SKU: BA.BA05448

ISBN 9790006471478. 33.2 x 26.5 cm inches. Text Language: French. Text: Berlioz, Hector / Nerval, Gérard de.

In 1828 Berlioz wrote the Huit scènes de Faust. The work was soon withdrawn but almost twenty years later each of the eight scenes found a place in the Lgende dramatique La damnation de Faust dedicated to Franz Liszt. The first part of the Damnation exposes the figure of Faust and has an introductory nature. From the second part onwards, the course of action is largely based on Goethe’s drama.

Contrasting characters and dramatic effect are of central importance in understanding Berlioz’s musical thought and his compositional process. Magic and fairy tale, incantations and ghosts, have been the ever-recurring themes of opera since the Baroque. It is precisely this fantasy in Berlioz's Faust, the “Opra de Concert en Quatre acts”, which comes very close to the spirit of Goethe's presentation.

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SKU: BA.BA10506-01

ISBN 9790006552009. 33 x 26 cm inches. Text Language: Italian. Text: Sterbini, Cesare.

Barenreiter's publication of a new volume of theWorks of Gioachino Rossini, in collaboration with the Center for Italian Opera Studies at the University of Chicago, makes available an edition of the operaIl barbiere di Sivigliawhich meets modern demands. The editors have recently identified numerous carelessly edited places in the last critical edition by referring to additional sources. The greatest changes relate to the overture; for the new edition, no fewer than twenty different autograph manuscripts have been consulted.

A detailed appendix containing alternative vocal parts, advice on ornamentation and compositions by Rossini significant in the performance history of the opera complete the volume.

A 420-page Critical Commentary is published separately. With this, a critical edition is now available to interpreters, enabling them to perform Rossini's ,,Barber of Sevillewith the greatest possible confidence in the accuracy of the musical material. The performance material is available on hire, and a vocal score will be published at the end of 2009.

Through 1829 Rossini was an extraordinarily prolific composer of operas, comic, serious, and semiserious, in Italian and French, as well as of a great deal of vocal and instrumental music. He composed sacred music, vocal treatises, cantatas. Then, for many different reasons, he wrote very little music for more than twentyfive years, if we except some songs and the ' Stabat Mater' . Only after he left Italy definitively for Paris in 1855 did he find his voice again.

Between 1857 and 1868 a fresh group of masterpieces issued from his pen, the so-called ' Peches de vieillesse' (Sins of Old Age), including chamber music, songs, and the 'Petite Messe Solennelle'.

Philip Gossett, General Editor of Works of Gioachino Rossini, is the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor at The University of Chicago and a professordi chiara famaat the University of RomeLa Sapienza. He is also general editor of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi.

Barenreiter in cooperation with the Center for Italian Opera Studies at The University of Chicago will publish ten volumes in the series Works of Gioachino Rossini, in critical editions, during the period 2007-2011. These are all volumes that were not issued in theEdizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini.

About Barenreiter Urtext