"Adirondack Mammals" is a wonderful publication that goes into depth on the behaviors of the mammals that make the Adirondack Mountains their habitat. All the information you'll want to know about the animals of the park is in this book.

Adirondack Mammals is a thorough guide to the animals of the Adirondacks. If you would like to know what month a certain mammal gives birth to its young, or what a certain mammal eats, this is a great guide to have. There are 54 mammals included in all and they range from tiny mice to the moose. This guide is a necessity to people who live in , or plan on visiting the Adirondacks.

Verdi's two Comedies philosophically, and emotionally, frame his long career. While writing Il Giorno di Regno, his first comedy, and only his second opera, the rather naive young Verdi lost his first wife and their children in a fire. Needless to say, the opera wasn't very funny, and the audience booed it off the stage. Verdi quit Opera...he thought for good. However, his self-imposed exile didn't last long, and Verdi eventually wrote several of Opera's greatest masterpieces. He also loved Giuseppina, first as his paramour, eventually as his second wife, became one of Europe's most generous philanthropists, and admired his great rival Richard Wagner, who referred to Verdi simply as "pig." Arrigo Boito, a genius in his own right (if you don't believe it, get a good recording of Mefistofele), testified in Italian newspapers that Verdi's "old ways" of writing Opera were permanently invalidated by Wagner. Yet one day, eight years after Verdi had retired for the second time, Boito, the great Verdi hater, came to Sant' Agata, hat in hand, to ask Verdi to compose music for two Shakespearean music dramas he had written. The second of those music dramas, Falstaff, was to be Verdi's second comedy, and his last opera. Falstaff is a towering monument to artistic collaboration. In it, Verdi, Boito, and Shakespeare tell us that life is a great cosmic joke, and, since we cannot escape being its brunt, we might as well laugh along. Dover republished an early Ricordi edition of Falstaff. Ricordi is, simply put, the most useful publisher of late romantic Italian opera, especially of Verdi and Puccini. The scholarship is top notch, making this Dover edition quite a useful volume. The book itself is, as always, well crafted and easy to read. The score may be too large, and the book too small, to make this volume useful for the podium, but at home, in front of the stereo, it's invaluable. Falstaff is one of the west's great example's of existentialism expressed in artistic form. If you are not familiar with this opera, I strongly recommend you buy this score, and a good recording to go with it, and knock yourself out.

Phillip Porter is a recognized expert on the Jaguar XK series. His book, suplemented by excellent photos, details each version of the car with text and photos. For anyone restoring an XK series Jaguar, the photos are a rich source of originality information highlighting differences between the various models. This book is well worth purchasing.

Best translation of this work. Useful notes and essays. Highest recommendation.

This petite book (perfectly sized to slip into even the smallest handbag) is a treasure for the senses. Its sturdy structure and silky jacket are a balm to the touch; its contents pure eye candy.

My first exposure to Tracy Porter was through a friend's 2001 calendar, which features photographs of Tracy's beautiful collages. I have since sought out her work as inspiration for my own artful endeavors. "True Love," while ostensibly a book of thoughts on that subject from various points of view, is enriched immeasurably by Tracy Porter's stunning backgrounds. Indeed, having read through the quotes once or twice, I now focus completely on admiring the expertise with which each of the pages is designed.

Best translation of this work. Useful notes and essays. Highest recommendation.

Best translation of this work. Useful explanatory notes and essays. Highest recommendation.

Viva Verdi is the opera lover's response to this magisterial work by Phillips-Matz. Her years of research has produced a detailed life of Verd. The author traces the family lineage of Verdi in Bussetto, chronicles the genesis of his operatic masterpieces and delves into the private life of the greatest Italian opera composer of the nineteenth century.
I dove into this huge book during Christmas 2002. The book will immerse you in the life of the complicated composer detailing his relationships, his tragedies and triumphs. The book
is essential to anyone interested in knowing more about Verdi and his times. The book is not easy reading but is worthwhile for the time it takes to peruse it. Viva Phillips-Matz on a superb biography!

I have just finished reading this book. It was my intention to get the bits and pieces I have been taught over the years about Verdi together in order to teach a short course on him in January 2000. It has done so much more. If you're looking for a book that details the opera plots and offers translations of the librettos, this isn't it. But if you're looking for a great summary of what we know about this truly great man, his friends and enemies, his work habits, his interests in farming and charity, the gestation and difficult birth of his operas and other words -- and what we *don't* know, things that might still be discovered -- you've come to the right place. It has NEVER taken me so long to read a book because the pages are so densely detailed. That being said, I am very glad that I did. VERY glad. Here is a hero for the ages, pace his operas.

I can't imagine a more complete collection of information about Verdi's long and productive life. Phillips-Matz captures the feeling of mid-century Italy and among other things she shows how Verdi became a hero in the movement culminating in Italian statehood. Viva Verdi!

The information presented above contains some errors. This is not a score: it is an Opera Guide, one of a series published in association with the two principal London opera companies (Royal Opera and ENO). These books are intended to prepare audiences to evaluate and enjoy opera performances. Each book contains a complete libretto with a parallel translation into English (in this case, the singing translation by Andrew Porter).

There are five articles in Opera Guide no.34, as follows:

'A Very Human Epic' by Mike Ashman: a distinguished opera director, best known for his Wagner productions; these have included the WNO 'Ring' and 'Parsifal', the Norwegian Opera's 'Ring' and productions at Covent Garden. This essay provides an excellent introduction to Wagner's 'Parsifal'. It does however contain a few factual errors; in particular, Ashman is clearly out of his depth when he discusses Wagner's sources such as the 'Poetic Edda' (for the 'Ring') and Chretien de Troyes (for 'Parsifal').

This Guide was completed in 1986, and therefore it is understandable that the controversy that blew up around 'Parsifal' in the mid-1980's does not receive an adequate treatment here. The criticisms of Hartmut Zelinsky and Robert Gutman are mentioned, briefly, in a footnote at the end of Ashman's article.

'Recapitulation of a Lifetime' by Dieter Borchmeyer. I found this rather an eccentric take on 'Parsifal'. The author erroneously believes that the genesis of the work began in 1865; whereas Wagner recorded that the initial inspiration came in Marienbad in 1845 and the first sketch was written soon after Good Friday 1857. Borchmeyer also seems to be under the impression that Amfortas is meant to die at the end of 'Parsifal'; although this is a variant seen in many productions, it was not Wagner's idea. Etc.

'Experiencing Music and Imagery in Parsifal' by Robin Holloway: composer and professor of music in the University of Cambridge. In this fascinating article, Holloway identifies a "sonorous image cluster" at the core of the work. When so many articles about Wagner are leitmotif-fixated, it is refreshing to read an analysis of a Wagner score in which it is seen as an organic whole in which harmonic and melodic elements are inseparable.

'Parsifal: Words and Music' by Carolyn Abbate. An eccentric article (or is it an undergraduate essay?). The reader should refer to his score when Abbate does so, since she often misreads her score.

'Discursions into the Dramaturgy of Parsifal' by Gerd Rienäcker. I have no idea what this purple prose might be about! Rienäcker tells us that, at the end of act 2, Parsifal 'sets off into the wilderness with no idea where he is going'. On the contrary, Parsifal knows *exactly* where he is going; he just does not know how to get there.

There is also a useful 'Thematic Guide' by Lionel Friend, which contains 69 musical examples, some of which might be called 'leitmotiven'. He omits at least one of importance: Newman's 'Atonement'. Both the libretto and some of the articles refer to these musical examples by their numbers.

On balance, I can recommend this book as an introduction to 'Parsifal'. Even though I would have preferred it without a couple of the essays.

This book is a full score of the opera, printed in Hungary. The paper and paperback binding are good quality, and the book lies open easily. There is, however, no index of acts or scenes, and all the stage directions and dialogue are in German with no translation. The price of $7.98 is a bargain.

I bought this translation after I bought Wolfgang Sawallisch's excellent live Ring on EMI-- which, obviously, did not include a libretto. I did not realize until I read the introduction that Andrew Porter's translation was for an English version of The Ring staged some years back. I would only want to hear The Ring in the original German, but I must say Porter does a fabulous job in capturing both the sense and the rhythms of Wagner's language. He is forced to give up some of the alliterative quality in order to be more literal, but what makes this book so intriguing is that one can follow along with the music and practically hear the English text in each note, syllable by syllable. That's because Porter did the impossible by pretty much matching the meaning of each word (and each part of a word) with the intended note, setting it apart from those clumsy German translations of Mozart's Da Ponte operas, and so forth. However, I did feel like I was missing out on some of Wagner's meaning, and so I sought out a more literal (and less poetic) translation. I found that in Barry Millington's text-- in hardcover, and therefore more expensive, but with excellent notes and a few essays (as well as photos of older productions). So, unless one wants to know how Wagner might sound in English (and the Chandos cycle on CD does just that), I suggest finding another translation for listening purposes.

Andrew Porter's English translation of the 'Ring' was written to be sung. It has been used in performances of the 'Ring' cycle at English National Opera and elsewhere. When reading this translation, and perhaps using it to follow a recording or broadcast of any of these operas in the original German, you should keep in mind that it is not a *literal* translation. Porter has taken some liberties with the meaning of the original text, in order to match the rhythms of his English as closely as possible to those of Wagner's archaic German. The translator has also attempted to capture some of the alliteration that is characteristic of Wagner's *stabreim*.

It is clear that Andrew Porter understands the text of the 'Ring' well enough that he was able to make this "poetic" translation without distorting the meaning of the original text. For a literal, accurate translation, the only one currently available is by Stewart Spencer (Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung: The full German text with a new translation and commentaries, Thames and Hudson, 1993). You might also be able to find in a library or for sale used, the William Mann translation (Centurion Press Ltd, 1964).

If you collect audio "Ring" CDs, throw out all the libretti that may have come with your CDs and buy porter's book! The nice thing about this translation is that it (a) is understandable, and (b) is easy to follow along to an audio performance because it matches the singing syllable to syllable. Care was also taken in the translation so that the english words occur in the appropriate places where the motif occurs in the music. Also, proper names match up one for one with the German. So, for example when someone refers to "Siegmund", on a recording, the English text at that point is "Siegmund"! Awesome synchronization!