Opera: The Great Composers and Their Masterworks

Mozart, Puccini, Wagner, Britten, Barber, and more are the featured players in the invaluable reference book for opera lovers, whose numbers are climbing as the art enjoys a renaissance in the public imagination.

Joyce Bourne takes us on a compelling tour de force of 400 years of the world's great operas providing biographies for every important composer and synopses for each of their key works. She also covers the singers whose performances have made music history, the festivals that showcase both standard repertory and groundbreaking new works, the stages, the scenery and even the buildings that make opera such a thrilling art form.

With opera attendance climbing, this timely book, "will make your opera an even more exciting, engrossing and fabulous experience." (World famous bass-baritone Bryn Terfel, from the foreword.)"

Born in Hull, Yorkshire, Joyce Bourne has lived in Manchester since 1952. Married to the critic and writer Michael Kennedy, she has for 25 years, acted as his researcher, typist and, on the Oxford Dictionary of Music, as his associate editor. She has a lifelong interest in music, particularly in Opera. She is the author of Who's Who in Opera, which was published by Oxford University Press in 1998 and analyzes 2500 roles from 280 varying operas.