Essays on 30 operatic masterpieces.

Definitive treatment of the stories, texts, and music of 29 operas. The first volume of the trilogy of books with which Newman has wished to replace his much earlier book, Stories of the Great Operas.

Ernest Newman's four-volume Life of Wagner, originally published between 1933 and 1947, remains a classic work of biography. The culmination of forty years' research on the composer and his works (Newman's first Study of Wagner was first published in 1899), these books present a detailed portrait of perhaps the most influential, the most controversial and the most frequently reviled composer in the whole history of western music. Newman was aware...