Reviews for Opera through other eyes

The average rating for Opera through other eyes based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-05-11 00:00:00 Michael Sparacio Mordden gives a comprehensive and witty overview, providing plenty of detailed analyses. The book charts the course of music/theatre aesthetics (sacred, profane, Godot), discussing a couple hundred operas along the way and allowing the reader to watch their development from composer to composer. Mordden often contrasts artistic philosophies across large groups of composers (chronologically, geographically, etc.), so that one can sense the tumult of, say, developing verismo or neoclassicism. The discussion can be quite confusing, (Mordden has to guide the reader through details of artistic sensibility, prosody, and musical effect!), but it rewards the reader with a rich, detailed understanding. The reader must have a firm grasp of Western archetypes and music history. It doesn't hurt to have some cursory knowledge of modern and contemporary opera. Very little of the discussion is based on music theory or harmonic analysis, but the reader should be familiar with atonality, serialism, bitonality, etc.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-11-08 00:00:00 Lu Weifeng great