Handel's Operas, 1704-26 - Hardcover

Dean, Winton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0193152193 ISBN 13: 9780193152199

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1987

Synopsis

Winner of the Yorkshire Post Music Book Award 1987, this book examines all of Handel's operas. It takes the story as far as the spring of 1726, when the Italian singer Faustina Bordoni arrived in London, and covers Handel's first 17 surviving operas including many of the greatest and most successful. Each opera has a chapter to itself which includes: a full synopsis of the libretto (including the original stage directions; a comparison between the libretto and its literary and dramatic sources; a discussion of the music with special emphasis on its dramatic power; and a history of the opera in performance. General chapters deal with the opera seria convention and Handel's treatment of it; the operatic background in the three countries where he worked; the operas of his contemporaries and rivals; audiences; performance practice, and other related matters. Eight appendices list all the performances in Handel's time (with location of librettos), borrowings, modern revivals, new information on his singers, and a complete index of Italian first lines in all Handel's works. This is a book for all Handelians, and students of music, opera, and theatre in the 18th century.

About this title

Review:

`This book is going to be the standard work on Handel's operas for future generations.' -- Music and Letters

`indispensable book' -- Observer

About the Author:

WINTON DEAN is a distinguished Handelian scholar and writer on opera. He is a former vice-president of the Georg-Friedrich-Handel Gesellschaft in Halle and a founding Council Member of the Handel Institute in London. JOHN MERRILL KNAPP died in 1993. He was Emeritus Professor of Music, Princeton University and the editor of two volumes of the German edition of Handel's complete works, and author of The Joy of Opera.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0193152193
• ISBN 13: 9780193152199
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 770