David Beard is Senior Lecturer in Music at Cardiff University, where he is Director of the MA programme in Musicology. He has published widely on the music of Harrison Birtwistle in academic journals, including Music Analysis, the Cambridge Opera Journal and Twentieth-Century Music, and in notes for concerts and opera festivals. He has contributed to Peter Maxwell Davies Studies, Ancient Drama in Music for the Modern Stage and Dichotonies: Gender and Music, and he is the co-author of Musicology: The Key Concepts.

• 1. The roots of Birtwistle's theatrical expression: from Pantomime to Down by the Greenwood Side; 2. Punch and Judy: parody, allusion, and the grotesque; 3. The Mask of Orpheus: 'lyrical formalism', time and narrative; 4. Yan Tan Tethera: pastoral labyrinths and the scene-agent ratio; 5. The shadow of opera: dramatic narrative and musical discourse in Gawain; 6. 'A face like music': shaping images into sound in The Second Mrs Kong; 7. Corporeal music: Bow Down, The Io Passion and The Corridor; 8. The Last Supper and The Minotaur: eyes 'half filled and half deserted'; Bibliography.

'Even were Harrison Birtwistle's Operas and Music Theatre not so well written by such a perceptive and well-qualified author as David Beard, it would be a definitive study. Since it is, the book can be unreservedly recommended for anyone interested in this corner of contemporary music: they cannot but come away with a greatly enhanced understanding of how Birtwistle's music works. For enthusiasts of Birtwistle's original and beautiful musical world it's essential.' Mark Sealey, Classical Net (classical.net)