Publisher's Synopsis
This aims to provide a panoramic survey of opera past and present and to explain the cultural phenomenon of opera. The author believes opera to be a vitally necessary art form that speaks to our primitive nature and expresses the whole drama of human existence.;In such archetypal figures as Don Giovanni, Falstaff, Carmen, Salome and Tristan and Isolde, we see heroes and heroines who embody a freedom of action of which we overtly disapprove but secretly identify with and admire.;The author teaches English at Christ Church, Oxford and has written other works of cultural analysis including "Imagining America" and "The Everyman History of English Literature".
