You don't need Opera For Dummies in order to enjoy opera -- but if you do read this book, you can enjoy opera a great deal more. This complete book and CD package raises the curtain on a brilliant, passionate art with a long, rich history. Multitalented authors and music professionals David Pogue and Scott Speck
Introduce you to the words, the music, and the singers
Prime you on operatic history and the lives of the great composers
Take you to the opera house and on a backstage tour of this magical realm
Offer in-depth synopses of the world's most-beloved operas
And even share with you ten great opera jokes, opera terms to throw out at cocktail parties, and more
Best of all, Opera For Dummies features an enhanced CD, complete with over 60 minutes of opera classics (compiled especially for this book) and a multimedia software demo that you can run on your Macintosh or your Windows-based PC.
Opera is growing--in the size of its audience, in the number of companies, in general interest--and is attracting a lot of attention among younger, more visually oriented people. But opera can be intimidating to the uninitiated: it's sung in foreign languages and has odd little customs (such as women singing the parts of young boys, and hefty middle-aged singers portraying teenaged lovers) that may be disconcerting at first. But opera needn't be at all intimidating, thanks to the miracle of supertitles (like subtitles, but projected above the stage), the advent of generations of singers who work at staying in shape, and the appearance of reference works like Opera for Dummies that are designed to remove the snobbery and mystery from opera. If you don't mind the flippant tone, IDG Books' Opera for Dummies makes an excellent guide for those who are new to this splendid art form. All of opera's details are explained clearly and without pretension; there's a lot of useful information packed into its 358 pages. The package includes an enhanced compact disc (listen to it in your stereo's CD player or in your computer's CD-ROM drive), with more than an hour of operatic excerpts from classic EMI releases. The illustrations, while not lavish, are adequate.
There are, however, a few glaring errors in this book that demand correction: Scott Speck and David Pogue confuse the opera chorus with the supers (the "extras" who march in armies, wait on tables, and never, ever sing), and--even worse--maintain that soloists and choristers are two entirely separate breeds. In fact, there's not a soloist alive who has never done chorus work--and choristers frequently do solo work as well. These are rather foolish mistakes for a pair of acclaimed experts to make in a book that wants to be taken as a basic guide to opera.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Great book for opera *newbies*:
As you see in many of the other reviews, this is a great guide that will introduce you to opera without overwhelming you. I am new to opera, and this book gave me what I was looking for - a great understanding of opera terms, a history of the composers, and best of all, a scene-by-scene overview of 70+ operas (I didn't even realize there were that many operas!). The writing is informal, easy reading, and full of witty comments and references to the modern era. And don't forget the music CD (which I only... more info
Entertaining and different!:
This book has a different "dummies" approach to opera, which is very entertaining. This is excellent, easily readable and very comprehensive. The "50 big cahunas" gives a good introduction to these operas.
Not What You'd Think...:
This is a great book. But there's nothing "dumb" or "for dummies" about it. Any person who is bright and has a sense of humor and who is just beginning to be interested in opera will find this funny, clever, irreverent book to be fascinating. Plus, the included CD is of high quality and has a great selection of tracks.
In sum, this book (while being not as hefty or as chock full of information as competing introduction-to-opera guides) is an intelligant, useful, user-friendly welcome to the universe of... more info
Would have earned 5 stars except for the crass commercialism:
Pogue and Speck provide a wonderful, humorous, and accessible text in "Opera for Dummies."
I just wish they or IDG (publishers) would stop pumping the "free CD" on every page. Readers don't need reminding, after the dozenth time, that a CD is included with the book ... besides at [$$] (retail) for book and CD, it's NOT free, we paid for it. Also the multiple reminders of their "Classical Music for Dummies" is nearly as annoying.
That said, I found the book highly entertaining and educational.
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