This aims to provide a panoramic survey of opera past and present and to explain the cultural phenomenon of opera. The author believes opera to be a vitally necessary art form that speaks to our primitive nature and expresses the whole drama of human existence. In such archetypal figures as Don Giovanni, Falstaff, Carmen, Salome and Tristan and Isolde, we see heroes and heroines who embody a freedom of action of which we overtly disapprove but secretly identify with and admire. The author teaches English at Christ Church, Oxford and has written other works of cultural analysis including "Imagining America" and "The Everyman History of English Literature".
- ISBN10 0701208406
- ISBN13 9780701208400
- Publish Date 20 April 1989 (first published 1 September 1987)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 9 November 1995
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Chatto & Windus
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 384
- Language English