Customer Reviews

The Times Opera Notes: An Accessible Yet Scholarly Guide to Over 90 Major Operas

The expansive mind of Robert Thicknesse is not only enlightening, but entertaining. This book is for the novice opera-goer and the afficionado. Exhaustive, thorough, and inciteful this concise review of the 92 most important operas is a must for every true opera-lover, or those who think they might like a good laugh.

Following in the tradition of serious British scholarship, with
much more depth and less superficiality of American reviewers, Mr. Thicknesse's reviews have always provided his readers with valuable long-lasting insights into all aspects of these operatic works.

Solid music knowledge combined with sweeping and detailed knowledge of world history, psychology and sociology this book reminds one that what one learns from the critic is often more interesting than that from the creator.

This book has brought to opera what Dennis Miller brought to Monday Night Football--football for people who think. But just as the Encyclopedia Britannica has a website to explain the esoteric references Dennis Miller makes every Monday night, one will have to recall some of their high school world history to really "get it". But the "Crush Bar Gambit" alone makes it more than worth its price. The whole world of musical reviews could use critics like this, and we hope there is more to come.