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Showing 1 - 12 of 20 results for “michael steen
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  • The Lives and Times of the Great Composers

    by Michael Steen ...
    'A glorious plum-pudding of a book, to be consulted, with pleasure and profit, over and over again' Sir Jeremy IsaacsMichael Steen's 'Great Composers' was originally published in 2003. A lifetime's work and almost 1000 pages long, it has since become 'the' reference point and key read on the biographical backgrounds to classical music's biggest names.Authoritative and hugely detailed - but ... Read more

    $11.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Mozart's Don Giovanni

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    With a wealth of famous tunes and meticulous characterisation, Don Giovanni is an undisputed masterpiece created by Mozart out of a thread-bare fairground gig. The Don – for whom both sexes have a sneaking admiration – gatecrashes proceedings, serenading and seducing as he goes. As wily as he is insatiable, he outclasses all who are out to get him, including a jealous bumpkin and the down-at-heel ... Read more

    $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Great Operas of Puccini

    by Michael Steen ...
    This compendium of short guides to all twelve Puccini's operas is part of the author's series A Short Guide to a Great Opera. Puccini's highly-charged music provides an unforgettable experience for those enjoying it socially, in an opera-house or cinema, or at home on TV, radio etc. He has been the largest contributor to the hundred best tunes, including Nessun dorma (Turandot), O mio babbino caro ... Read more

    $9.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Mozart's Marriage of Figaro

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    Although the story of Figaro's success in preventing the Count of Almaviva's seduction of his fiancée Susanna was politically explosive, it was tolerated in the court of the relatively enlightened Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. Mozart's opera, Le Nozze di Figaro, uses a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, and was premièred in Vienna in 1786. It was based on a famous play by the Frenchman Beaumarchais, a ... Read more

    $2.49 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Puccini's Tosca

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    Tosca's première in Rome in January 1900 was nearly disrupted by a terrorist threat to blow up Italy's King Umberto. Victorien Sardou had written the melodrama for the great actress Sarah Bernhardt. Giacomo Puccini's popular opera is a tale of sadism and brutality, torture, attempted rape, murder, an execution and two suicides. 'Realism' was in vogue: Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana had been a ... Read more

    $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Mozart's The Magic Flute

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    Even Salieri, the notorious villain of Peter Shaffer's drama Amadeus, admired Mozart's comic opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), which was premièred in Vienna a few weeks before Mozart's death in December 1791. Though sometimes enjoyed as a children's opera, this is not a pantomime: rooted in Freemasonry, the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, it promotes the ideals of progress, virtue, ... Read more

    $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Great Operas

    A Guide to Twenty-Five of the World's Finest Musical Experiences

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    With four famous operas each from Mozart, Verdi and Puccini, and two each from Rossini and Donizetti, there is a feast of information. Here are short guides to The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni; to the splendour of Aïda, the heart-breaking La Traviata; the drama of Tosca. The range is very broad. There is Wagner's great love story Tristan und Isolde; there is Johann Strauss's light comedy ... Read more

    $10.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Rossini's La Cenerentola

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    Rossini's La Cenerentola (or Cinderella) is one of the most popular comic operas in the classical repertoire – the timeless fairy tale about the triumph of virtue over snobbery. Its first performance at Rome's Teatro Valle in January 1817 – when the composer was not yet 25 – was the customary fiasco. More recently, audiences have laughed at Rossini's wit, gasped at the momentum of his crescendos ... Read more

    $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    With the 'Tristan chord' at the start of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, the composer launched modern music. The political refugee, a former revolutionary, was living in Zurich when the lovely Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a rich businessman, inspired him to break off from working on Siegfried, part of his 'Ring cycle', and refocus his efforts on Tristan. Expelled from there, Wagner ... Read more

    $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Verdi's Rigoletto

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    From the première of Rigoletto at Venice's La Fenice in 1851, the Duke's La donna è mobile caught on with the public and has done much to ensure the ongoing popularity of Verdi's opera about the body in the sack. Rigoletto, the sarcastic court jester, is cursed by a nobleman who he has mocked. Subsequent events see the curse realised, as Rigoletto's daughter Gilda is kidnapped, raped, and later ... Read more

    $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Britten's Peter Grimes

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    Britten's opera Peter Grimes is based on George Crabbe's horrifying poem The Borough about early 19th century Aldeburgh, a North Sea fishing town in East Anglia. Its premiere at Sadlers Wells in 1945, shortly after VE Day, was a landmark moment in British operatic history. Britten's partner Peter Pears – like Britten a pacifist and conscientious objector – was in the title role. Britten and Pears, ... Read more

    $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    The great Russian poet Pushkin's novel in verse tells the story of Tatyana, a love-struck country girl who unwisely wrote to the arrogant city-slicker Yevgeny Onegin professing her love. The tale resonated with Tchaikovsky when he found himself callously dismissing the suit of a student who similarly approached him out of the blue: within weeks, Tchaikovsky then married her! It was a disastrous ... Read more

    $2.99 USD or Free with Kobo Plus