Opera: a History in Documents.

Opera: A History in Documents by Piero Weiss. Oxford University Press (198 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016-4314), 2002. 368 pp., $35.

If you were afraid that one more perfunctory rendering of opera history in its chronological, fact-revealing format was being handed down to you, calm those fears. Piero Weiss has delivered an intriguing, insightful and simply fascinating look at opera history. While the materials are predominantly academic, this book is an important contribution to opera students, stage directors, history professors or opera lovers in general.

Keeping with Weiss's own tradition established in Music in the Western World: A History in Documents compiled with Richard Taruskin, this book contains fifty-two historical documents presented in chronological order, illustrating the evolution of the operatic form. His collection of letters, memoirs, reviews, essays, biographies and a wide variety of writings unfold fascinating and informative insights into the development of opera. Weiss begins with the descriptions of the 1589 Medici Wedding Festivities, Monteverdi's critique of Striggio's libretto to Orfeo (Monteverdi's first opera) and ends with essays by current opera composers John Adams and Philip Glass. In between, the pages are filled with noteworthy writings by Lully, Rousseau, Gluck, Mozart, Gretry, Kierkegaard, Verdi, Wagner, Nietzche, Alban Berg, Stravinsky and others.

The documents contained in this book are not new to researchers. What is new is that well over half these entries are translated into English, many for the first time. One need no longer be a scholar of foreign languages to wade through Pietro Bardi's documentation on the Birth of Opera, Metastasio's ideas on staging dramatic recitative, Tchaikovsky's writings on Eugene Onegin or Verdi's own story of how Nabucco was composed. In general, Weiss should be congratulated on his collection of informative, and in many cases witty, writings.

It is difficult to critique Weiss's comprehensive choice represented by these documents--he has managed to cover the essential schools, nationalities and important composer's writings on opera of each period. Revealing letters and essays provide insights about which we otherwise would be totally ignorant. It is encouraging, for example, to find his inclusion of numerous French romantic writings on opera, an arena all too often overlooked. If any glaring omissions exist, I would cite as a weakness the lack of documents relating to American opera of the twentieth century.

Weiss has included his own notes and interspersed comments with each document, in some cases citing historical background or factual data, and in others, simply expanding upon the information of the document that follows. Weiss does not hesitate to insert his own perspectives on questionable issues. Omissions in the texts are noted, however, and text sources are cited at the conclusion of each document.

Weiss is quite clear in his objectives as stated in the Preface: "My hope is that they [readers] will profit from such visits [to selected moments of operatic history] by gaining a closer acquaintance with the spirit that prevailed at those times in the minds of composers, librettists, critics, audiences.... But perhaps the most important benefit will be an awareness of how matters really stood then.... "It is clear that, while Weiss has not attempted to catalog the history of opera through burdensome dates, compositions and facts in the traditional textbook format, he has compiled an interesting and worthy supplement for the study of opera as viewed through the eyes of those who formed and created its evolution. Reviewed by Carl Gerbrandt, Greeley, Colorado.