Opera Lovers Alert

GREAT OPERAS: A GUIDE TO TWENTYFIVE
OF THE WORLD’S FINEST MUSICAL
EXPERIENCES / Michael Steen
Great OperasI love opera and if anyone is wondering what to put in my stocking – christmas stocking, that is..here\’s a very subltle hint
From Great Composers author Michael Steen, a unique multi-platform project offering a royal box view
into one of mankind’s greatest art forms.
From the soaring heights of Wagner’s epic Ring cycle to the tear-jerking
emotion of Mozart’s breathtakingly beautiful Don Giovanni, opera is one of
the most powerful artistic forms mankind has ever created. It should also be
the most enjoyable!
Michael Steen’s The Lives and Times of the Great Composers was described as
‘hugely informative and deliciously gossipy’ by the Spectator. Great Operas is
his accessible and entertaining user’s manual to making the best of an opera
– whether at home or at a live performance, interspersing the key facts with
erudite commentary from a man for whom opera is a lifetime’s passion.
Great Operas will be published initially as short eBooks focusing on individual
operas – see examples, left – and then published as a physical compendium
in November, covering twenty five stand-out operatic masterpieces.
Great Operas will cover: Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and The Magic Flute; Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and
La Cenerentola; Verdi’s La Traviata, Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and Aïda; Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and L’Elisir d’amore; Bizet’s Carmen;
Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Tristan; Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, La Bohème, Tosca and Turandot; Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin; Mascagni’s
Cavalleria Rusticana; Leoncavallo’ Pagliacci; Gounod’s Faust; Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus; Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Britten’s Peter
Grimes.
Many more Short Guides to a Great Opera are scheduled to follow as ebooks in 2013 and beyond.
Michael Steen studied at the Royal College of Music, was organ scholar at Oriel College,
Oxford and is currently Royal College of Music Society chairman