A review by rgould
A History of Opera by Carolyn Abbate

4.0

I thought this was a fun romp through the history of opera. The authors write with a nice sense of humor, and do a nice job of emphasizing important themes, such as the difficulty of dealing with spoken word. They also do a wonderful job of comparing and contrasting operatic trends with modern entertainment trends, and make an argument that similarities are more than coincidental. I found it hard to go through the book without turning to my CD collection and a friend's collection to play and re-play some of the discussed operas, many of which I enjoyed from a new perspective.