Ticket to the Opera offers a complete operatic education, including history, definitions of key musical terms, opera lore and gossip, and portraits of famous singers and the roles they
immortalized, as well as pithy introductions to the greatest operas of Europe and America and their composers. The book`s centerpiece is what Phil Goulding terms ”the collection” - 85 classics,
among them Aida, The Marriage of Figaro, Carmen, and Madame Butterfly, that have been packing the world`s opera houses for years. This meticulously researched book also includes a fascinating
chapter on American opera from George Gershwin`s Porgy and Bess to Philip Glass`s Einstein on the Beach and a discussion of the gems of twentieth-century opera featuring works like Leos
Janacek`s The Cunning Little Vixen, Alban Berg`s Lulu, and Sergei Prokofiev`s The Love for Three Oranges.
