101 Opera Librettos: Complete Texts with English Translations of the World's Best-Loved Operas

I like to read the librettos of the operas I am going to see each season before actually going to the performance. This book is a steal at the $price tag I paid. (Using rapid mathematics, that comes to This book is put out by Black Dog Publishers. I own every one of the Black Dog Opera Library issues (all 14 is it?) They are wonderful at giving you the libretto, the COMPLETE music on 2 cds, the history, the previous performers, etc. I wish they had more available. However, this book fills in nicely within my opera collection.This book is an excellent value with great content.

My one problem with this anthology of librettos is that it lacks a libretto for Puccini's Turandot, one of my favourite operas-and one of the more popular ones(!).Otherwise, this is probably your best bet for a general collection of librettos, particularly for the price. The way it's set up is that there are four columns on each page, and each pair of columns is the original text and the English translation, which is probably the best way to set up a collection of this size without making it an ungodly amount of pages (don't worry, the print is big enough to read). Librettos are aranged alphabetically by composer.While I was disappointed to see it had not included Turandot, it does have some lesser-known operas that I still find beautiful (I was particularly surprised to see Mignon in it).Jessica MacMurray has a particular flair for creating translations appealing to the modern eye, and Allison Franzetti comes up with some wonderful plot summaries that appear at the beginning of each libretto.With a wonderful array of operas and near-perfect translations, 101 Opera Librettos certainly does live up to the boast on its cover that it is the most comprehensive one volume collection of unabridged opera lyrics ever published.

Opera is a unique and splendid art form. It combines glorious singing by soloists and ensembles, dramatic or comic acting, spectacular scenes on indoor and outdoor stages, light effects and vibrant music. All these effects depend on the lyrics contained in librettos as a paramount foundation stone. Popular and great composers paid a lot of attention to the libretto or "parola scenica" (scenic word) as Verdi defined it. Puccini struggled in search of suitable subjects for opera. Once he found them, he had stormy relationships with his librettists on lyrics, for him to get inspired and compose immortal melodies. Verdi had problems with librettists apart from censors, in his quest at compressing the action on stage for maximum dramatic effect. When he found a poetic genius (Arrigo Boito) to write for him, he dished out "Otello", a masterpiece of condensed poetry and music, which would have made Shakespeare proud of the opera based on his play. Wisely, Wagner went a stage further and wrote his own lyrics. This book under review is an innovative, monster compilation of famous and popular opera librettos, which will delight and inform operagoers. What is also very handy in the book is a faithful description (in the original language and English) of what goes on the stage. Of course, the book is heavy and thank goodness that it is a single volume, although the pages are thin paper. Otherwise, with more robust paper, there would have been the need of several volumes! That said, reflecting on the importance of a libretto as foundation stone, I went about checking the accurate spelling of the Italian librettos (my mother-tongue) and how faithful the corresponding English translations were. On the book dust jacket, the editors wrote "COMPLETE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE TEXTS WITH ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS". I found a myriad of spelling mistakes in the Italian texts to make fire ants look like frightened and depleted hordes! As an example, in Luisa Miller (Verdi), Act II and Scene IV, the first 50 singing lines between Walter and Wurm have 18 spelling mistakes of the Italian language. Misspellings and absence of consonants and vowels, missing words and attachment of prepositions to words. It is a real bedlam! There is a claim that the English translations are full. Surely, they are full of sentences that do not correspond to the Italian ones. At times, the meaning conveyed sounds very poetic but is not faithful to the original intention. As an example, in Tosca (Puccini), Act III, Mario Cavaradossi, reminiscing one night of love with Tosca, sings "...mi cadea fra le braccia"(she fell in my arms) translated as "In her soft arms she clasped me" and "le belle forme disciogliea dai veli" (beautiful forms she disclosed from the veils) translated as "A thing of beauty, of matchless symmetry in form and feature!". This is very liberal translation, poetry within poetry!! I may accept the poetic versions in English but a very useful book of complete opera librettos with glaring sp

Jessica M. MacMurray and Allison Brewster Franzetti have assembled a rich and thorough resource for opera buffs and novices alike.This work affords the reader a chance to become friendly with a opera before attending its performance. Different than the seminal 100 Great Operas and Their Stories, the Libretto book offers the pure nature of the language without commentary. As a recent subscriber to a local company's 1999-2000 series, I savor the opportunity to "study-up"!