David Timson
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English
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Chief of the Intelligence Department Sir Leonard Wallace - bearing always the hall mark of coolness and wit - is up to his earlobes in trouble. Summoned by the Viceroy of India, he makes a rapid flight to India to investigate the mysterious death of British officer Major Elliot and the theft of some very important dispatches.
62) Così fan tutte
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English
Description
Così fan tutte contains some of Mozart's most sublime music. On one level, the opera is purely a social anecdote about young people falling in and out of love; but Mozart was a supreme sensualist and a great humanist, and invested the tale with all his understanding of humanity and young love. In this title, David Timson refutes the charge that Mozart squandered his genius on a work full of trivial nonsense and proves this 'miraculous yet problematic'...
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Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament known for his monumental series The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, which chronicled the dissipation of the Roman dynasties in a lofty, majestic style unique to its author. Memoirs of My Life, published posthumously in 1796, wholly unveils the character of the world's greatest historian in full candour and openness. We follow him from birth, through to his education...
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The Flying Dutchman is the perfect opera with which to approach the operatic mountain that is Richard Wagner. It is short, has a great story (the legend of the Dutch captain doomed to sail forever unless redeemed through love), and the striking score has many pre-echoes of Wagner's later great music dramas. It contains wonderful tunes in its arias, ensembles, and big choruses, and the orchestral writing – from the gale that blows out of the Overture...
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An absorbing account of the conspiracy to kill King James I by his handsome lover, the Duke of Buckingham, a historical crime that has remained hidden for 400 years. The rise of George Villiers from minor gentry to royal power seemed to defy gravity. Becoming gentleman of the royal bedchamber in 1615, the young gallant enraptured James, Britain's first Stuart king, royal adoration reaching such an intensity that the king declared he wanted the courtier...
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English
Description
Dating from the last decade of the nineteenth century, Pelléas et Mélisande points the way into the twentieth century. The score is hauntingly beautiful, but there is more to the work than shifting panels of elusive, impressionistic sound. Debussy retains the text of Maeterlinck's play, and the linguistic subtleties of the French text are matched perfectly by the musical detail. Taking a little time to explore the romantic, elusive world of this...
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English
Description
Many opera-lovers would name The Marriage of Figaro as their favourite opera. It appeals to the most intellectual listener, but also to music-lovers seeking great melodies and ensembles (while it remains accessible through its fascinating plot and memorable characters) and to those seeking only entertainment. One of three operas by Mozart to libretti by Lorenzo da Ponte it represents one of the pinnacles not just of operatic but of human achievement....
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John Galsworthy's magnificent trilogy of power and passion chronicles the wealthy Forsyte family. As the disintegrating values of the Victorian era progress to World War I and the political uncertainty of the 1930s, the family's material and emotional struggles are set within the dwindling status of the affluent middle-classes. Infused with warmth, compassion and engaging characters, the complete Chronicles are divided into three volumes, containing...
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Cavalleria rusticana is the short opera that has all the elements of a grand opera compressed into a single highly dramatic time span. The story of love, lust, blood-feud and betrayal played out against the pageantry of the Easter celebrations in a Sicilian village delivers an emotional wallop because of the youthful vigour and musical wealth of its great score which includes the glorious Easter Hymn and the deeply moving Intermezzo. Mascagni was...
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English
Description
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has always maintained its initial appeal to both the general public and scholars alike. Its sheer scale is daunting, encompassing over a millennium of history, covering not merely the Western Empire from the days of the early emperors to its extinction in AD 476, but also the Eastern Empire, which lasted for another thousand years until the Turks vanquished it in 1453. But Gibbon’s style, part historical...
71) Falstaff
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English
Description
Verdi's Falstaff repays careful study with real pleasure. It is opera's happiest irony that the great Italian master should cap a career – distinguished for its blood-and-thunder tragic masterpieces – with the greatest comic opera in the Italian repertory. The genius of Shakespeare is harnessed (in a miracle of compression) by master-librettist Boito to give the eighty-year-old Verdi a superb libretto, on which he lavished more wonderful tunes...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
John Galsworthy's magnificent trilogy of power and passion chronicles the wealthy Forsyte family. As the disintegrating values of the Victorian era progress to World War I and the political uncertainty of the 1930s, the family's material and emotional struggles are set within the dwindling status of the affluent middle-classes. Infused with warmth, compassion and engaging characters, the complete Chronicles are divided into three volumes, containing...
Author
Language
English
Description
Sir Leonard is not a man to desire fame or notoriety. His chronicler has been forced to fall back on office records and information supplied by various members of the secret service, to tell of the struggles of Wallace and his intelligence officers: of their battles against the Soviet Union, terrorism and subversion in the British Empire, Nazi Germany and the tentacles of global organized crime.
74) Aida
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English
Description
Ancient Egypt and the war with Ethiopia is the setting for Verdi's grandest opera. It is the story of the love between Rhadames, the Egyptian general and Aida, an Ethiopian slave, and the jealousy of Amneris, daughter of the King of Egypt. It was written in 1871 to a commission from the Khedive of Egypt to inaugurate the new opera house in Cairo. Aida generally is considered one of the most spectacular of Verdi's operas. But Thomson Smillie, in his...
Author
Language
English
Description
Sir Leonard is not a man to desire fame or notoriety. His chronicler has been forced to fall back on office records and information supplied by various members of the secret service, to tell of the struggles of Wallace and his intelligence officers and their battles against the Soviet Union, terrorism and subversion in the British Empire, Nazi Germany and the tentacles of global organized crime.
76) Pagliacci
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English
Description
Pagliacci may be the most completely compelling short opera in the repertory and owes much of its impact to a brilliant story based, it is said, on true life and told through the device of a play-within-a-play. The action is set in Calabria in the deep south of Italy where the jealousies and illicit passions of a troupe of strolling actors precisely intersect with the play they are performing – to both touching and tragic effect. Leoncavallo was...
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As a young boy, Glyver always believed he was destined for greatness. A chance discovery convinces him that he was right: greatness does await him, along with immense wealth and influence. Overwhelmed by his discovery, he will stop at nothing to win back a prize that he knows is rightfully his. Glyver's path to reclaim his prize leads him from the depths of Victorian London, with its foggy streets, brothels, and opium dens, to Evenwood, one of England's...
78) L'elisir d'amore
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English
Description
L'elisir d'amore, or The Elixir of Love, has remained popular for almost two centuries because of a touching tale and a galaxy of comic characters adapted from the traditional commedia dell' arte. Above all Donizetti poured into the score all the warmth and tenderness of the Italian temperament. His melodic invention never ceases to charm whether in the jolly rustic choruses, the exhilarating 'patter' numbers, or the sweet sadness of the beautiful...
Author
Language
English
Description
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has always maintained its initial appeal to both the general public and scholars alike. Its sheer scale is daunting, encompassing over a millennium of history, covering not merely the Western Empire from the days of the early emperors to its extinction in AD 476, but also the Eastern Empire, which lasted for another thousand years until the Turks vanquished it in 1453. But Gibbon's style, part historical fact...
80) Madama Butterfly
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English
Description
Madama Butterfly runs the gamut of operatic emotions. The title heroine has a fragility wonderfully expressed in her entry music, deep sexual instincts as shown in the love duet, and immense tragic stature in her last hours. The fate of Madama Butterfly – married to an American sailor and then abandoned – engages our emotions, as it obviously did Puccini's to a degree equalled by few other opera heroines. The oriental setting and the exquisite...