The Opera Companion.(Book review)

* The Opera Companion, by George Whitney Martin. Amadeus Press, 2008. www.amadeuspress.com; (800) 637-2852; 720pp.; $19.95.

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George Martin's The Opera Companion, written in 1961 to address an audience of "casual opera goers" has been reissued this year by Amadeus Press. It's a large book written in layman's language to embrace a wide audience. Martin engages his readers by enlivening factual information with somewhat humorous anecdotes, subjective observations and opera trivia. Two thirds of the book is dedicated to opera plots, principal characters and circumstances surrounding of the genesis of a particular work. To lend authority to his text, Martin quotes venerable music scholars the likes of Percy Scholes, Ernest Newman, Donald Tovey as well as other professional sources.

The Opera Companion is organized in three sections: The Casual Operagoer's Guide, Glossary and The Synopses. The first of these is comprised of 13 short articles covering a veritable smorgasbord of disparate topics such as operatic orchestral music, the singing voice, the castrato or male soprano, the operatic claque, concert pitch, elements of music, ballet, the construction of opera houses and scenery, and persons connected with opera.

In the glossary, one finds a curious and interesting mixture of musical terms, foreign words, prominent names, operatic themes. There are also humorous tales of persons ...