The Complete Opera Book
Encyclopedia
The Complete Opera Book is a guide to opera
s by American music critic and author Gustav Kobbé
first published (posthumously) in the United States in 1919 and the United Kingdom in 1922. A revised edition from 1954 by the Earl of Harewood
is known as Kobbé's Complete Opera Book.
Much of the additional material first appeared in a supplement or appendix to the main work. The last opera of the main text is the Goyescas
of Enrique Granados
, and the Supplement is still (in the English edition, p. 851 ff.) described as such in 1929, but in other editions called "Recent and Revised Operas." This continued to evolve, and incorporated additional material written by Ferruccio Bonavia (signed F.B.). The earlier supplement included works by Maeterlinck, Reginald de Koven
, Ravel, Henry Hadley, Andre Messager
, Holst
, Rutland Boughton
, Ethel Smyth
, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky
and Stravinsky, and Mozart's Il Seraglio, occupying pp. 851–901. After 1929 it was enlarged to include Verdi's Simone Boccanegra
, Boito's Nerone
, Alban Berg
's Wozzeck
, Puccini's Turandot
, Rossini's La Cenerentola
, Mozart's Così fan tutte
, Jaromir Weinberger
's Schwanda the Bagpiper and Vaughan Williams's Hugh the Drover
(pp. 901–930). The English 1935 imprint included Bonavia's notes on Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri
, Rimsky-Korsakov's Snegourochka and two operas of Ildebrando Pizzetti
: parts of the former supplement had by now been incorporated into the main text, and the overall page-count before index was now 945 pages.
While no amount of enlargement could possibly have made the work literally complete, these additions supplied gaps in Kobbé's unfinished manuscript, some works of importance which appeared after his death, and others (such as Simone Boccanegra) which had important revivals.
The pre–World War II editions were enriched by a superb series of sixty-four photographs of singers in operatic roles. In general these did not change, though the frontispiece of Nellie Melba
as Juliet was substituted by an engraved bust of Jenny Lind
in other editions. The illustrations reflected exactly the singers of Kobbé's time, (including Winckelmann and Materna in the first Parsifal
), and many of the famous international artists who sang at the Met
from the 1890s to around 1920. They are typically the singers of the acoustic (i.e. pre electric-microphone) recording period c.1898-1925, so that the book remained popular with collectors of operatic 78 rpm records well after the real-life careers of these singers had been superseded by others. Hence in early editions the illustrations are listed in the sequence in which they appear, following the operas, but in later editions the illustrations table is alphabetical by singer.
to form the basis of his complete new revision, retaining Kobbé's plan and a good deal of his text, but bringing the whole work up to date under the title of Kobbé's Complete Opera Book. Details of specific productions were supplied by Harold Rosenthal
. The text was now arranged in three main sections. In Part 1, "Before 1800", sections on Monteverdi, Purcell
, The Beggar's Opera
and Pergolesi
were added, Gluck was enlarged, and the Mozart operas systematized. The great body of Kobbé's work was maintained and enlarged in Part 2, "The Nineteenth Century" (beginning with Beethoven), preserved the original format of the various national "schools", with specific sections on Wagner and Verdi. Composers and synopses were similarly grouped by nationality in Part 3, "The Twentieth Century", treating the period 1900-1950 as a separate coherent whole, including an American section for Thomson, George Gershwin
and Gian-Carlo Menotti, and a substantial English section culminating in Benjamin Britten
. The illustrations were completely replaced with forty new photographs of post-War operatic productions and singers. Further reprints (with revisions) appeared in 1956 and 1958. The convention of noting authorship of different sections was retained by the initial "K" for Kobbé and "H" for Harewood. The resultant edition, while preserving and paying due homage to Kobbé's original work, was a newly authoritative work in its own right.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s by American music critic and author Gustav Kobbé
Gustav Kobbé
Gustav Kobbé M.A. was an American music critic and author, best known for his guide to the operas, The Complete Opera Book, first published in the United States in 1919 and the United Kingdom in 1922.- Biography :Kobbé was born in March 1857 in New York City to William...
first published (posthumously) in the United States in 1919 and the United Kingdom in 1922. A revised edition from 1954 by the Earl of Harewood
George Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood
George Henry Hubert Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, KBE AM , styled The Hon. George Lascelles before 1929 and Viscount Lascelles between 1929 and 1947, was the elder son of the 6th Earl of Harewood , and Princess Mary, Princess Royal, the only daughter of King George V of the United Kingdom and...
is known as Kobbé's Complete Opera Book.
The original Complete Opera Book
Gustav Kobbé was on the point of completing the book which was afterwards published as The Complete Opera Book when he died. Various additions were made to it before publication, and also in subsequent editions or reprints, as the subject demands constant revision and renewal, both through new works and through the discovery or revival of lesser known existing ones. The work in its original form was first finally edited and brought together for publication by Katharine Wright, who at the same time included some additional operas in sections that bear her initials. Its full title was The Complete Opera Book : the Stories of the Operas, Together with 400 of the Leading Airs and Motives in Musical Notation. The early American editions were copyrighted in 1919 (first), and then in 1922 and 1924, by C. W. Kobbé.Much of the additional material first appeared in a supplement or appendix to the main work. The last opera of the main text is the Goyescas
Goyescas
Goyescas, Op. 11, subtitled Los majos enamorados , is a piano suite written in 1911 by Spanish composer Enrique Granados. This piano suite is usually considered Granados's crowning creation and was inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya, although the piano pieces have not been authoritatively...
of Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados
Enrique Granados y Campiña was a Spanish pianist and composer of classical music. His music is in a uniquely Spanish style and, as such, representative of musical nationalism...
, and the Supplement is still (in the English edition, p. 851 ff.) described as such in 1929, but in other editions called "Recent and Revised Operas." This continued to evolve, and incorporated additional material written by Ferruccio Bonavia (signed F.B.). The earlier supplement included works by Maeterlinck, Reginald de Koven
Reginald de Koven
Henry Louis Reginald De Koven was an American music critic and prolific composer, particularly of comic operas.-Biography:...
, Ravel, Henry Hadley, Andre Messager
André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager , was a French composer, organist, pianist, conductor and administrator. His stage compositions included ballets and 30 opéra comiques and operettas, among which Véronique, had lasting success, with Les p'tites Michu and Monsieur Beaucaire also enjoying international...
, Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
, Rutland Boughton
Rutland Boughton
Rutland Boughton was an English composer who became well known in the early 20th century as a composer of opera and choral music....
, Ethel Smyth
Ethel Smyth
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, DBE was an English composer and a leader of the women's suffrage movement.- Early career :...
, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky
Mussorgsky
Mussorgsky can refer to:*The Mussorgsky family of Russian nobility;*Modest Mussorgsky, a Russian composer belonging to that family.*Mussorgsky , a 1950 Soviet film about the composer...
and Stravinsky, and Mozart's Il Seraglio, occupying pp. 851–901. After 1929 it was enlarged to include Verdi's Simone Boccanegra
Simone Boccanegra
Simone Boccanegra was the first doge of Genoa. His story was popularized by Antonio García Gutiérrez's 1843 play Simón Bocanegra and Giuseppe Verdi's 1857 opera Simon Boccanegra. Note the spellings....
, Boito's Nerone
Nerone
Nerone is an opera in three acts by Pietro Mascagni, 1935, from a libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, based on the play Nerone by Pietro Cossa...
, Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
's Wozzeck
Wozzeck
Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's...
, Puccini's Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
, Rossini's La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola
La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cinderella...
, Mozart's Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte
Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti K. 588, is an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart first performed in 1790. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte....
, Jaromir Weinberger
Jaromír Weinberger
- Biography :Weinberger was born in Prague, from a family of Jewish origin. He heard Czech folksongs from time spent at his grandparents' farm as a youth. He started to play the piano at age 5, and was composing and conducting by age 10. He began musical studies with Jaroslav Křička. Later teachers...
's Schwanda the Bagpiper and Vaughan Williams's Hugh the Drover
Hugh the Drover
Hugh the Drover is an opera in two acts by Ralph Vaughan Williams to an original English libretto by Harold Child. According to Michael Kennedy, the composer took first inspiration for the opera from this question to Bruce Richmond, editor of The Times Literary Supplement, around 1909–1910:"I...
(pp. 901–930). The English 1935 imprint included Bonavia's notes on Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri
L'italiana in Algeri
L'italiana in Algeri is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Angelo Anelli, based on his earlier text set by Luigi Mosca...
, Rimsky-Korsakov's Snegourochka and two operas of Ildebrando Pizzetti
Ildebrando Pizzetti
Ildebrando Pizzetti was an Italian composer of classical music.- Biography :Pizzetti was born in Parma in 1880. He was part of the "Generation of 1880" along with Ottorino Respighi and Gian Francesco Malipiero. They were among the first Italian composers in some time whose primary contributions...
: parts of the former supplement had by now been incorporated into the main text, and the overall page-count before index was now 945 pages.
While no amount of enlargement could possibly have made the work literally complete, these additions supplied gaps in Kobbé's unfinished manuscript, some works of importance which appeared after his death, and others (such as Simone Boccanegra) which had important revivals.
The pre–World War II editions were enriched by a superb series of sixty-four photographs of singers in operatic roles. In general these did not change, though the frontispiece of Nellie Melba
Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century...
as Juliet was substituted by an engraved bust of Jenny Lind
Jenny Lind
Johanna Maria Lind , better known as Jenny Lind, was a Swedish opera singer, often known as the "Swedish Nightingale". One of the most highly regarded singers of the 19th century, she is known for her performances in soprano roles in opera in Sweden and across Europe, and for an extraordinarily...
in other editions. The illustrations reflected exactly the singers of Kobbé's time, (including Winckelmann and Materna in the first Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...
), and many of the famous international artists who sang at the Met
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
from the 1890s to around 1920. They are typically the singers of the acoustic (i.e. pre electric-microphone) recording period c.1898-1925, so that the book remained popular with collectors of operatic 78 rpm records well after the real-life careers of these singers had been superseded by others. Hence in early editions the illustrations are listed in the sequence in which they appear, following the operas, but in later editions the illustrations table is alphabetical by singer.
Kobbé's Complete Opera Book
The final (11th) impression (in fact variant editions) of the English edition was in September 1949. This constant revision reflected the fact that the book, with all its shortcomings, was the best encyclopedic account of operas from Gluck to Mascagni in existence. It was therefore this work which was chosen by the distinguished operatic patron the Earl of HarewoodGeorge Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood
George Henry Hubert Lascelles, 7th Earl of Harewood, KBE AM , styled The Hon. George Lascelles before 1929 and Viscount Lascelles between 1929 and 1947, was the elder son of the 6th Earl of Harewood , and Princess Mary, Princess Royal, the only daughter of King George V of the United Kingdom and...
to form the basis of his complete new revision, retaining Kobbé's plan and a good deal of his text, but bringing the whole work up to date under the title of Kobbé's Complete Opera Book. Details of specific productions were supplied by Harold Rosenthal
Harold Rosenthal
Harold David Rosenthal OBE was an English music critic, writer, lecturer, and broadcaster about opera. Originally a schoolmaster, he became drawn to music, particularly opera, and began working on musical publications...
. The text was now arranged in three main sections. In Part 1, "Before 1800", sections on Monteverdi, Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
, The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
and Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Iesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...
were added, Gluck was enlarged, and the Mozart operas systematized. The great body of Kobbé's work was maintained and enlarged in Part 2, "The Nineteenth Century" (beginning with Beethoven), preserved the original format of the various national "schools", with specific sections on Wagner and Verdi. Composers and synopses were similarly grouped by nationality in Part 3, "The Twentieth Century", treating the period 1900-1950 as a separate coherent whole, including an American section for Thomson, George Gershwin
George Gershwin
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
and Gian-Carlo Menotti, and a substantial English section culminating in Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
. The illustrations were completely replaced with forty new photographs of post-War operatic productions and singers. Further reprints (with revisions) appeared in 1956 and 1958. The convention of noting authorship of different sections was retained by the initial "K" for Kobbé and "H" for Harewood. The resultant edition, while preserving and paying due homage to Kobbé's original work, was a newly authoritative work in its own right.
External links
- The Complete Opera Book text at Bob's Opera World