Great Operas
Researched Bibliographic Dossier
Verified edition data and a musicological research note prepared specifically for this work.
- Title
- Great Operas
- Subtitle
- A Guide to Twenty-Five of the World’s Finest Musical Experiences
- Author
- Michael Steen
- Publisher
- Icon Books
- Year
- 2012
- Extent
- 488 pages
- ISBN
- 9781848316119
- eISBN
- 9781848314603
- Language
- English
- Type
- Opera guide / audience reference
SCOPE & CONTENT
Steen’s guide selects twenty-five widely performed operas and treats each as a complete cultural and theatrical experience. Plot is combined with composer biography, historical setting, musical points to listen for and information about the circumstances of composition and first performance. The selection ranges from Handel and Mozart through nineteenth-century Italian and French opera to Wagner, Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Britten, giving the general reader a practical route into the standard repertory.
RESEARCH VALUE
This is not a specialist critical edition or analytical monograph. Its research value lies in audience history, repertory orientation and the condensation of multiple kinds of contextual information into a single guide. It is particularly useful for readers preparing to attend or listen to an opera, and it documents which works were presented as the core international canon in a twenty-first-century popular reference book.
TWENTY-FIVE-OPERA FORMAT
The limited selection allows more space per work than a pocket dictionary. Each opera can be approached through story, historical background and listening cues, making the book a bridge between synopsis and more detailed scholarship.
AUDIENCE-CENTERED PERSPECTIVE
The guide is written from the perspective of musical experience rather than source criticism. That makes it useful for studying how opera is mediated to non-specialist audiences and how historical explanation is translated into practical listening advice.
- Catalogue completeness
- 8 / 10 core bibliographic fields