Thank you to Netgalley and Columbia University Press for the eARC! All opinions expressed are my own.

About 1-2 years ago I became interested in opera so I was really excited for this work!

This is published posthumously and Studies 4 different operas; Cosi fan tutte Les Troyens, Fidelio, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The essays were originally meant as lectures and are placed in a 1990s context, mainly focused on New York productions.

Because it’s published after Said’s death and before he was able to complete the manuscript it does feel incomplete. Especially since there’s no conclusion that Said was able to write.

It’s also not what I was expecting as it’s very dry and academic, focusing on the musicology and performance (discussing the operas scene by scene) rather than how opera can/should evolve like what the synopsis seemed to suggest (“Said explores how each opera engages with the social and political questions of their own eras—and how they might speak to the present”).

 I didn’t get much of that, instead getting an explanation of what each opera is about, but not how it was received during the time it would’ve been written and first performed. Or how present day adaptations can evolve to maintain the original message but relate to modern audiences (such as the 2022 production of the METs Bride of Lammermoor set in 2010s Detroit during the opioid crisis.

I enjoyed the introduction and was excited for this book but the following chapters ended up disappointing me. I was often bored and couldn’t fully grasp what Said was talking about. The musicology (and a lot of the vocabulary) went over my head, as a casual opera goer. Definitely a book for academics and people with knowledge of the music/musicology field and not for readers with more of a hobbyist knowledge of opera, like myself.