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\"Libretto-bashing has a distinguished tradition in the blood sport of opera,\" writes Arthur Groos in the introduction to this broad survey of critical approaches to that much-maligned genre. To examine, and to challenge, the long-standing prejudice against libretti and the scholarly tradition that has, until recently, reiterated it, Groos and Roger Parker have commissioned thirteen stimulating essays by musicologists, literary critics, and historians. Taken as a whole, the volume demonstrates that libretti are now very much within the purview of contemporary humanistic scholarship. Libretti pose questions of intertextuality, transposition of genre, and reception history. They invite a broad spectrum of contemporary reading strategies ranging from the formalistic to the feminist. And as texts for music they raise issues in the relation between the two mediums and their respective traditions. Reading Opera will be of value to anyone with a serious interest in opera and contemporary opera criticism. The essays cover the period from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on works of the later nineteenth century. The contributors are Carolyn Abbate, William Ashbrook, Katherine Bergeron, Caryl Emerson, Nelly Furman, Sander L. Gilman, Arthur Groos, James A. Hepokoski, Jurgen Maehder, Roger Parker, Paul Robinson, Christopher Wintle, and Susan Youens. Originally published in 1988. ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In these essays, Roger Parker brings a series of valuable insights to bear on Verdian analysis and criticism, and does so in a way that responds both to an opera-goer's love of musical drama and to a scholar's concern for recent critical trends. As he writes at one point: \"opera challenges us by means of its brash impurity, its loose ends and excess of meaning, its superfluity of narrative secrets.\" Verdi's works, many of which underwent drastic revisions over the years and which sometimes bore marks of an unusual collaboration between composer and librettist, illustrate in particular why it can sometimes be misleading to assign fixed meanings to an opera. Parker instead explores works likeRigoletto, Il trovatore, La forza del destino, andFalstafffrom a variety of angles, and addresses such contentious topics as the composer's involvement with Italian politics, the possibilities of an \"authentic\" staging of his work, and the advantages and pitfalls of analyzing his operas according to terms that his contemporaries might have understood. Parker takes into account many of the interdisciplinary influences currently engaging musicologists, in particular narrative and feminist theory. But he also demonstrates that close attention to the documentary evidence--especially that offered by autograph scores--can stimulate equal interpretive activity. This book serves as a model of research and critical thinking about opera, while nevertheless retaining a deep respect for opera's continuing power to touch generations of listeners.

The other two principals came from the Metropolitan Opera. Tenor Allan Glassman proved a resourceful actor, economically depicting Faust in old age and in youth. He has a strong, resilient voice that he maneuvered skillfully through [Arrigo Boito]'s obstacle course. Bass Raymond Aceto brought vocal firepower, idiomatic diction, and interpretive imagination to Mefistofele, as well as a playful spirit that might be more appropriate to Gounod's \"Faust.\" He sang loud and louder all the time, but that was partly the composer's fault - the trombones are never far away. [Jeffrey Rink], once a \"Mefistofele\" chorister himself, got off to a tepid start in the prologue championed by Toscanini, but warmed to the task and conducted most of the opera as if his immortal soul depended on it.

The reason for [Arrigo] Boito's ''Mefistofele'' at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night could be found at the top of the cast list. Samuel Ramey has made a minor career of the title role, and this production -- questionable in its taste as well as its state of repair -- has been following him around the world since its birth at the Grand Theatre de Geneve 12 years ago. Mr. Ramey is his usual wonderful self. The voice is rich and commanding; the profile appropriately devilish and the figure nicely athletic. Modeling a wardrobe of surreal evening clothes, he bounds about the stage and leers splendidly. One is more ambivalent about the opera around him. Unsuspecting fans of Goethe's ''Faust'' will be surprised to discover profound explorations of the human condition reduced to splashy Italian melodrama, but how could they not be raised up by the soaring, stepwise celestial chorus that serves as bookends for the untidy and uneven materials held between, or for that matter by Margherita's ''L'altra notte in fondo al mare'' with its ambiguous slitherings between the major and minor modes?

The bass Samuel Ramey comes from Colby, Kan., a farm town of 5,000. The population was 5,000 when Mr. Ramey was born there 57 years ago. The population is still 5,000. Among his most familiar roles are Mephistopheles in Gounod's ''Faust'' and in Berlioz's ''Damnation of Faust,'' Nick Shadow in Stravinsky's ''Rake's Progress'' and the four villains, each a Devil incarnate, in Offenbach's ''Tales of Hoffmann.'' The operatic Devil he has portrayed most often is the title character of Arrigo Boito's ''Mefistofele,'' which he will sing in a series of performances at the Metropolitan Opera beginning tonight. The Met has not presented the opera for 75 years. And Mr. Ramey has been the most effective champion of this intriguing and neglected work. The production, new to the Met, was initially conceived as a vehicle for Mr. Ramey and a creative team including the director Robert Carsen and the set and costume designer Michael Levine. It was first presented in Geneva in 1988, then at the San Francisco Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which jointly own the production. Since then it has become a sort of Samuel Ramey touring show, with additional stops at the Houston Grand Opera and the Washington Opera and return bookings in in San Francisco, Chicago and Houston.