Grand Opera: Mirror of the Western Mind

No medium can compare with opera in its expression of human willfulness nor in the intense passions of its characters. The great composers of opera were also governed by their feelings and heavily influenced by the life of their time. In this fascinating book, Eric Plaut employs a remarkable combination of expertise in music, opera, and psychology to explore the great operas and their composers from the time of the French Revolution to the onset of the First World War. Weaving together social, psychological, and historical strains, Plaut investigates the meaning behind eighteen of the greatest operas and their composers. They include Mozart's Don Giovanni, Beethoven's Fidelio, Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, Gounod's Faust, Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and The Ring, Verdi's Aida and Otello, Moussorgsky's Boris Godounov, Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus. Bizet's Carmen, Saint-Saens's Samson and Delilah, Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann, Puccini's Tosca and Madame Butterfly, and Richard Strauss's Salome and Der Rosenkavalier. Looking into the lives of the composers, Plaut shows how their personalities and life experiences help to explain the particular opera as well as the composer's larger body of works. The result is an unusually satisfying and perceptive view of grand opera, a book that offers new perspectives on some great operas while providing intriguing glimpses into the psychological motivations of the great composers.…