The Crafty Art of Opera: For those who make it, love it or hate it

by Michael Hampe and Chris Walton

Chris Walton (Translator)

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Book cover for The Crafty Art of Opera

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Opera is nowadays performed worldwide. But as an art form it is little understood by performers and audiences alike. The Crafty Art of Opera wants to change that. Here, Michael Hampe brings glimpses of the director's work to a wider audience, uncovering the many techniques and rules that should inform an opera's staging: the need for singers to know their orchestra, the importance of space around singers, the gestures of languages, what we all can learn from Mozart, and the primacy of sense over effect, to name but a few. He shows how stories, through music, become tangible and real.
Packed with many anecdotes from the author's luminous career, this book is dedicatedto opera-lovers who want to understand 'how it is done'; to opera-makers who want to better understand their craft; and, last but not least, to those who loathe opera, in order to prove them wrong. Eminently readable, it brings both insight and wit from a life spent in opera as director and teacher.

MICHAEL HAMPE is an internationally acclaimed opera stage director. The Crafty Art of Opera was published in German as Opernschule.
  • ISBN10 1783270977
  • ISBN13 9781783270972
  • Publish Date 18 August 2016
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
  • Imprint The Boydell Press
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 197
  • Language English