This is one of my favorite operas but unfortunately this recording stinks. Scarpia probably had a hand in the engineering. While the performance is of high quality the dynamics are very poor. Whoever mixed it was playing the magic flute or intoxicated with the elixir of love. The quiet passages are recorded at such low levels that I have to increase the volume to hear them, but only to find myself forced to rush over to lower the drastically over amplified loud passages. As I have a much better recording (Caballe-Carreras-Wixell on Phillips) I end up looking at this book and playing the other. This was most disappointing since I also have the companion La Boheme and Butterfly and those are excellent. Save your money on this one.....

The score in this book is perfect, it's a copy of an Ricordi Edition, if you are a conductor you can use it, don't confuise with the comment of the hardcover edition, the hardcover dosn't have the full score of the opera only this book. it's a good edition, if you like this opera buy this book.

It was once said that Puccini's "La Boheme" was all music and no drama, while "Tosca" was all drama and no music. Yet, at least to modern listeners, "Tosca," with its resonating themes, its incredible orchestrations, and its compelling story line of love, lust, loyalty, and betrayal continues to fascinate. The full score will aid the discerning listener in enjoying the scope of Puccini's genius as music and drama come together in a breathtaking rush of melody, aria, and incredible pathos. One of opera's most detestable, yet evilly engaging, villains, Baron Scarpia, stalks with regal ominousness. Floria Tosca sings one of the most poignant arias, "Visa d'arte. Visa amore." And as the plot thickens, the listener is carried to new heights of musical drama as the lovers plan their escape. But Scarpia's evil hand reaches from beyond the veil of death to thwart their flight to love and freedom. Puccini's orchestrations, his soaring melodies, and his sense of place and time have thrilled audiences for generations. Enjoy it again with the full score, and your favorite recording!

This author uses fiction and mythology to write this book. It is filled with historical errors and pure sugar coated wishes...the major one: Constantine as a Christian Martyr....He was far from it.

The seed of the Church is fed by the blood of martyrs. In a time when so much is made of supposedly Muslin martyrs, it is refreshing for Christians to recall what a true martyr is- someone who bears witness to their faith in Christ by laying down their life by the hands of persecutors. Ricciotti does an excellent job in weaving both historical narrative and quotations from primary sources to give the reader a real flavor of the stresses and glories of the early Church's position in society between 284 and 337.

The various forms of martyrdom are covered thoroughly. As well, an excellent prologue sets the stage for the political and religious climate of the era. It ends with a long discussion of various heresies that were rampant at the time (such as Arianism and Donatism). This is a very good source, in fact, for information of the Donatist Schism if you can't get a hold of Frend's massive study.

I was a bit surprised at one reviewer's remarks that this book was fit for the fire. The author of the book makes distinctions between the historical and fictional accounts of martyrdom in detail. While sympathetic to Latin Christianity, Ricciotti does not compromise his integrity as a historian. This is why I give the book five stars and the other lame review a thumbs down.

You may also enjoy reading "The Cruelty of Heresy" and Hengel's "The Cross of the Son of God".

The author, writing from an Italian and Latin perspective, is understandably less than effusive regarding the interventions of St. Constantine in the internal affairs of the Church. Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate the Great Councils, beginning with Nicea in 325 as establishing the "conciliar" pattern by which Orthodoxy defined itself against the variety of heretical uprisings in the Patristic age. With certain limitations, this is a factual, sympathetic, and balanced account of an heroic, and sinful, and ultimately repentant, man. Nevertheless, the result, with Contantine's acceptance, of the rise of Christianity in the Empire was dramatic and swift. Crucifixion and other public cruelties were abolished, the infanticide of female children was suppressed so that women came from perhaps 1/3 of the population to equality in numbers with males, slavery and other evils eventually disapeared... and the Empire lasted another thousand years until overwhelmed by the Muslim invasions.

Ever wanted to jerk off to a comic book? Well, now you can!

Giuseppe Bergman is the starring of the oldest Manara's comic books. In this episode you can live his metropolitan fantasy, you can live the dream of a young and sweet lady and you can see how art can be confuse with the real life. This is one of the best Manara's techincal performance. His illustrations for "to see the stars" will be impressed in your memory forever!

Books published at the author's own expense really should contain a warning on the seller's site. If no reputable publisher will touch it, it's likely to be pretty bad. And this one is. I was unlucky enough to buy the book before it was reviewed on site. How I wish I'd waited! It truly is appalling. I didn't know enough about the subject to recognise the historical errors, but the bad grammar, patronising style and nauseating 'folksy' wisdom made reading it a very unpleasant experience.

LiPira is a renaissance man, according to the cover blurb he is a retired dentist who plays golf. Unfortunately he's not much of a historian. You wouldn't want a historian to drill your teeth, and as "Garibaldi" demonstrates, it's probably not a good idea to have a dentist write your biographies. I was suckered by the two previous reviews, but after a dozen pages I realized that the author's mother and sister wrote them, because no discerning reader could call this book excellent. Among its many flaws:

Research: the bibliography lists eight works, none less than twenty years old, none apparently in Italian, and none primary sources. Its seems LiPira read a handful of biographies and decided to try his hand at it.

Tone: It reads like some misbegotten 1940s communist propaganda. Garibaldi is a "noble leader" who "must fulfill his destiny". Alternately the "true messiah", "megahero", "demigod" and, laughably, a "guru of libertarianism, so to speak". We read that a "swell of adoration built to a tidal wave of idolatry" and "The Neapolitans were awed by his invincibility". He is a great lover whose "wiry constitution enamored him to all in the boudoir". His troops were "feverish in their passion to begin this momentous invasion" and "follow their glorified hero to higher levels of achievement". Pretty steamy stuff.

Bad guys are "imperialists" and "royalists". Interesting since Garibaldi renounced republicanism in 1851 and spent his career fighting for a king and for a time was dictator of Sicily. LiPira resorts to marxy prose to demonstrate Garibaldi's appeal to "the masses", even criticizing merchants who disliked Garibaldi because he "impounds" their goods to feed his troops. Garibaldi was a brilliant general, but it's not necessary to disguise the fact that he was also an ambitious mercenary. One annoying riff is LiPira's strange failure to grasp the relationship between military and political power. He mewls about "political interference" and how "politics once again nullified the noble sacrifice of so many gallant men", without considering the political ends for which they were sacrificed. When Garibaldi once persisted in fighting after a war had ended, LiPira acts as though he was abandoned by conniving politicos. Perhaps the fact that Garibaldi disguised his lust for adventure with contradictory ideologies explains his pathological distrust for politicians. The book fails to engage in any real political analysis.

And it is often inaccurate: "Millions [in Marseilles] were dying each year" of cholera; "Guerrilla warfare was born in the nineteenth century"; characterizing ancient Rome as a society of "liberated people, ennobled men, and guardians of human rights". Italy "failed in its first attempt to join the League of Nations" in 1866. Once LiPira has Garibaldi retreating so as not to "pit Italians against Italians and lead to a civil war", while for fifteen years he has been fomenting civil war by leading his Italian troops against other Italians. The French had "forty cannons, forty-eight artillery pieces, and various howitzers" (howitzers are a type of cannon, and cannon a type of artillery - an odd error in a military biography). San Marino is "a small old republic", without comprehending that its tactical value to Garibaldi and the very reason that this small republic got to be an old republic is that it sits atop a mountain without good road access.

Grammar: apparently English syntax and usage aren't a part of the dental school curriculum. LiPira can't seem to get the hang of matching subject to verb: "weakness and fragility was evident". Readers will enjoy the inventive usages: "abstract poverty" (vice abject), "offshore" (vice onshore), "reactionaries" (vice revolutionaries), and "lie" as the past tense of "lie", as in "Garibaldi lie in a stupor".

Some phrases are nearly incomprehensible: "ethereal personification", "obvious casualties", "It took until June for the sailing of the Neapolitan army to depart", "his talented saber in hand", "Garibaldi presented the taking of Venice via Dalmatia and the Balkans but with governmental ties." in a battle, his "ammunition dwindled to an embarrassing minimum", "He was adamant in his belief that life is not for the privileged", "each town they passed was more friendly than the next". The death of Garibaldi's beloved wife's is described as "unwelcome". For good measure there are ethnic slurs: "subtle" Sicilians and "warlike Prussians".

Readers will get a kick out of the redundancies: "freedom and liberty", "violent battle", "due to his recuperative powers, he recovered.", his biography included an "episode from his life", "more incessant", "a ditch that served as a trench", "long two month voyage", "both fear-inspiring and terrifying", "aggressively attacked", those killed are "lost forever", "raves and adulation", "the royalist king", "disarray and disorder", and "prior history". LiPira is compelled to state the obvious: "Little did he know what the future had in store", an attack was "designed to disable the enemy and bring victory", he patiently explains that computers did not exist in 1807, and later that the Statue of Liberty (not yet built) "had not gained [its] place in history, as yet".

e.e. cummings once teased Warren Harding for writing a sentence with seven grammatical errors. LiPira has created the biographical equivalent, cramming all this into a mere 120 pages. So, while it reads like a vanity book published by a hobbyist writing in his den, at least it doesn't take very long. Oh, the worst, the very worst thing about this book is that Garibaldi's name is misspelled on the spine.

This was one of the most interesting books on Italy i have ever read. Very enjoyable indeed! I would recommend it to alot of people interesting in Italy.

I was expecting alot o clearf pictures of his works, and got none. If a text book is what you are looking for, I recomend it but since I wanted mostly pictures, I was very much dissapointed.

Tangled Web is a great concept. Cool writers get to do Spiderman related stories. Volume 1 has some of the best stories including Flowers For Rhino (Rhino becomes super smart) and Severance Package(which shows what happens to one of Kingpin's lieutenants after Spiderman messes up an operation). Sadly, as a whole, the series is uneven.

This edition of Tangled Web is volume III. I cannot attest to the goodness of this volume because i have not read all the issues it collects, but it contains my favorite issue of Tangled Web, #13 which features a villain bar populated by Doc Oc, Matador, Stiltman, and Whirlwind. The story centers around a Mystery Man, The Vulture, and Kraven meeting in a bar and swapping stories. The Vulture/Kraven dynamic is hilarious but the last two pages of the story would stun any spiderman fan. I don't want to spoil it, so just find the back issue or buy this book.

How do you imagine the life of a young boy in the Italy of 1980? As Culicchia says in his book life is a "girotondo", a kind of dance for children, where you always turn around: is life really so? The protagonist always goes on, looking for a job, for a girlfriend, to discover something new in a so boring life... Is there a end or, rather, this circle will go on forever? He doesn't know it, but, at the moment, he waits for a surprise...

A group of Matemathical Researchers of several Universties of the World, disciples and friends of Professor James Serrin (one of the best developers of "Rational Mechanics" along with C. Truesdell, W. Noll, N.A. Toupin and R. S. Rivling just to mention a few), compiled some of their works in a book to honor Professor Serrin for his 65th birthday. Even when the book's content is interesting since deals with Nonlinear Analysis, it lacks the "Classic Approach" of the Continuum Mechanics that just Professor Serrin could impregnate to it. At the beggining of the book a list of J. Serrin's papers is shown as well as an unique paper of him at the end of the book which is not enough to me by considering the title of the book. Now I am aware that I misunderstood the second title of the book: "Papers for the 65th Birthday of James Serrin" which I thought it meant: "Collected Papers for the 65th Birthday of James Serrin".

The prose style of this book gets in it's way. Unfortunately Eric Olsen is correct. Though Sicily has a fascinating history, dramatic and exciting, it certainly does not come through in this poorly translated book. It's the fault of the translator that it fails. Justin Vitiello's command of English is not what it might be were he less pretentious in his choice of language and syntax. One imagines it reads better in the Italian of Quatriglio who should find himself a better translator. There is merit in the information, were it better presented.

Disappointing political history. While Sicily undoubtedly has a fascinating and rich history, it did not come through in this work. Perhaps this was due to the fact that the journalist author wrote in disjointed journalistic dispatches: whenever the material began to get interesting, the author dropped the topic and moved on to the next headline; furthermore, his narrow focus on political events (with a smattering of high culture) made the survey of "A Thousand Years in Sicily" rather superficial. The extraordinarily awful translation only compounded these problems.

Actually, this would be a very good book for an Italian who wants to learn English. It provides proper pronunciation information for all English words, but not for the Italian words. It simply lists the Italian word and the English equivalent.