The New Grove Guide to Verdi and His Operas

This book is essentially extracted from the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, gathering together the items for Verdi. It contains a chronology of Verdi's works and highly significant events in his life, a 30 page biography, followed by almost 200 pages devoted to the operas separately. A not very useful glossary and (more useful) index of roles completes the work.The individual opera discussions tend to follow a fixed pattern: a very brief characterization of the type of opera and its first performance; A list of the initial cast.; a table of the characters -- and the categories of voice for which they were written; a brief description of the background to the writing of the opera and its initial reception; a fairly lengthy synopsis of the plot and major musical feature; a brief assessment of the opera.By and large all these features are very well done. I would have liked more analysis, and at times there are tantalizing snippets of information whose relevance is not followed up. You are not likely to sit down and read this book from cover to cover -- it is presumably not intended for such use. Instead, it provides an excellent vehicle for looking up the nature of particular Verdi operas and where each one fits in to his work -- there is remarkably little about the contemporary musical scenes.