age of Romanticism; Verdi, Wagner and their contemporaries; opera in transition - the generation of Puccini, Massenet and Debussy; the era of modernism; opera since World War II; directory of singers; directory of conductors. (Part contents).

Author Biography

Matthew Boyden is one of Britain's most hard-hitting music writers. He also makes regular appearances on television and radio.