Aida: Opera Guide and Libretto [Paperback]

Giuseppe Verdi (Author), Eileen Bleiler (Translator)

Product Details

• Paperback: 181 pages
• Publisher: Dover Pubns; First edition (June 1962)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486204057
• ISBN-13: 978-0486204055
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,504,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a fan of Opera, but this book conveys atmosphere, March 17, 2004

By 

Nikephoros Phokas (Dover, NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Aida: Opera Guide and Libretto (Paperback)

I am not a big of Opera, nor have I attended one, I read this book because an acquaintance loaned it to me. This book sketches a brief biography of Verdi's life, contains notes on early performances of Aida, a plot summary, a musical background with some muscial notation, and finally the actual libretto in Italian on the left side of each of page, with the English translation on the right. I did not enjoy the actual libretto, Opera is clearly meant to be performed and not read. For example on page 130 we have the following: ... "Amneris: My tears will now be avenged by heaven ... heaven ... will be avenged by heaven. My tears will now be avenged by heaven." ... This kind of repition makes it a chore to read, but performed and sung in the beautiful Italian language, perhaps it is more bearable. With my limited experience with opera I cannot fathom what opera was like when as in mentioned on page 51, Rossini grew tired of having the singers making his music unrecognizeable by adding their own vocal acrobatic whims to the opera, Rossini demanded that singers perform the opera exactly as he had written to remedy this. I thought modern opera was bad enough in this regard, I cannot imagine the chaos back when the performers were adding their own vocal gynmnastics to showcase their voices. This book also contains many pictures from performances of Aida(where you can see some of the beautiful women who have performed this opera over the years in photos), so while I disliked the actual libretto, I enjoyed the book for all it did to convey the atmosphere of attending an actual opera.