This volume is a reference source to literature in the English language throughout the world. It provides a survey of the world-wide literary tradition of this area, and offers explanations of genres, movements, critical terms and literary concepts.

Biographical sketches of the composers and critical interpretations of their productions accompany these summaries of eighty-seven famous operas

By making systematic use of the mostly unpublished Opera Archive, Mead fills in the missing links to previous investigations and unlocks the significance of this seminal masterpiece.

Although many opera dictionaries and encyclopedias are available, very few are devoted exclusively to operas in a single language. In this revised and expanded edition of Operas in English: A Dictionary, Margaret Ross Griffel brings up to date her original work on operas written specifically to an English text (including works both originally prepared in English, as well as English translations). Since its original publication in 1999, Griffel has added nearly 800 entries to the 4,300 from the original volume, covering the world of opera in the English language from 1634 through 2011. Listed alphabetically by letter, each opera entry includes alternative titles, if any; a full, descriptive title; the number of acts; the composer’s name; the librettist’s name, the original language of the libretto, and the original source of the text, with the source title; the date, place, and cast of the first performance; the date of composition, if it occurred substantially earlier than the premiere date; similar information for the first U.S. (including colonial) and British (i.e., in England, Scotland, or Wales) performances, where applicable; a brief plot summary; the main characters (names and vocal ranges, where known); some of the especially noteworthy numbers cited by name; comments on special musical problems, techniques, or other significant aspects; and other settings of the text, including non-English ones, and/or other operas involving the same story or characters (cross references are indicated by asterisks). Entries also include such information as first and critical editions of the score and libretto; a bibliography, ranging from scholarly studies to more informal journal articles and reviews; a discography; and information on video recordings. Griffel also includes four appendixes, a selective bibliography, and two indexes. The first appendix lists composers, their places and years of birth and death, and their operas included in the text as entries; the second does the same for librettists; the third records authors whose works inspired or were adapted for the librettos; and the fourth comprises a chronological listing of the A–Z entries, including as well as the date of first performance, the city of the premiere, the short title of the opera, and the composer. Griffel also include a main character index and an index of singers, conductors, producers, and other key figures.

A guide to the often misunderstood musical form offers readers an irreverant tour of the opera world and the music it supports.

“Though absent long, These forms of beauty have not been to me, As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns in cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart” William Wordsworth's verse was the embodiment of the Romantic age, with its evocation of a unifying spirit running through all things. This collection brings together a rich and diverse selection of his works, from the epic autobiographical masterpiece The Prelude to much-loved shorter poems such as 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' and 'She Was a Phantom of Delight'. Alongside his more personal and introspective compositions, poems such as 'Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey', 'She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways' and 'The Idiot Boy' demonstrate, in an era of political and social ferment, the manner in which Wordsworth, together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, forged a revolutionary new poetic style through the publication of Lyrical Ballads – one that embraced the vernacular and subjects previously deemed unworthy of poetry – and thus changed the literary landscape of England for ever.