Opera in the Twentieth Century: Sacred, Profane, Godot

by Ethan Mordden

This is the only history of twentieth-century opera available in English today. Traces the rise of modern music drama from its nineteenth-century Wagnerian peak, and shows how modern opera has evolved.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195022882
• ISBN13: 9780195022889
• Release Date: May 1978
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 357 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A definitive guide to an obscure but important repetory.

With John Steane (The Grand Tradition, Grammophone quarterly reviews) and Andrew Porter (The New Yorker reviews), Ethan Mordden's writing on the culturally complex subject of opera represents the best that the modern school of critical commentary has to offer. His exposition on almost any aspect of opera -- like that of Andrew Porter and John Steane -- makes one want to read on, seek out and experience first hand: Ariane et Barbe-Bleau, Padmatavi, Aphrodite, Salammbo . . . who knew?! As delineated by Mordden they appear significant, not so obscure and potentially exciting. His knowledge of these frequently obscure and often difficult opera and their cultural underpinnings is comprehensive. He possesses both technical expertise and historical perspective. Armed with the big guns of a classical education, he uses them with precision and discretion. His style is lean, compelling and assured. (his fiction is equally apt: superb short stories, for instance, read like well-crafted string quartets play.) Such gifts illumine the unknown and are themselves rare and precious treasures in a world not overly supplied with perception, style or simple accuracy. What a shame this book is no longer in print. His "Demented: The World of the Opera Diva" is another equally worthy and likewise unfortunate casualty of the out-of-print virus. "Opera in the 20th Century" as a book is, like its subject, unique of its kind. We are therefore poorer by definition for its being absent from the shelves.