Customer Reviews

Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I give talks on various opera topics for my local opera guild. I do not have a musical education, just a passion for opera. This history has a lot of interesting material about how opera developed as a public (as opposed to courtly) entertainment. The tone is scholarly but readable. The book was a great resource for my talk on madness in opera because it discusses the developnment of the mad scene and its conventions in this period. Some of the later chapters are somewhat too technical for my level of knowledge, but there is enough here to fascinate those with a more general interest in the music and the history of the period, as well as those with a more thorough knowledge. It is not written for the general reader in the sense that it makes an effort to present the material in the most entertaining way, however. So if "Verdi with a Vengeance" is more your style, this book may not be for you.

This is a very thorough look at the beginnings of commercial opera. This book is extremely readable and fascinating and is loaded with musical examples.