Can’t wait to experience all the operas in our 2019/20 season? Or do you have one favorite opera that you can’t get enough of? (It’s okay, we have our favorites too). You’ll have to wait until opening night to see the magic live onstage, but that doesn’t mean you can’t immerse yourself in the stories and histories behind your favorite operas in the meantime.
To kick off the LA Times Festival of Books, we’ve rounded up the books our 19/20 season favorites are based on. Read the play that helped spark both the French Revolution and Mozart’s imagination – The Marriage of Figaro. Or pick up a copy of Psycho: A Novel, the book that Alfred Hitchcock based his film on (and that he famously purchased all copies of to prevent avid readers from spoiling the surprise of the classic film).
La Bohème
La Vie de bohème by Henri Murger
Puccini Without Excuses by William Berger
Bohemian Paris by Jerrold Seigel
The Light in the Piazza
The Light in the Piazza by Elizabeth Spencer
The Italians by Luigi Barzini
Musical Theater: An Appreciation by Alyson McLamore
The Magic Flute
Mateki: The Magic Flute by Edmund Shern
The Magic Flute Unveiled by Jacques Chailley
Mozart the Freemason by Jacques Henry
Eurydice
Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl
Georgics by Virgil
Metamorphoses by Ovid
Roberto Deveraux
The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir
Donizetti and His Operas by William Ashbrook
The Unhappy Favourite: or, the Earl of Essex by John Banks
Pelléas et Mélisande
Pelléas et Mélisande by Maurice Maeterlinck
Claude Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande by Roger Nichols and Richard Langham Smith
Debussy: A Painter in Sound by Stephen Walsh
The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
Mozart and His Operas by David Cairns
Memoirs by Lorenzo Da Ponte
Rodelinda
Handel’s Operas 1704-1726 by Winton Dean and John Merrill Knapp
Handel by Christopher Hogwood
Handel and his Singers by C. Steven Larue
Psycho
Psycho: A Novel by Robert Bloch
Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello
A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann by Steven C. Smith
Angel’s Bone
The Essential Abolitionist: What You Need to Know about Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery by John Vanek
Reconfiguring Myth and Narrative in Contemporary Opera by Yayoi Uno Everett
Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery by Siddharth Kara
Sure you can find these books online, but a visit to your favorite local bookstore has its own special magic.
Click here for more information on LA Times Festival of Books.