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Reading With Your Ears: The Uses Of Opera In Literature, James E. Ford

Music and Literature Archive

In both the East and the West the relationship between opera and literature is ancient and profound. As the Disciples of the Pear Garden would know, many of the most popular works of the Beijing Opera are based on famous Chinese historical novels. And when a group of late Sixteenth-Century Italians created Western opera they were trying to revive Greek tragedy. (They knew that Greek tragedy was sung in some fashion and the speaking-to-music we know as recitiative was their attempt to reproduce that ancient practice.) Of course, many, many Western operas have been based on plays, novels, and short …