Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was...

Verdi's now-popular opera was a fiasco in Venice in 1853, attributable perhaps to the prima donna being noticeably obese, despite apparently wasting with tuberculosis. Soon, however, Verdi's scandalous love story was on stage contemporaneously at Her Majesty's Theatre, Covent Garden and Drury Lane.Piave's libretto depicts Violetta and Alfredo Germont, the Marguerite and Armand of The Lady with the Camelias by Alexandre Dumas (son of the author of The Count of Monte Cristo and The Th...

The great Russian poet Pushkin's novel in verse tells the story of Tatyana, a love-struck country girl who unwisely wrote to the arrogant city-slicker Yevgeny Onegin professing her love. The tale resonated with Tchaikovsky when he found himself callously dismissing the suit of a student who similarly approached him out of the blue: within weeks, Tchaikovsky then married her! It was a disastrous decision; except that it inspired him to write his great opera. Onegin's future was different. H...

A couple of smooth army officers in metropolitan Naples become increasingly horrified as they find that they are losing their bet with a misogynist philosopher. The wager? That their fiancées will be faithful. Their disguise as Albanians in an attempt to entrap their fiancées, and the complicity of the naughty maid, who feigns as a lawyer organising their 'marriage', provide hilarious moments in an opera full of favourite tunes. Lorenzo da Ponte's libretto was long considered indecent and ...

Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was...

Sir Walter Scott's story of a Scottish girl forced by her family into an arranged marriage still resonates today, two centuries after it was published. Donizetti's opera, which premièred in Naples in 1835, is famous particularly for the Mad Scene when Lucia, after leaving for her nuptials, reappears having murdered the man she has just married, the unfortunate Arturo. She truly loves Edgardo, sworn enemy of her family, who turned up moments too late to stop the wedding.The story unfolds in...

This compendium of short guides to all twelve Puccini's operas is part of the author's series A Short Guide to a Great Opera. Puccini's highly-charged music provides an unforgettable experience for those enjoying it socially, in an opera-house or cinema, or at home on TV, radio etc. He has been the largest contributor to the hundred best tunes, including Nessun dorma (Turandot), O mio babbino caro(Gianni Schicchi) or Chi il bel sogno (La Rondine). Some of his operas are full of them, like ...

In volume II of self-standing Short Guides to 25 of the world's greatest operas, Michael Steen, author of the acclaimed The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, and Great Operas provides another compendium in his ebook series. Much more than a standard reference book, this ranges across influential operas from Monteverdi's Poppea, Gluck'sOrfeo and Weber's Freischütz via Debussy's mysterious and symbolist Pelléas et Mélisande, to Britten's Billy Budd and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Here a...

Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was...

Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was...

Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was...

Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was...