First Intermissions: Commentaries from the Met (Limelight)

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M. Owen Lee was one of the great wiriters about opera, If you are looking for a guide to deep meanings in opera, he is your man.

Father M. Owen Lee is a faculty member at the University of Toronto, and a long time opera lover whose commentaries are sometimes heard during intermissions of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. His book is an affectionate series of short articles about specific operas based on his intermission talks. Among the operas treated are Faust, Les Troyens , die Meistersinger, die Frau Ohne Schatten, Contes d Hoffmann and various works by Verdi and Puccini. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Die Meistersinger, and Les Troyens.The erudition is impressive, and I learned a number of interesting things, such as the origin of the do,re,mi.. names for notes in a scale.Professor Lee lectures on Virgil at University, and his knowledge is particularly on display in regard to Les Troyens. In discussing Meistersinger, he brings out a number of things about St. John the Baptist which were new to me. The discussion of Offenbach's last opera Tales of Hoffmann stresses theincomplete nature of what the composer wrote, and the ongoing scholarshipneeded to discover missing pieces of the score. Interesting also is theway the composer used music from his previous operas- the famous Barcarolle was originally written for another opera. In spite of the erudition, the book is not an intimidating read, and the author displays a sincere love of his subject. All opera fans owe it to themselves to partake of Father Lee's writings.