cover image Season of Opera from Orpheus T

Season of Opera from Orpheus T

M. Owen Lee. University of Toronto Press, $39 (254pp) ISBN 978-0-8020-4296-5

In these eloquent essays, some written as commentaries for New York Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, Father Lee (First Intermissions) explores meaning in the words and music of 23 operatic masterpieces. He begins with Monteverdi's myth-based Orfeo and moves on to major works composed during the 400 years of opera's existence, concluding with Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, where he finds a message of renewal and rebirth for a world entering a new century. As a Catholic priest and a professor of classics, Lee is well versed in mythology, psychology, philosophy, history and literature. He combines spirituality, learning and a compassionate understanding of human nature to deepen our appreciation of, for example, the universal myths that underlie Mozart's The Magic Flute; the ideals of love and freedom at the heart of Beethoven's Fidelio; the archetypal symbols that permeate Verdi's Il Trovatore; the ""exchanges of grace"" that imbue the conversations of the nuns in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites. The chapter on Tristan und Isolde, especially, is a tour de force--an elegant exploration of the levels of meaning through which Wagner expressed in music humankind's ""yearning for the infinite."" Lee believes that ""[t]o anyone who loves opera, life isn't really thinkable without it."" His passion for opera and his sensitivity to what the works say about the human spirit make his essays a great pleasure to read. Includes short annotated bibliography and a list, with commentary, of Lee's favorite recordings and videos of the operas. (Oct.)