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Steven A. Leibo Ph.D. The Sage Colleges and Suny-Albany Co-Founder of H-ASIA
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The vision of opera is open-minded and broad. Porgy and Bess is here. So is Gilbert and Sullivan. When an opera exists in different manuscript versions, such as Verdi's Don Carlo or Simon Boccanegra, all variations are discussed.
Since opera is somewhat expensive to collect, listeners will want to have some guidance as to which recordings to purchase. Here the Viking Guide is particularly good. Many of the suggested recordings are selected by Alan Blyth, author of Opera on Record and Opera on CD (both very highly recommended, by the way), as well as long time reviewer for Gramophone magazine. I don't always rank recordings exactly as Blyth does, but I find his taste to be the most reliable of any of the critics whom I follow.
This volume was originally published in 1993, but is now very hard to find. The publishers have printed an abridged version under the Penguin Guide series. I understand they are also coming out with a CD-ROM version of the full Viking Guide. I can safely recommend both these alternative versions as well as my trusty hardcover version.
There are other valuable opera guides. The series published by Norton of the Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera and to Opera Plots is excellent. But for a single volume reference work, nothing surpasses the Viking Guide. Amanda Holden and her team have done a splendid job.
Very highly recommended.
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Horsfall himself is uniquely qualified to compose "the reference work" for book 7. This very book of the Aeneid has been the subject of his doctoral dissertation, while in the past thirty years he has published three books and several articles on Roman native tradition and mythology, early latin cults and their origin, latin ethnicity, all of them themes that dominate book 7 of the Aeneid, the very book witnessing Aeneas' arrival in Italy, and therefore functioning among others as an introduction--to us, the readers, as well as the Trojans themselves--of the native character, history, customs, and tradition of the new land and future country of the Trojans-soon-to-be Romans (cf. mainly, Horhfall and Bremmer, Roman Myth and Mythography [B.I.C.S. Supplement 52, 1987]; Horsfall, L'Epopea in Alambicco [Naples 1991]; and, ibid, A Companion to the Study of Virgil [Leiden 1995]). Turning on the work itself, Horshfall begins with an introduction covering: 1) Structure and brief summary of content; 2) Literary Sources, both Greek ( Homer, Greek tragedy, Callimachus), and Latin (Ennius, Sallust's Histories, Varro). 3) Language, Grammar, Syntax, Style, Metre. 4) Textual criticism and manuscript tradition. The exhaustive bibliography alone, which comes before the text and commentary, is perhaps as important as the rest of the book. Horsfall lists well over a hundred major works. Additional references are included in the commentary, and it would have been helpfull, since they are both many and important, if the author has assembled those in an appended reference list at the end. This confusion caused by scattered and delayed references is perhaps the only drawback of the work. Then comes the main section of the book: brief into and text, translation, and three indexes (English, Latin, Proper Names). Horsfall has incorporated in the text several ingenious emendations, the translation I found very helpful, and the wealth, acumen, and detail of the commentary would take pages to describe. Overall, this new volume comes to fill a long standing gap in the study of the Aeneid, and provide both Vergilian scholars and graduate students of Classics with an indispensable reference tool.
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The other fantastic version is again a reproduction of the poem, (Philomel Books)McLoughlin Bros.,but from 1888,with Santa in a green coat.
These are the two books you will ever need to partner the classic old poem.Both hardback,and from Amazon.com
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Each chapter also has a checklist and a set of key insights, making it easy to scan and lift the essentials
A MUST for all marketers.