Performing opera

"In Performing Opera: A Practical Guide for Singers and Directors Michael Ewans provides a detailed and practical workbook to performing many of the most commonly produced operas. Aimed at singers and directors as well as opera lovers, it draws on examples from twenty-four operas ranging in period from Gluck and Mozart to Britten and Tippett, to illustrate exactly how opera functions as dramatic form: how words are illuminated by the composer's music and, in turn, how the singers' movements, expressions, gestures and use of props, together with the costumes and décor, present the director's…