First we had Kobbé (2000, latest ed.) and then, with an increasing interest in music arising from the availability of recorded music, a plethora of opera guides such as May (1977) and Martin (1962). As opera began to be ever more popular – even being used as theme songs for football competitions – we went down‐market and had the Rough Guide to the Opera (Boyden, 2002) and Opera for Dummies (Pogue and Speck, 1997). Now, at last, Charles Osborne, who previously had concentrated on individual composers and their operatic works, guides us through the classical repertoire from Daniel‐François‐Esprit Auber to Bernd Alois Zimmerman. Mr Osborne, who has been the London music critic of the New York Times and the chief drama critic of the Daily Telegraph, is an author who knows what he likes and why he likes it. In covering some 175 of the mainstream repertoire, he concentrates on the great five – Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini and Strauss – to which he adds those works most frequently performed and recorded.
However, opera lovers and committed newcomers, for whom this book is avowedly aimed, will be warned about pitfalls as well as enthused about the great successes. Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmilla is described as having a “cumbersome dramatic structure”, a feature not unknown among the greatest of operatic works, and in composing La Bohème Puccini is accused of being “cloyingly sentimental”. However, we are told that Verdi's Nabucco “is a work that combines freshness, vigour and emotional intensity with something of the gracefulness of Bellini and the melodramatic flair of Donizetti”.
Each entry commences with a cast list and an introduction informing the reader about the opera's librettist, setting and details of its first performance. After two of three paragraphs providing the historical basis of the composition, the plot, separated into acts and scenes, is detailed, followed by Osborne's brief analysis of the work. The entry is rounded off by details of a recommended recording of the work, information that will soon be out of date as record companies delete CDs so rapidly and without warning. There is an excellent index.
While one cannot criticise a reference book for not covering the subject fully if it is not the declared intention of so doing, it is a pity that Osborne does not extend his Companion into the twentieth century and the interesting operas that it produced. Perhaps for the second edition?
