Understanding Italian Opera

Tim Carter is David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has published widely on music in late Renaissance and early Baroque Italy, Mozart's operas, and American musical theater in the 1930s and '40s. Previously on faculty at Royal Holloway, University of London, he frequently gives pre-performance lectures, and conducts adult-education workshops on opera in both the US and the UK.

• Preface ; 1: What is Opera? ; Some definitions ; In praise of librettists ; Italian versification ; Poetic structures and musical consequences ; Two examples from Mozart ; An "exotic and irrational entertainment"? ; 2: Giovanni Francesco Busenello and Claudio Monteverdi, ; L'incoronazione di Poppea (Venice, 1643) ; Monteverdi in Venice ; The first operas ; "But here the matter is represented differently" ; "Speaking" and "singing" ; Seductive Poppea ; Seneca's death ; Ottavia in exile ; Ecstasies of love ; 3: Nicola Francesco Haym and George Frideric Handel, ; Giulio Cesare in Egitto (London, 1724) ; Arcadian reforms ; Adapting Bussani ; Recitatives and arias ; Some alternatives ; "Fly, my heart, to the sweet enchantment" ; Taming Cleopatra ; Cesare returns ; All's well... ; 4: Lorenzo da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, ; Le nozze di Figaro (Vienna, 1786) ; ... these Italian gentlemen are very civil to your face ; Translating Beaumarchais ; Aria forms ; A duet, a trio, and a sextet ; Finales ; Readings and messages ; 5: Francesco Maria Piave and Giuseppe Verdi, ; Rigoletto (Venice, 1851) ; "Le Roi s'amuse" ; Cantabiles and cabalettas ; Duets ; Arias and monologues ; A quartet ... a storm ... and a death ; 6: Giuseppe Giacosa, Luigi Illica, and Giacomo Puccini, ; La Boheme (Turin, 1896) ; Bohemian rhapsodies ; A publisher, two librettists, and a rival ; A missing act ; Verse and music ; Formless forms? ; Operatic realisms ; Mimi dies ; 7: Afterthoughts

Required reading.