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A Mad Love
- An Introduction to Opera
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
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A Mad Love
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Publisher's Summary
A lively introduction to opera, from the Renaissance to the 21st century
There are few art forms as visceral and emotional as opera - and few that are as daunting for newcomers. A Mad Love offers a spirited and indispensable tour of opera's eclectic past and present, beginning with Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in 1607, generally considered the first successful opera, through classics like Carmen and La Boheme, and spanning to Brokeback Mountain and The Death of Klinghoffer in recent years. Musician and critic Vivien Schweitzer acquaints listeners with the genre's most important composers and some of its most influential performers, recounts its long-standing debates, and explains its essential terminology.
Today, opera is everywhere, from the historic houses of major opera companies to movie theaters and public parks to offbeat performance spaces and our earbuds. A Mad Love is an essential audiobook for anyone who wants to appreciate this living, evolving art form in all its richness.
Critic Reviews
"Dynamic. Passionate. Searing. ALIVE! Vivien Schweitzer's A Mad Love: An Introduction to Opera captures everything I love about this often misunderstood art form. She connects the stories and musical treasures from across the centuries of opera to go straight to the heart of why opera is addictive and life-affirming. This is the perfect starting point if you're a beginner, and an ideal landing point if you need to be reminded of why you fell in love with opera in the first place!" (Joyce DiDonato)
"A wonderful and welcoming introduction to an art form that can seem elusive and forbidding. A Mad Love is engaging and entertaining for anyone from the opera newbie to the cognoscenti. I was drawn in by Schweitzer's intimate conversational style, and you will be as well." (Francesca Zambello, artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival and artistic director of the Washington National Opera)
"Opera composers often spin out just a thought or two into expansive arias. Vivien Schweitzer does the opposite, deftly packing centuries of music and a profusion of astute observations into this lean delight of a book. If you think you might like opera, but have no idea where to start, the answer is: right here." (Justin Davidson, Pulitzer Prize-winning classical music critic for New York Magazine)
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What listeners say about A Mad Love
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jane9462
- 08-28-19
Great content, great narration, but...
I really enjoyed this audio book! The content is easy to digest but not overly simple, and Lisa Flanagan's narration is very engaging. I learned a lot! My one issues is that the audiobook medium could have been a great opportunity to incorporate clips of the works being discussed. Vivien Schweitzer created a public spotify playlist, but how wonderful would it have been to hear exactly what she's talking about in context with her writing? Audiobook production has a long way to go - this could have been very innovative.
6 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 114
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross described his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of Ross’s writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Educational!
- By Jason Anschutz on 07-10-15
By: Alex Ross
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Beethoven
- A Life in Nine Pieces
- By: Laura Tunbridge
- Narrated by: Laura Tunbridge
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 20
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
The iconic image of Beethoven is of him as a lone genius: hair wild, fists clenched, and brow furrowed. Beethoven may well have shaped the music of the future, but he was also a product of his time, influenced by the people, politics, and culture around him. Oxford scholar Laura Tunbridge offers an alternative history of Beethoven's career, placing his music in contexts that shed light on why particular pieces are valued more than others, and what this tells us about his larger-than-life reputation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Engaging, interesting, nice format
- By George on 07-04-22
By: Laura Tunbridge
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For the Love of Music
- A Conductor's Guide to the Art of Listening
- By: John Mauceri
- Narrated by: John Mauceri
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story5 out of 5 stars 24
With a lifetime of experience, profound knowledge and understanding, and heartwarming appreciation, an internationally celebrated conductor and teacher answers the questions: Why should I listen to classical music? How can I get the most from the listening experience? Unpretentious, graceful, instructive, this is a book for the aficionado, the novice, and anyone looking to have the love of music fired within them.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Divine Time with a Maestro
- By Meg on 12-18-19
By: John Mauceri
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The Secret Life of the American Musical
- How Broadway Shows Are Built
- By: Jack Viertel
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 234
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 214
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 214
For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in actors and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great review lacked music
- By joseph f mcgovern on 10-14-18
By: Jack Viertel
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Mozart
- The Reign of Love
- By: Jan Swafford
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 30 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 88
Like Jan Swafford’s biographies Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, Mozart is the complete exhumation of a genius in his life and ours: A man who would enrich the world with his talent for centuries to come and who would immeasurably shape classical music. As Swafford reveals, it’s nearly impossible to understand classical music’s origins and indeed its evolutions, as well as the Baroque period, without studying the man himself.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Too many words
- By James Messelbeck on 01-12-21
By: Jan Swafford
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Bob Dylan in America
- By: Sean Wilentz
- Narrated by: Sean Wilentz
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4 out of 5 stars 54
This book follows Dylan as he continues to develop a body of musical and literary work unique in our cultural history. Wilentz’s approach places Dylan’s music in the context of its time, including the early influences of Popular Front ideology and Beat aesthetics, and offers a larger critical appreciation of Dylan as both a songwriter and performer down to the present. Wilentz has had unprecedented access to studio tapes, recording notes, rare photographs, and other materials, all of which allow him to tell Dylan’s story.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Editing badly needed.
- By Marc on 10-14-10
By: Sean Wilentz
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The Fiery Angel
- Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West
- By: Michael Walsh
- Narrated by: Michael Walsh
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story5 out of 5 stars 45
Without an understanding and appreciation of the culture we seek to preserve and protect, the defense of Western civilization is fundamentally futile; a culture that believes in nothing cannot defend itself, because it has nothing to defend. In this profound and wide-ranging historical survey, Michael Walsh illuminates the ways that the narrative and visual arts both reflect and affect the course of political history, outlining the way forward by arguing for the restoration of the heroic narrative that forms the basis of all Western cultural and religious traditions.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great cultural criticism
- By miasarx on 08-06-18
By: Michael Walsh
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Apollo's Angels
- A History of Ballet
- By: Jennifer Homans
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 23 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 127
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 107
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 108
For more than 400 years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. A ballerina dancing The Sleeping Beauty today is a link in a long chain of dancers stretching back to 16th-century Italy and France: Her graceful movements recall a lost world of courts, kings, and aristocracy, but her steps and gestures are also marked by the dramatic changes in dance and culture that followed.
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4 out of 5 stars
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a great book poorly read
- By Anonymous User on 04-14-11
By: Jennifer Homans
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The Holy or the Broken
- Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah"
- By: Alan Light
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Today, "Hallelujah" is one of the most-performed rock songs in history. It has become a staple of movies and television shows as diverse as Shrek and The West Wing, of tribute videos and telethons. It has been covered by hundreds of artists, including Bob Dylan, U2, Justin Timberlake, and k.d. lang, and it is played every year at countless events - both sacred and secular - around the world. Yet when music legend Leonard Cohen first wrote and recorded "Hallelujah", it was for an album rejected by his longtime record label.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love Cohn and this Is a Great Story
- By Karen & Dennis Lauer on 12-13-22
By: Alan Light
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The Story of Music: From Babylon to the Beatles
- How Music Has Shaped Civilization
- By: Howard Goodall
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 156
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 139
Music is an intrinsic part of everyday life, and yet the history of its development from single notes to multilayered orchestration can seem bewilderingly complex. In his dynamic tour through forty thousand years of music, from prehistoric instruments to modern-day pop, Howard Goodall leads us through the story of music as it happened, idea by idea, so that each musical innovation - harmony, notation, sung theater, the orchestra, dance music, recording - strikes us with its original force.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great intro to musc history
- By Enthusiast on 03-06-16
By: Howard Goodall
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My Life in Pieces
- An Alternative Autobiography
- By: Simon Callow
- Narrated by: Simon Callow
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4 out of 5 stars 24
Drawing on a lifetime of writing about theatre and film, Callow takes us behind the curtain and behind the camera to introduce us to the performers and performances that have shaped him as an actor and as a public persona. They include giants like Orson Welles, Charles Dickens, Tommy Cooper, Charles Laughton and Laurence Olivier.
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2 out of 5 stars
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great narration, disappointing & irritating story
- By Sherry Spencer on 02-08-12
By: Simon Callow
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Can't Buy Me Love
- By: Jonathan Gould
- Narrated by: Richard Aspel
- Length: 29 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
Nearly 20 years in the making, Can't Buy Me Love is a masterful work of group biography, cultural history, and musical criticism. That the Beatles were an unprecedented phenomenon is a given. Here Jonathan Gould seeks to explain why, placing the Fab Four in the broad and tumultuous panorama of their time and place, rooting their story in the social context that girded both their rise and their demise.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Light on gossip, rich on context
- By Tad Davis on 10-29-13
By: Jonathan Gould
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The Sound of Music Story
- How a Beguiling Young Novice, a Handsome Austrian Captain, and Ten Singing Von Trapp Children Inspired the Most Beloved Film of All Time
- By: Tom Santopietro
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
Now Tom Santopietro has written the ultimate Sound of Music fan audiobook with all the inside dope, from behind-the-scenes stories of the filming in Austria and Hollywood to new interviews with Johannes von Trapp and others. Santopietro looks back at the real-life story of Maria von Trapp, goes on to chronicle the sensational success of the Broadway musical, and recounts the story of the near cancellation of the film when Cleopatra bankrupted 20th Century Fox.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A must for super-fans
- By Simone on 07-29-17
By: Tom Santopietro
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Why Bob Dylan Matters
- By: Richard F. Thomas
- Narrated by: Nick Landrum
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated while many others questioned the choice. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter who wouldn't even deign to attend the medal ceremony? In Why Bob Dylan Matters, Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers this question with magisterial erudition.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Classical Dylan
- By Buretto on 11-27-17
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The Creation of Anne Boleyn
- A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen
- By: Susan Bordo
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 405
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 371
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Story4 out of 5 stars 369
Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: Neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Most Enjoyable Biography--Win!
- By Roswatheist on 03-29-14
By: Susan Bordo