So You Want to Sing Light Opera: A Guide for Performers

(Paperback)

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Description

So You Want to Sing Light Opera is a concise handbook for performers, teachers, and directors who want to learn more about the delightful genre of light opera, including Viennese operetta, English comic opera, French opra bouffe, and Spanish zarzuela. Award-winning opera director and singer Linda Lister brings clarity to this often misunderstood and overlooked category of music with detailed information on how to prepare and perform roles with stylistic and musical sensitivity and to deliver spoken dialogue and choreography with confidence. Lister focuses on the attributes of a light opera performer, light opera singing style, historical references, audition advice, directing insights, extensive repertoire recommendations Singing professionals, teachers, students, conductors, stage directors, coaches, and choreographers will find this book to be an ideal resource for the style. The So You Want to Sing series is produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing Light Opera features online supplemental material on the NATS website. Please visit www.nats.org to access style-specific exercises, audio and video files, and additional resources.

Reviews

So You Want to Sing Light Opera is well researched and well written. Lister, who has extensive experience in this genre, provides a wide range of information for performers who are interested in light opera. It is highly recommended. * Journal of Singing *
This book offers an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of light opera and is a must for any serious singer! Solid material and guidance that will help steer you through your performing career and right into the role of your dreams. -- Skip Galla, artistic director, Sin City Opera
An invaluable guide to light opera in all its sub-genres, this exhaustive, but not exhausting, resource will whet the appetite of students, teachers, music & stage directors, and performers of all levels. Linda Lister's love for this art form is palpable. Her seemingly endless expertise combines with other experts in the field to make this book indispensable! -- Copeland Woodruff, director of opera studies, Lawrence University
SYWTS has released another valuable resource in their Light Opera volume. Along with concise overviews of the genre and its subcategories, this multifaceted exploration of Light Opera includes lists of familiar and unfamiliar repertoire and monologues by voice type and advice for selecting editions. Lister's writing style is charming and makes humorous use of contemporary references. Particularly useful is the chapter on Zarzuela by Christopher Webber which provides not only an interesting history of the genre but a guide to technical requirements for singing this music. The SYWTS series belongs on every teacher's bookshelf! -- Mitra Sadeghpour, director of Opera, University of Northern Iowa

Author Bio

Linda Lister is a performer, author, director, and choreographer of light opera. Her solo credits include performances with the Washington Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, Evansville Philharmonic, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Piedmont Opera Theatre, Opera Theatre of Rochester, Long Leaf Opera, Sin City Opera, Greensboro Oratorio Society, Cambridge Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and Maine State Music Theatre. Winner of the 2014 American Prize in Directing, she directed UNLV Opera to two first place awards in the 2015 National Opera Association Collegiate Opera Scenes Competition in both musical theatre and graduate opera divisions and a second place award in the 2016 NOA Opera Production Competition for her pairing of Trial by Jury with Dan Shores The Beautiful Bridegroom.