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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

    $11.59 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

    $2.49 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

  • 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

  • Bizet's Carmen

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    The Paris audience in 1875 was shocked by the sexually explicit realism of Bizet's exotic operatic masterpiece, its 'verismo' depiction of low life and brutal passion. But since the disastrous première – a sensational failure which hastened Bizet's premature death – it has been the greatest operatic success. It led to a film opera, a jazz opera, a rock ballet and a Broadway musical. Equally, it ... Read more

    $2.49 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Puccini's La Bohème

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    Puccini's obsession with detail ensured the success of La Bohème, his opera about the impoverished 'artistes' in Paris in the 1830s. Soon after its première, people started calling their baby daughters Mimi. The story of this seamstress, her hectic but fraught love affair with the poet Rodolfo and her tragic death from consumption (tuberculosis), never fail to touch the audience. Che gelida manina ... Read more

    $2.49 USD or Free with Kobo Plus

  • Rossini's The Barber of Seville

    A Short Guide to a Great Opera

    by Michael Steen ...
    Series series Great Operas
    The première in 1816 in Rome of Gioachino Rossini's famous opera was a fiasco comparable to those of Wagner's Tannhäuser and Bizet's Carmen. But Il barbiere di Siviglia was soon recognised as being among the greatest of comic operas, comparable to those of Mozart. Even Beethoven was enthusiastic.Figaro, Seville's barber, is confident of a good pay-off for facilitating the elopement of Rosina with ... 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

  • 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

    $2.49 USD or Free with Kobo Plus