A comprehensive guide to Wagner's LOHENGRIN, featuring Principal Characters in the opera, Brief Story Synopsis, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples, and an insightful and in depth Commentary and Analysis by Burton D. Fisher, noted opera author and lecturer.

A comprehensive guide to Puccini's MANON LESCAUT, featuring Brief Story Synopsis, Principal Characters, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples, a complete, newly translated libretto with Italian/English translation side-by-side, an in depth and insightful Commentary and Analysis, a Discography, Videography and Dictionary of Opera and Musical terms.

English National Opera Guides are ideal companions to the opera. They provide stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text of each opera in English and the original. The legend of the Swan Knight who rescues a princess from the forces of pagan evil is one Christian Europe s foundation myths." Lohengrin" transformed Wagner into an international figure almost overnight, and it remained his most popular work throughout the nineteenth century. Thomas Grey proposes that this was because it offered a "cautious taste" of his later works, while preserving some of the familiar traditions of French grand opera. John Deathridge asks why Wagner denied its Christian symbolism, and Janet Nelson argues that his vision of the Christian Middle Ages prefigured a modern historical approach. This English translation is by Amanda Holden."

The English National Opera Guides were originally conceived in partnership with the English National Opera and edited by Nicholas John, the ENO's dramaturg, who died tragically in an accident in the Alps. Most of the guides are devoted to a single opera, which is described in detail—with many articles that cover its history and information about the composer and his times. The complete libretto is included in both the original language and in a modern singing translation—except where the opera was written in English. Each has a thematic guide to the most important musical themes in musical notation and each guide is lavishly illustrated. They also contain a bibliography and a discography which is updated at each reprint. The ENO guides are widely regarded as the best series of their kind and excellent value.

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A comprehensive guide to Wagner's TANNHaUSER, featuring Principal Characters in the opera, Brief Story Synopsis, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples, and an insightful and in depth Commentary and Analysis by Burton D. Fisher, noted opera author and lecturer."

A comprehensive guide to Bellini's NORMA, featuring Brief Story Synopsis, Principal Characters, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples, and an insightful Commentary and Analysis.

Presents the story of Wagner's opera, based on a twelfth-century German legend, in which a mysterious shining knight appears to serve a seriously distressed maiden, his only demand being that she must never ask his identity