Essays on Opera - Softcover

Dean, Winton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198163843 ISBN 13: 9780198163848

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1993

Winton Dean has long been regarded as the foremost British expert on Handel and Bizet, as well as an outstanding writer on opera in general. In this wide-ranging volume, Dean brings together his best writing over the past thirty-five years, each essay a small masterpiece of opera connoisseurship. The thirty pieces included here cover a diversity of opera-related subjects, ranging from shorter articles from The Listener to substantial surveys such as "Shakespeare in the Opera House." There are also important writings on the performance of recitative in late Baroque opera and on the controversial German edition of Carmen. Throughout, the more scholarly essays--the results of original and extensive research--appear alongside articles intended for non-specialist readers, making Essays on Opera essential reading for musicologist and opera buff alike. In addition, the new paperback edition offers a number of essays substantially revised in the light of Dean's latest research.

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About the Author:

About the Author:
Winton Dean is President of the Georg-Friedrich-Handel-Gesellschraft in Halle, and is a founding Council Member of the Handel Institute. His past books include Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques, Handel and the Operia Seria, and Bizet.

Review:

`This is indeed a book from which most opera lovers can glean knowledge and pleasure.'
Day by Day

`this splendid book will at once convince the casual music-lover that there are other vital concerns for Winton Dean than just the oddly assorted two composers for whom he has performed the greatest and most persistent service, Handel and Bizet. ... so well does Winton Dean write, such
liveliness and wit, depth of scholarship and enthusiasm, wide range of reference and insight, that this collection will have and appeal far beyond the normal run of musically interested readers. ... this is a consistently rewarding book, wise, urbane, learned-and thoroughly entertaining.'
Peter Branscombe, German History vol.X no. III 92

`superb essay on Verdi's Otello ... Dean's collection, which covers nearly 40 years, is musicology at its finest.' Anthony Burgess, Observer

`his skills are unmatched, both as a detective and as a user of words to pin down that most elusive subject, musical quality.' John Roselli, Times Literary Supplement

`It is the most important and readable volume of music criticism and analysis to appear in Britain since Martin Cooper's Judgments of Value and David Cairns's Responses'
Michael Kennedy, Sunday Telegraph

`Dean's collection, which covers nearly 40 years, is musicology at its finest. Dean inherits the tradition of stylistic excellence which Dent initiated ... we are grateful for his specialisations.' Anthony Burgess, Observer

`Formidable in criticism as in thoroughness of research and presentation, Winton Dean has a very special place among writers on music in our time. He is a great tightener of standards.'
Musical Times

`His scholarship, wide and deep, is conveyed with precision in clear, trenchant English refreshingly free from cloudiness or rhetoric. Great learning is lightly worn, and made excellently readable.'
Financial Times

`For those who may know only his majestic Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (1959) and Handel's Operas 1704-1726 (1987; written jointly with J. Merrill Knapp), this collection of miscellaneous essays on opera will broaden their perspective of a master critic's achievements as both an
elegant, at times witty, essayist and an authority with prodigious knowledge about a diverse array of operatic topics.'
George J. Buelow, Music and Letters, Vol. 73, No. 1, Feb '92

`this splendid book will at once convince the casual music-lover that there are other vital concerns for Winton Dean than just the oddly assorted two composers for whom he has performed the greatest and most persistent service, Handel and Bizet ... so well does Winton Dean write, with such
liveliness and wit, depth of scholarship and enthusiasm, wide range of reference and insight, that this collection will have an appeal far beyond the normal run of musically interested readers ... this is a consistently rewarding book, wise, urbane, learned - and thoroughly entertaining'
Peter Branscombe, University of St Andrews, German History, Vol. X, No. III, '92

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