The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video [Hardcover]

Metropolitan Opera (Author), Paul Gruber (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 1997

For anyone trying to select the best from the vast array of operas on video.

In this latest handbook from the Metropolitan Opera, fourteen opera mavens evaluate performances of over 150 of the best-loved operas. The new Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video enables opera lovers to choose widely from the hundreds of available video recordings by reading expert comparative reviews and by following explicit, trustworthy recommendations. Everyone who enjoyed the successful Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera will love this companion volume, published jointly by the Metropolitan Opera Guild and W. W. Norton.

Contributors to this useful collection are Bruce Burroughs, Jon Alan Conrad, Peter G. Davis, Cori Ellison, Shirley Flemming, London Green, David Hamilton, Albert Innaurato, C. J. Luten, Conrad L. Osborne, Bridget Paolucci, Harvey E. Phillips, Harlow Robinson, and Richard Traubner.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For those with an interest in opera, videos provide an easy way to keep up with trends in stage direction, catch productions mounted far away, and enjoy a pleasant evening's entertainment. As with audio recordings, indulging an interest in videos can become an expensive proposition, particularly because opera videos are seldom available for rent. Furthermore, advertisements for such videos seldom go into more detail than the name of a star or two and the company where the opera was produced; it's caveat emptor. For people who want to own more than simply a better copy of a Metropolitan Opera production that they happened to catch on public television, a guidebook becomes invaluable. Although you might question the wisdom of publishing something in hardcover that will, of necessity, quickly become outdated, The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video will quickly pay for itself if it steers you away from just two or three teledogs. If you enjoy opera on video, The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video will save you both money and unnecessary annoyance. The summaries prove particularly useful when a given opera has been filmed in several versions. Which one to buy? The critics will tell you!

From Library Journal

This companion volume to The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera (Norton, 1993) consists of newly written reviews of operatic performances released in the United States in VHS or laserdisc format. The reviews are written by experienced opera critics from Opera News, the New York Times, and other outstanding publications. Some 150 operas by 57 composers are covered. Each review includes information on cast, presence of subtitles, background information on the work, a review of each performance, and recommendations. Some reviews are strongly critical, which is understandable given the varying technical and musical qualities described. This newer work includes more citations to performances of individual works than Sharon G. Almquist's Opera Mediagraphy (Greenwood, 1993), which provides only citations to reviews, as do several other older works. This makes the Metropolitan Opera guide a desirable choice for libraries with an interest in video or opera.?James E. Ross, Seattle
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (October 17, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393045366
• ISBN-13: 978-0393045369
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,320,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A "difficult" book..., April 15, 2000

By 

Izolda (North Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video (Hardcover)

There is really no alternative to this Metropolitan Opera guide to opera on video and it's hard to be fussy about a volume that can be easily recommended as the only reference source of this kind. I rarely buy opera videos and this book may not be as important for me as it will be for true opera video collectors, but I suspect that it would be difficult to me to get acquainted with most of the titles featuring in the guide if I had to make choices based on the guide's reviews. But I am lucky to live not too far from the famous "Best Video" in Hamden, CT, which has a marvellous collection of classical music/opera tapes and I can afford renting tapes with "bad reviews" to confront my impressions with the MET's critics'. And there are simply too many "bad reviews" in this book to make it credible! After just a short acquaintance with the guide you may ask yourself a question: so what is there to watch? Here "Barbara Bonney looks a bit old for Sophie (Rosenkavalier, p. 315), there "Te Kanawa, a handsome Marshallin on stage, suffers under the camera's close scrutiny, her eyes and blonde wig evoke memories of Carol Channing..." (p. 314) etc, etc. The MET's critics are often fussy about quite trivial details, what sometimes distorts the more general impression and leaves the reader with just one conclusion: don't even touch this tape, let alone buy it! An exerpt from the review of the admirable English National Opera production of Handel's "Xerxe" can be a good example of the reviewing "technique" used too often in the MET's guide: "Lesley Garrett's spoiled brat Atalanta and Valerie Masterson's cool cucumber Romilda succeed along vocally deconstructive lines. Between them they barely possess one whole soprano voice. Garrett's peeps and squeaks are damnably annoying in themselves, apart from her character's innate obnoxiousness. The puny piping of Masterson proffers instead of bravura singing indispensable to the great "constancy" aria that closes Act II (Handel's "Come scoglio" equivalent) turns a potential audience rouser into an anticlimactic fizzle" (p. 103) I don't want to argue with the review itself, but with the style used here and in many other places. This style reminds more of an informal conversation or a review in a daily newspaper (or Amazon.com!), where a high degree of subjectivism is very welcome, but not of a "guide kind" of criticism known to all music lovers from such publications as the Penguin or Gramophone guides to classical recordings. What is striking in these reviews is their very "impersonal" tone - I haven't notice a single first person pronoun; a "personalization" of the reviews' language would make them much more likable and credible, because THEY ARE highly subjective and the distanced, impersonal language doesn't conseal that. This book, after all, is not a "collective effort" - every review or group of reviews is signed by one of the 14 contributors. As I said, many of the reviews here are simply sour, what - in some ways - makes the fun of confronting them with the tapes they refer to much greater. The operas by Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti or Wagner got the most extensive coverage, and not surprisingly so, but these are the composers that I don't particularly care for so I cannot offer any comments. A few words about the structure of the guide. The composers are listed alphabetically, and so are their operas - this is a very user friendly arrangement, preferable to the chronological one seen in some opera guides. Chronological order is adopted when more than one production of a particular title is available, in these cases also a brief ending note summarizes the reviewer's preferences. Quite understandably, there is no room in such a publication for even brief synopses of the operas, but each work is given a general introduction with some details on first performances etc. The MET's guide is a valuable and helpful book and, if given in a more likable, "personal" form, could be treated as a wonderful collection of essays on opera theatre. Collecting operas on video can be quite expensive and if you follow most of the reviews, you'll simply save a lot of money (and room on you video racks). But that's not what an opera lover, given an opportunity of building a collection of videos preserving some of the exquisite productions from the past, really wants. Use with caution!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars There's no alternative within one cover, June 13, 2001

By 

Kevin M. Cox (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video (Hardcover)

An indispenable guide for the serious collector -- the most-used reference book on my shelf. Especially helpful for identifying the best production among multiple ones of the same work. One caveat: some of the reviewers are unduly harsh and pan productions that I found completely satisfactory in every respect. Arranged alphabetically by composer, then chronologically (not alphabetically) within each composer's section. Includes indices, e.g. by performer. All the more valuable as VHS releases dwindle and go out of print, and DVD titles are scant and of questionable interest.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A guide, not a bible., October 4, 2005

By 

Jose Carlos C. Freire "jcarlos" (pesqueira - pe - brasil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Opera on Video (Hardcover)

An extraordinary book that gives me light in the difficult choice about what I must see - first - in opera videos.
My goal is see all my loved opera videos ( Wagner, Puccini, Mascagni,etc ).
It needs immediate new edition.
Since 1997 there was hundred new opera videos releases and I want to know what my great Met opera critics think about them.