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The Cambridge Companion to Verdi.

Article Excerpt
The Cambridge Companion to Verdi. Edited by Scott L. Balthazar. (Cambridge Companions to Music.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. [xxvi, 336 p. ISBN 0521635357. $25.99.] Music examples, index, bibliography.

Within the prefaces to the volumes of the ever-increasing Cambridge Companions series, it has become commonplace to assert, in the words of the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, that these books are "aimed primarily at students and opera lovers who already have a broad background in music history and theory but have not proceeded to a specialized level" while simultaneously offering new ideas and information that "may interest scholars already working in the field" (p. xiii). Thus each member of the Cambridge Companion fleet attempts to carefully navigate the potentially treacherous passage between the Scylla of overly specialized studies and the Charybdis of the fare intended for a general readership readily available elsewhere. The obvious question upon the embarkation of each new vessel is: how well does it stay the course? However, a more pressing question might be: who are these "students and opera lovers" with a "broad background in music history and theory" that are not already to some degree on a specialized level? It may be the case that the intended reader of these volumes simply does not exist. At its best (the companion to grand opera comes to mind), the series accomplishes the seemingly impossible by bringing together a thoroughly readable and intriguing set of essays that do not estrange...

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