Opera: a History in Documents.

Opera: A History in Documents by Piero Weiss. Oxford University Press (198 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016-4314), 2002. 368 pp., $35.

If you were afraid that one more perfunctory rendering of opera history in its chronological, fact-revealing format was being handed down to you, calm those fears. Piero Weiss has delivered an intriguing, insightful and simply fascinating look at opera history. While the materials are predominantly academic, this book is an important contribution to opera students, stage directors, history professors or opera lovers in general.

Keeping with Weiss's own tradition established in Music in the Western World: A History in Documents compiled with Richard Taruskin, this book contains fifty-two historical documents presented in chronological order, illustrating the evolution of the operatic form. His collection of letters, memoirs, reviews, essays, biographies and a wide variety of writings unfold fascinating and informative insights into the development of opera. Weiss begins with the descriptions of the 1589 Medici Wedding Festivities, Monteverdi's critique of Striggio's libretto to Orfeo (Monteverdi's first opera) and ends with essays by current opera composers John Adams and Philip Glass. In between, the pages are filled with noteworthy writings by Lully, Rousseau, Gluck, Mozart, Gretry, Kierkegaard, Verdi, Wagner, Nietzche, Alban Berg, Stravinsky and others.

The documents contained in this book are not new to researchers. What is new is that well over half these entries are translated into English, many for the first time. One need no longer be a scholar of foreign languages to wade through Pietro Bardi's documentation on the Birth of Opera, Metastasio's ideas on staging dramatic recitative, Tchaikovsky's writings on Eugene Onegin or Verdi's own story of how Nabucco was composed. In general, ...