The Opera

Streatfeild, R. A. (Richard Alexander), 1866-1919Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 559K words
Chapters: 56

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Opera by R. A. StreatfeildAuthor: Streatfeild, R. A. (Richard Alexander), 1866-1919,Language: English, Class: ML: Music: Literature of music, Release Date: Jul 9, 2005

Editor's review

This is a discursive work on opera by the British music scholar Richard Alexander Streatfeild, belonging to the literature of music. Its value lies in a relatively systematic discussion of opera as a genre—its constituent elements, historical development, and points for appreciation—addressed to readers with some cultural preparation, in a prose carrying the speculative temper of early twentieth-century British music criticism. For readers who wish to build a basic framework for opera and are not satisfied with scattered dictionary entries, it offers a coherent narrative thread; for specialist researchers it can serve as a reference text for understanding operatic conceptions in the English-speaking world of the time. Note that the views and the works cited reflect the horizon of the author's era and should not be used as a current, up-to-date general history of opera. It can be read alongside listening to specific works; reading while listening better brings out what the discussion refers to.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Music lovers seeking a systematic understanding of the opera genre and ways of appreciating it
Music specialists needing historical English-language opera criticism as source material
Readers with some classical music background who wish to broaden their listening horizons

Not a good fit for

Complete beginners needing tutorial-style introductions
Readers seeking the latest opera performances and contemporary works
Practical readers wanting only plot synopses and aria lists

Reading tips

After each chapter, pick a passage from an opera mentioned in the book and listen to it, building a correspondence between text and sound.
Jot down unfamiliar composers and works, and after finishing compile a listening list according to interest.
Treat the book's judgments as historical views and compare them with contemporary opera scholarship to form your own judgment.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book suitable for readers with zero background in opera?

Not very suitable as a first introductory book. It is aimed more at readers with some cultural preparation and listening experience, and its style is discursive rather than instructional. Readers with zero background can first look at popular introductory works and become familiar with a few common operas, then return to this book, which will be much smoother.

Can the operas discussed in the book still be heard today?

The book mostly deals with classic operas current in the author's time, many of which are still performed today, but the specific scope reflects the perspective of the early twentieth century and may not cover later works. It is advisable to treat the book as a reference for historical perspective rather than a guide to contemporary performances.

Is the English reading difficult?

Sources indicate the original is in English and belongs to music literature, with relatively formal sentence structures and considerable terminology, posing a certain threshold for non-native readers. You can read with a dictionary of musical terms, slow down when encountering long discursive sentences, and grasp the main point of a paragraph before examining the wording in detail.

Comments

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About the author

Streatfeild, R. A. (Richard Alexander), 1866-1919 Author · British · 1866–1919

Richard Alexander Streatfeild (1866–1919) was a British writer and art critic. Though his life was not long, he is remembered for his writings on two fields, art and music. One work by him is held in this collection, The Opera, which shows that his writing touched on opera as a composite art form. Beyond music, he also wrote on printmaking, indicating a sustained interest in the visual arts. Available information on his life is very limited, and public sources are scarce, so his education, career and personal associations cannot be described in detail. On the whole, he belongs to the tradition of British art criticism and music writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; his works are chiefly thematic studies that introduce general readers to the knowledge and appreciation of particular arts, and they remain of reference value for later study of the history of printmaking and of opera.