![]() ![]() ![]() Considerations of the history of culture, of literary, historical, and topographical sources, of librettos in their own right, of the lives of artists, of theatre history, of set design, of great singers, and of changing public taste-all of which I write about here-are as pertinent to the understanding and the enjoyment of opera as are music history, analysis, and criticism. Partly because of their original occasion-as background essays intended for people who had already made the decision to attend a particular opera-and partly because of my own interest in opera as a cultural phenomenon, a product and inhabitant of other-than-musical worlds, many of these essays deal with things other than music.īut then so does opera. It is only the very exceptional critic who can turn rapidly written reviews of the passing scene into literature worth reading long after the event. Although I have written critical reviews of many individual opera productions, none of the others seemed to me sufficiently reflective or substantial to warrant collecting and preserving. The one exception is a piece written after, rather than before, a particular event-my description of and response to Peter Sellars's productions of Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni at Purchase, New York, in the summer of 1989, originally written for The Opera Quarterly. They are frequently longer, in any event. I like to think (but am not convinced) that the more recent pieces are better. I have added a couple of updating footnotes or postscripts, and have tried to correct a few earlier errors I'm sure others remain. They add up to no statement about or position on the phenomenon we call "opera," except insofar as the fact that one person wrote them may lead you to detect some sort of "unified sensibility" behind them. ![]() All but one of the essays that follow the Introduction were written for the San Francisco Opera Magazine, the program book of the San Francisco Opera, during the last sixteen years. ![]()
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