(Amadeus). There's a reason La Boheme has been staged at the Met more often than any other opera: Puccini's enticing music perfectly conveys the enchantment of new young love and the anguish that comes with loss and death. La Boheme , the passionate and timeless story of love among impoverished young artists in Paris, can stake its claim as the world's most popular opera. It has a marvelous ability to make a powerful first impression (even on those new to opera) and to reveal unexpected treasures after dozens of hearings. At first glance, La Boheme is the definitive depiction of the joys and sorrows of love and loss; on closer inspection, it reveals the deep emotional significance hidden in the trivial things (a bonnet, an old overcoat, a chance meeting with a neighbor) that make up our everyday lives. This touching story of tenderness and tragedy never fails to move audiences and melt hearts.

An NYRB Classics Original Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer played a crucial role in bringing opera back to life as a contemporary art form, and they have been popular—and, in the case of Klinghoffer, highly controversial—ever since they were first staged by the director Peter Sellars in the eighties and nineties. Both operas were conceived from the start as collaborations between composer and writer, and their power is due as much to the dazzlingly constructed and deeply felt libretti of the poet Alice Goodman as they are to John Adams’s music. Nixon in China is a story, at once heroic, comic, and unnerving, of men and women making history and of their different conceptions of what history is and what it means to makes it. Klinghoffer, by contrast, has at its center the tragedy of an innocent man condemned at the cost of his life to play a part in history. History Is Our Mother, which takes its title from a line sung by the title character in Nixon in China, brings Goodman’s two libretti together for the first time in book form. Included alongside Goodman’s no less inspired translation of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s famous libretto to The Magic Flute, these vivid dramas of character and searching meditations on fate are here revealed as among the most original, ambitious, and accomplished poetic achievements of our time.

A visual history of opera describes its modest beginnings as a re-creation of classical Greek drama, to its peak in the seventeenth century, to its modern incarnations, in an account that is complemented by reference biographies, a glossary of terms, and a listing of opera house openings and premieres. Reprint.

Explains how to develop an appreciation for opera by furnishing a concise history of opera, a glossary of terms, a list of books and recordings, a listener's guide to key operatic works, and advice on attending a performance

A New York Times bestseller A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Notable Book A Publishers Weekly Book of the Year As seen on CBS This Morning, NPR's Fresh Air, and People Magazine A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year A Library Journal Nonfiction Pick of September The New York Times bestseller about a young black man's journey from violence and despair to the threshold of stardom. "A beautiful tribute to the power of good teachers."--Terry Gross, Fresh Air "One of the most inspiring stories I've come across in a long time."--Pamela Paul, New York Times Book Review Ryan Speedo Green had a tough upbringing in southeastern Virginia: his family lived in a trailer park and later a bullet-riddled house across the street from drug dealers. His father was absent; his mother was volatile and abusive. At the age of twelve, Ryan was sent to Virginia's juvenile facility of last resort. He was placed in solitary confinement. He was uncontrollable, uncontainable, with little hope for the future. In 2011, at the age of twenty-four, Ryan won a nationwide competition hosted by New York's Metropolitan Opera, beating out 1,200 other talented singers. Today, he is a rising star performing major roles at the Met and Europe's most prestigious opera houses. SING FOR YOUR LIFE chronicles Ryan's suspenseful, racially charged and artistically intricate journey from solitary confinement to stardom. Daniel Bergner takes readers on Ryan's path toward redemption, introducing us to a cast of memorable characters--including the two teachers from his childhood who redirect his rage into music, and his long-lost father who finally reappears to hear Ryan sing. Bergner illuminates all that it takes--technically, creatively--to find and foster the beauty of the human voice. And Sing for Your Life sheds unique light on the enduring and complex realities of race in America.

The author describes how, as a young child, he learned of his family's intimate past connections with Adolf Hitler and spent a lifetime accumulating the information contained in this sweeping account of anti-Semitism and forgiveness.

Includes letters written by Verdi and his acquaintances that illuminate the personal side of the innkeeper's son turned successful composer

An anthology of backstage stories give a revealing insider's view of the lives of opera's greatest stars and the glorious pageantry they create on stage

Arranged alphabetically by composer, presents information on operas in their historical context, highlighting key events, important performances, and interpretations.