Indispensible and entertaining opera guide

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	• A Night at the Opera: An Irreverent Guide to The Plots, The Singers, The Composers, The Recordings (Modern ... Denis Sir Forman Modern Library, 1998 - 976 pages average customer review:based on 29 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Difficult Read for Americans

A decent, reasonably broad overall review of major operas intended for a lay audience. Forman's style, however, is a highly colloquial British English, which does not travel well across the Atlantic. I am American, but lived in the UK for a year in the 90s; I found the book's deliberately cute style difficult to follow, and I quickly became annoyed at what I perceived as the author's excessive efforts to convey his irreverance. Overall, a useful work that focusses on the author's impression of each opera's entertainment value; historical context and academic aspects of music and dance take a back seat.

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Indispensible and entertaining opera guide

An excellent source for budding opera buffs. Enjoyable, pithy, informative.

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A Perfect Gift!

This book is the perfect gift for a new opera fan. It does a great job of describing each opera, including history and reviews, but in a language anyone can understand. Seasoned opera buffs will enjoy the light-hearted overviews and insights. Fabulous.

Entertaining

I see no reason to bore you with a longish disquisition on the merits of this entertaining book. (The reviewer 'Starmoth' has selected some nice bon mots from Forman's work, and he's reviewed it in a long review that outlines its strengths and weaknesses, such as they are, without inducing boredom.) Forman is both witty and insightful. He gives the reader useful information, as well as less useful information (e.g., when he tells us what to listen for, according to his tastes). But most of what he says is conveyed with humour and commonsense. Keep in mind that it is far too huge to serve as a guide; it requires a briefcase or backpack and not a pocket.

Are there problems? Well, sometimes he's pretty flippant. And there are a considerable number of great operas -- not just ones I like but ones in the repetoire of all major opera houses -- that don't get treated. Perhaps these are not fair complaints. For one thing, Forman's flippant remarks are often entertaining and interesting. And for another, it IS his book, so who am I to complain about omissions, or about an author who states in his subtitle that it is an irreverent work?

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Sound bites about opera

The author seemed to want to be cute and quotable rather than offer a reasoned perspective on opera. At times I felt he even became condescending in his attitude. This could have been a misguided attempt to counter the widely held opinion that opera is only for snobs, but people with that opinion wouldn't read his book anyway.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

With an encyclopedic knowledge of opera and a delightful dash of irreverence, Sir Denis Forman throws open the world of opera--its structure, composers, conductors, and artists--in this hugely informative guide. A Night at the Opera dissects the eighty-three most popular operas recorded on compact disc, from Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur to Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. For each opera, Sir Denis details the plot and cast of characters, awarding stars to parts that are "worth looking out for," "really good," or, occasionally, "stunning." He goes on to tell the history of each opera and its early reception. Finally, each work is graded from alpha to gamma (although the Ring cycle gets an "X"), and Sir Denis has no qualms about voicing his opinion: the first act of Fidelio is "a bit of a mess," while the last scene of Don Giovanni "towers above the comic finales of Figaro and Così and whether or not [it] is Mozart's greatest opera, it is certainly his most powerful finale."
The guide also presents brief biographies of the great composers, conductors, and singers. A glossary of musical terms is included, as well as Operatica, or the essential elements of opera, from the proper place and style of the audience's applause (and boos) to the use of surtitles.
A Night at the Opera is for connoisseurs and neophytes alike. It will entertain and inform, delight and (perhaps) infuriate, providing a subject for lively debate and ready reference for years to come.

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