cover image First Intermissions: Twenty-One Great Operas Explored, Explained, and Brought to Life from the Met

First Intermissions: Twenty-One Great Operas Explored, Explained, and Brought to Life from the Met

M. Owen Lee. Oxford University Press, USA, $23 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-19-509255-4

Despite the limitations of the format-intermission commentary drawn from the Texaco-Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts between 1984 and 1993-this collection makes rewarding casual reading. Lee, a Catholic priest and a Canadian classics professor, is an inspired guide to the operas considered, with separate chapters devoted to each of six Verdi operas, five by Wagner, three by Strauss, two by Puccini, one by Mozart and a chapter encompassing four French operas. He views Die Meistersinger as a master song in itself and notes its peculiarity in the Wagner canon for turning the listener outward rather than inward. No composer, shows Lee, reads our hearts as deeply as Verdi, especially in his depictions of fathers and their children (Rigoletto and Gilda; the Germonts). Puccini, on the other hand, is an executioner-Tosca with its firing squad; La Fanciulla del West, a lynch mob-darkly interested in the suffering of his characters. Lee's radio talks deserve their recovery from the ether. Illustrated. (Dec.)