Complete histories of opera are not numerous these days. For a long time, the standard work was Donald Jay Grout, A Short History of Opera (1947; 4th edn, with Hermine Weigel Williams, New York, 2003); this has been periodically updated, although it still bears the stamp of its musicological period of creation, in which most Italian opera of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was suspect (to say the least). The opera sections of Richard Taruskin’s Oxford History of Western Music, 6 vols. (Oxford, 2005), are far more up to date and reliable, not to mention bracingly controversial at times. An excellent recent survey, albeit one concentrating on the social aspects of the story, is Daniel Snowman’s The Gilded Stage (London, 2009). In the field of opera criticism Joseph Kerman’s Opera as Drama (1956; rev. edn, Berkeley, 1988) still retains its power, even though it condemns almost all eighteenth-century opera (and, implicitly, much of the nineteenth-century repertoire) to what Kerman calls ‘the dark ages’. Gary Tomlinson’s Metaphysical Song (Princeton, 1999) is in some ways a modern version of Kerman, albeit with a much broader purview. Bernard Williams’s On Opera (New Haven, 2006) is a typically thought-provoking reflection by a leading philosopher.
Other worthwhile general histories include: Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, eds., Opera Production and Its Resources (Chicago, 1998), and the same authors’ Opera on Stage (Chicago, 2002), both of which take a very broad view of Italian opera; John Rosselli, Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession (Cambridge, 1992); Susan Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–1930 (Cambridge, 2007); Thomas Forrest Kelly, First Nights at the Opera (New Haven, 2004); Roger Parker, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera (Oxford, 1994); and Piero Weiss, Opera: A History in Documents (New York, 2002). The various Grove Dictionaries offer the most reliable factual compendia; Amanda Holden, ed., The Penguin Opera Guide (London, 2002) is also excellent.
John Butt and Tim Carter, eds., The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Music (Cambridge, 2008), provides an up-to-date introduction to the period, and contains several fine essays on opera. Lorenzo Bianconi, Music in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1987), remains important, particularly in its coverage of the Italian scene. For the period before 1600, see Frederick W. Sternfeld, The Birth of Opera (Oxford, 1993). On Monteverdi generally, see especially: Denis Stevens, The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi (Cambridge, 1980); Gary Tomlinson, Monteverdi and the End of the Renaissance (Berkeley, 1987); and John Whenham and Richard Wistreich, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Monteverdi (Cambridge, 2007). Directly concerned with Monteverdi’s operas are: John Whenham, Claudio Monteverdi: Orfeo (Cambridge, 1986), and Tim Carter, Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre (New Haven, 2002). For Venetian opera, the standard work is Ellen Rosand, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley, 1991). For Cavalli, see Jane Glover, Cavalli (London, 1978); for Purcell, see Curtis Price, Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge, 1984). Beth L. Glixon and Jonathan E. Glixon, Inventing the Business of Opera: The Impresario and His World in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Oxford, 2006), offers a document-rich account of the business of Italian opera in the period.
For Italian opera seria in the eighteenth century, the place to start is Martha Feldman’s Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy (Chicago, 2007), which is the most thoroughgoing attempt to connect the genre to broader intellectual currents. Reinhard Strohm’s Dramma per musica. Italian Opera Seria of the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, 2007) is also very good, while Michael F. Robinson’s Naples and Neapolitan Opera (Oxford, 1972) covers the minor figures. Enrico Fubini, Music & Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe: A Source Book (Chicago, 1994), offers a valuable compendium of contemporary sources on opera. Those wishing to know more about castrati should consult Patrick Barbier, The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon (London, 1998); see also Angus Heriot, Castrati in Opera (London, 1956). Well-written general books on Handel include Jonathan Keates, Handel: The Man and His Music (London, 2008), and Christopher Hogwood, Handel (London, 2009). On Handel’s operas, the standard work is Winton Dean, Handel’s Operas (vol. 1, Oxford, 1987; vol. 2, Woodbridge, 2006); see also Reinhard Strohm, Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1985).
Charles Burney, A General History of Music (London, 1776–89) and Burney, The Present State of Music in France and Italy (London, 1773), offer wonderful contemporary viewpoints on opera (and opera’s history). For a general history of the period, with ample cultural context, see Daniel Heartz, From Garrick to Gluck: Essays on Opera in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. John A. Rice (Hillsdale, 2004). Downing A. Thomas, Aesthetics of Opera in the Ancien Régime, 1647–1785 (Cambridge, 2002), is good on the French context. On Gluck, see Bruce Alan Brown, Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna (Oxford, 1991); useful insights can also still be found in Ernest Newman, Gluck and Opera. A Study in Musical History (London, 1895). On Orfeo, see Patricia Howard, C. W. Gluck: Orfeo (Cambridge, 1981); on Gluck’s reception in the nineteenth century, see Simon Goldhill, Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity: Art, Opera, Fiction, and the Proclamation of Modernity (Princeton, 2011). On Rameau, see Charles Dill, Monstrous Opera: Rameau and the Tragic Tradition (Princeton, 1998). For general books on Mozart, see the bibliography to Chapter 5; for Idomeneo in particular, see Julian Rushton, W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo (Cambridge, 1993).
The intellectual background that helped to form Mozart’s mature comedies has been the subject of several excellent books. See in particular Daniel Heartz, with contributing essays by Thomas Bauman, Mozart’s Operas (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990); Mary Hunter, The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart’s Vienna (Princeton, 1999); and Thomas Bauman and Marita Petzoldt McClymonds, eds., Opera and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2006). For insightful discussions of the operas, see David Cairns, Mozart and His Operas (London, 2006); Ivan Nagel, Autonomy and Mercy: Reflections on Mozart’s Operas, trans. Marion Faber and Ivan Nagel (Cambridge, Mass., 1991); Andrew Steptoe, The Mozart–Da Ponte Operas: Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte (Oxford, 1988); and Nicholas Till, Mozart and the Enlightenment: Truth, Virtue and Beauty in Mozart’s Operas (London, 1992). For book-length treatments of individual Da Ponte operas, see: Tim Carter, W. A. Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro (Cambridge, 1987); Lydia Goehr and Daniel Herwitz, eds., Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera (New York, 2006); Julian Rushton, W. A. Mozart: Don Giovanni (Cambridge, 1981); and Bruce Alan Brown, W. A. Mozart: Così fan tutte (Cambridge, 1995).
The best general introduction to the issues in this chapter are the relevant chapters of John Warrack, German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner (Cambridge, 2001). For more detailed studies of the German operatic landscape, see Thomas Baumann, North German Opera in the Age of Goethe (Cambridge, 1985), and Matthew Riley, Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment (Aldershot, 2004). For the French perspective, see David Charlton, Grétry and the Growth of Opéra comique (Cambridge, 1986). In addition to the general Mozart literature mentioned in the bibliography to Chapter 5, books that particularly concern Mozart’s German operas include: Thomas Baumann, W. A. Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Cambridge, 1987); Peter Branscombe, W. A. Mozart: Die Zauberflöte (Cambridge, 1991); and David Buch, Magic Flutes and Enchanted Forests: The Supernatural in Eighteenth-Century Musical Theater (Chicago, 2008).
Edmond Michotte, Richard Wagner’s Visit to Rossini (Chicago, 1968), is the most reliable account of the fateful meeting between those two composers. The best general introduction to Beethoven is Lewis Lockwood’s Beethoven: The Music and the Life (New York, 2003). Glen Stanley, The Cambridge Companion to Beethoven (Cambridge, 2000), offers a reliable introduction to the music; for Fidelio in particular, see Paul Robinson, Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio (Cambridge, 1996). For the French background, see Malcolm Boyd, ed., Music and the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1992); Victoria Johnson, Backstage at the Revolution. How the Royal Paris Opera Survived the End of the Old Regime (Chicago, 2008); and Jean Mongrédien, French Music from the Enlightenment to Romanticism 1789–1830 (Huddersfield, 1996). For Cherubini, the English-language source is still Basil Deane, Cherubini (Oxford, 1965). There are two excellent compendia on E. T. A. Hoffmann: Abigail Chantier, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Aesthetics (Aldershot, 2006), and David Charlton, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings (Cambridge, 1989). The best general introduction to Weber remains John Warrack, Carl Maria von Weber (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1976). More specific to his operas are: Michael C. Tusa, Euryanthe and Carl Maria von Weber’s Dramaturgy of German Opera (Oxford, 1991), and Stephen C. Mayer, Carl Maria von Weber and the Search for a German Opera (Bloomington, 2003).
A good general introduction to the period can be found in the relevant chapters of David Kimbell, Italian Opera (Cambridge, 1994). Richard Osborne’s Rossini (2nd edn, Oxford, 2007) is the best available life-and-works, although Herbert Weinstock, Rossini: A Biography (New York, 1968), has abundant documentary information. Stendhal (Henri Beyle), Life of Rossini, trans. Richard N. Coe (London, 1956), is highly idiosyncratic (and often unreliable), but it is also full of passion and delightful exaggeration. Recent scholarly attitudes are collected in Emanuele Senici, The Cambridge Companion to Rossini (Cambridge, 2004).
John Rosselli, The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi: The Role of the Impresario (Cambridge, 1984), provides an excellent introduction to the Italian opera ‘industry’; just as the same author’s Music and Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Italy (London, 1991) sets the broader cultural scene. With Donizetti, the place to start is William Ashbrook, Donizetti (Cambridge, 1982); Herbert Weinstock, Donizetti (London, 1964), has further information about Donizetti’s milieu. Bellini’s life is succinctly dealt with in John Rosselli, The Life of Bellini (Cambridge, 1996), while David Kimbell, Vincenzo Bellini: Norma (Cambridge, 1998), offers a good introduction to Bellini’s most famous opera. For a stimulating account of one particular genre in this repertoire, see Emanuele Senici, Landscape and Gender in Italian Opera: The Alpine Virgin from Bellini to Puccini (Cambridge, 2009). For fascinating insights into the musical-gestural language, see Mary Ann Smart, Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera (Berkeley, 2004).
The classic account of Verdi’s operas remains Julian Budden’s magnificent three-volume study, The Operas of Verdi (London, 1973, 1978, 1981), the first of which takes us up to Rigoletto. The same author’s one-volume treatment in the ‘Master Musicians’ series, Verdi (3rd edn, Oxford, 2008), also includes a section on the life. For a briefer account of Verdi’s life and works, see Roger Parker, The New Grove Guide to Verdi and His Operas (Oxford, 2007). The classic biography remains Frank Walker, The Man Verdi (London, 1962), although John Rosselli’s brief Life of Verdi (Cambridge, 2000) is more up to date. William Weaver’s Verdi: A Documentary Study (London, n.d.) offers an excellent compendium of pictorial evidence. Scott Balthazar, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Verdi (Cambridge, 2004), is generally reliable. Volumes dedicated to the early operas in particular include Gabriele Baldini, The Story of Giuseppe Verdi (Cambridge, 1980), David R. B. Kimbell, Verdi and the Age of Italian Romanticism (Cambridge, 1985), and David Rosen and Andrew Porter, Verdi’s Macbeth: A Sourcebook (New York, 1984).
There are several stimulating and up-to-date general books on French Grand Opera, which is, it seems, much more popular with musicologists than with opera-house managers and audiences. Among the best are: David Charlton, The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera (Cambridge, 2003); Jane Fulcher, The Nation’s Image: French Grand Opera as Politics and Politicized Art (Cambridge, 1987); Anselm Gerhard, The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1998); and Sarah Hibberd, French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, 2009). Benjamin Walton’s Rossini in Restoration Paris: The Sound of Modern Life (Cambridge, 2007) is excellent on the cultural background of Rossini’s last operatic phase. Berlioz is also very well served: see in particular David Cairns’s fine biography, Berlioz, 2 vols. (London, 1989, 1999), and the same author’s edition of the Memoirs of Hector Berlioz (London, 1969). A book-length account of Berlioz’s largest Grand Opera is provided by Ian Kemp, Hector Berlioz: Les Troyens (Cambridge, 1989). On Meyerbeer, see Heinz and Gundrun Becker, Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Life in Letters (London, 1989), and Mark Everist, Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Aldershot, 2005). A variety of cultural backgrounds are explored in Mark Everist and Annegret Fauser, eds., Music, Theatre, Cultural Transfer: Paris 1830–1914 (Chicago, 2009). Cormac Newark, Opera in the Novel from Balzac to Proust (Cambridge, 2011), presents a fascinating tour through grand opera’s novelistic appearances.
Those wishing to explore the Wagner bibliography will find a famously crowded field. William Ashton Ellis, ed. and trans, Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, 8 vols. (London, 1892–1912) offers a translation, now very dated, of most of the important prose works. Also valuable here is Richard Wagner, My Life, trans. Andrew Gray (Cambridge, 1983), and Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington, Selected Letters of Richard Wagner (London, 1988). The standard life remains Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1976), although there are reliable briefer treatments by Derek Watson, Richard Wagner: A Biography (London, 1979), and Barry Millington, Wagner (Princeton, 1992). There are numerous recent volumes of collected essays: Barry Millington, ed., The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner’s Life and Music (London, 1992); Ulrich Müller and Peter Wapnewski, The Wagner Handbook (Boston, 1992); Thomas S. Grey, The Cambridge Companion to Wagner (Cambridge, 2008); and the same author’s Wagner and His World (Princeton, 2009). Monographs on the composer and his operas are also legion. Among the most stimulating are: Theodor Adorno, In Search of Wagner, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London, 1981); Carl Dahlhaus, Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas (Cambridge, 1979); Michael Tanner, Wagner (London, 1996); Joachim Köhler, Richard Wagner: The Last of the Titans (London, 2004); and John Deathridge, Wagner beyond Good and Evil (Berkeley, 2008). Thomas S. Grey, Richard Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer (Cambridge, 2000), offers a book-length treatment of one of the early operas. Patrick Carnegy’s Wagner and the Art of the Theatre (New Haven, 2006) offers the best recent account of the history of Wagner staging.
A good general introduction to the period, with much about opéra comique, is provided in Hervé Lacombe, The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 2001). For Bizet, the most reliable account of the life and works remains Winton Dean, Bizet (3rd edn, London, 1975); see also Mina Curtis, Bizet and His World (New York, 1974). On Bizet’s most famous opera, see Susan McClary, Georges Bizet: Carmen (Cambridge, 1992). On Offenbach, the best general introduction is still Siegfried Kracauer, Offenbach and the Paris of His Time (London, 1937); see also Alex Faris, Jacques Offenbach (Boston, 1980), and Heather Hadlock, Mad Loves: Women and Music in Offenbach’s ‘Les Contes d’Hoffmann’ (Princeton, 2000).
(For Wagner books in general, see the bibliography to Chapter 12.) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1967), presents the original texts of a famous controversy. For books that specifically address the later works, see: John Warrack, Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Cambridge, 1994); Roger Scruton, The Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’ (New York, 2004); Arthur Groos, Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (Cambridge, 2011); and Lawrence Kramer, Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and Strauss (Berkeley, 2004).
(For Verdi books in general, see the bibliography to Chapter 10.) The second and third volumes of Julian Budden’s The Operas of Verdi (London, 1978, 1981) cover the operas of this later period. For books that specifically address the later works, see: Hans Busch, Verdi’s ‘Aida’: The History of an Opera in Letters and Documents (Minneapolis, 1978), and the same author’s Verdi’s ‘Otello’ and ‘Simon Boccanegra’ in Letters and Documents, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1988); James Hepokoski, Giuseppe Verdi: Otello (Cambridge, 1987); and the same author’s Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff (Cambridge, 1983). Marcello Conati, Interviews and Encounters with Verdi (London, 1984), provides a fascinating account of the manner in which Verdi projected his image to journalists and others in the second half of his career. Gundula Kreuzer, Verdi and the Germans: From Unification to the Third Reich (Cambridge, 2010), presents a revealing account of Verdi’s reception in Germany from 1870 onwards.
Three excellent recent books about the Russian operatic background are: Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically (Princeton, 1997); Marina Frolova-Walker, Russian Music and Nationalism (New Haven, 2007); and Richard Taruskin, On Russian Music (Berkeley, 2009). For Musorgsky in general, see Caryl Emerson, The Life of Musorgsky (Cambridge, 1999), and Richard Taruskin, Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue (Princeton, 1993). For Boris in particular, see Caryl Emerson and Robert W. Oldani, Modest Musorgsky and Boris Godunov: Myths, Realities, Reconsiderations (Cambridge, 1994). For general introductions to three important fin-de-siècle opera composers, see: David Brown, Tchaikovsky: The Man and His Music (New York, 2007); Stephen Huebner, The Operas of Charles Gounod (Oxford, 1990); and Demar Irvine, Massenet: A Chronicle of His Life and Times (Portland, 1994). Alan Mallach, The Autumn of Italian Opera: From Verismo to Modernism, 1890–1915 (Chicago, 2007), offers a good introduction to the post-Verdi phase of Italian opera. For Puccini in particular, see: William Ashbrook, The Operas of Puccini (Ithaca, 1985); Mosco Carner, Puccini: A Critical Biography (London, 1974); Michele Girardi, Puccini: His International Art (Chicago, 2000); Julian Budden, Puccini: His Life and Works (Oxford, 2002); and Alexandra Wilson, The Puccini Problem: Opera, Nationalism and Modernity (Cambridge, 2007). Two of Puccini’s early operas are treated at book length in Arthur Groos and Roger Parker, Giacomo Puccini: La bohème (Cambridge, 1986), and Mosco Carner, Giacomo Puccini: Tosca (Cambridge, 1985).
The effect of Wagner is discussed in David C. Large and William Weber, eds., Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics (Ithaca, 1984). For Wagner-obsessed France, the best place to start is Steven Huebner, French Opera at the ‘Fin de Siècle’: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (Oxford, 1999); see also Robin Holloway, Debussy and Wagner (London, 1979). Many of Debussy’s writings are collected in François Lesure, ed., Debussy on Music (Ithaca, 1988). Recent multi-author books about the composer include: Jane Fulcher, ed., Debussy and His World (Princeton, 2001), and Simon Trezise, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Debussy (Cambridge, 2003). Robert Orledge’s Debussy and the Theatre (Cambridge, 1982) is a valuable introduction to the composer’s broader theatrical enthusiasms. Books devoted to his great opera include: David Grayson, The Genesis of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (Ann Arbor, 1986), and Roger Nichols and Richard Langham Smith, Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande (Cambridge, 1989). General introductions to Strauss include: Michael Kennedy, Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma (Cambridge, 1999); Bryan Gilliam, The Life of Richard Strauss (Cambridge, 1999); and Bryan Gilliam, ed., Richard Strauss and His World (Princeton, 1992). For in-depth accounts of his two first operatic successes, see: Derrick Puffett, Richard Strauss: Salome (Cambridge, 1989), and the same author’s Richard Strauss: Elektra (Cambridge, 1990). For Bartók, see Peter Laki, ed., Bartók and His World (Princeton, 1995), and Carl S. Leafstedt, Inside Bluebeard’s Castle: Music and Drama in Béla Bartók’s Opera (Oxford, 1999). For the rich post-Wagnerian atmosphere in Vienna, see Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1980). On Schoenberg, see Joseph Auner, A Schoenberg Reader: Documents of a Life (New Haven, 2003), and Carl Dahlhaus, Schoenberg and the New Music (Cambridge, 1987). For Janácˇek, see: John Tyrrell, Czech Opera (Cambridge, 2005); the same author’s Janácˇek’s Operas: A Documentary Account (London, 1992); and Michael Beckerman, Janácˇek and His World (Princeton, 2003).
For an introduction to and contemporary sources concerning early Modernism, see: Daniel Albright, Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts (Chicago, 2000); the same author’s Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources (Chicago, 2004); and Christopher Butler, Early Modernism: Literature, Music and Painting in Europe 1900–1916 (Oxford, 1994). The general Strauss literature is listed in the bibliography to Chapter 17. For Rosenkavalier, see Hans Hammelman and Ewald Osers, The Correspondence between Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal (London, 1961), and Alan Jefferson, Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier (Cambridge, 1985). For Berg in general, see Anthony Pople, The Cambridge Companion to Berg (Cambridge, 1997). For Wozzeck, see Douglas Jarman, Alban Berg: Wozzeck (Cambridge, 1989); even more in-depth analysis of both Berg’s operas (emphatically not for the fair-hearted) is offered in George Perle, The Operas of Alban Berg, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1980, 1989). Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky: The Second Exile: France and America, 1934–1971 (London, 2006), gives a biographical context for The Rake’s Progress. See also Jonathan Cross, The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky (Cambridge, 2003), and Paul Griffiths, Igor Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress (Cambridge, 1982).
Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (London, 2008) provides a perceptive and enjoyable introduction to this period and its discontents. On Ravel, see Vladimir Jankélévitch, Ravel (London, 1959), an individual, highly poetic view of the composer, still worth reading. Deborah Mawer, The Cambridge Companion to Ravel (Cambridge, 2000), provides a recent compendium. On Weill and Krenek, see: Bryan Gilliam, ed., Music and Performance during the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 1994); Lys Symonette and Kim H. Kowalke, eds., Speak Low (When You Speak of Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya (Berkeley, 1996); Stephen Hinton, Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera (Cambridge, 1990); Ernst Krenek, Horizons Circled: Reflections on My Life in Music (Berkeley, 1974); and John L. Stewart, Ernst Krenek: The Man and His Music (Berkeley, 1991). On Shostakovich, see: Rosamund Bartlett, Shostakovich in Context (Oxford, 2000); Laurel Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford, 1999); and the same author’s Shostakovich and His World (Princeton, 2004).
For a series of (mostly) optimistic essays on opera’s last complete century, see Mervyn Cooke, The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera (Cambridge, 2005). General books on Britten include Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London, 1992), and Mervyn Cooke, The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten (Cambridge, 1999). A sceptical view is offered in Heather Wiebe, Britten’s Unquiet Pasts: Sound and Memory in Postwar Reconstruction (Cambridge, 2012). On Peter Grimes, see Philip Brett, Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes (Cambridge, 1983). The literature of John Adams is increasing; see in particular Thomas May, ed., The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer (Pompton Plains, NJ, 2006).
On recent trends in opera production, see Thomas Sutcliffe, Believing in Opera (London, 1996), Marcia Citron, Opera on Screen (New Haven, 2000), and David J. Levin, Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky (Chicago, 2007).