Charles Osborne

While Puccini wrote only twelve operas during a long life—three of them one-acters designed to be performed together—he has to be ranked today as the world's most popular composer of opera. His La Bohème and Tosca are more frequently performed in the major opera houses than works by other...

INTRODUCTION I am an arrogant and impatient listener; but in the case of a few composers, a very few, when I hear a work I do not like I am convinced it is my own fault. Verdi is one of these composers. Benjamin Britten^ The composer to whom Britten pays such graceful homage, whether in the...