Musically sound and fully annotated, this new reference work provides ready access to over 700 excerpts from 100 operas, by voice categories, and thus provides information on a wide variety of matters of interest to directors, teach­ers, and singers. A table of voice cate­gories, coded excerpts (including length and reference to accessible scores), char­acter descriptions (including estimations of degrees of difficulty of the music), summaries of the action of each excerpt, and indexes to titles, composers, and well-known arias and ensembles make this book an indispensable tool.

Mary Elaine Wallace is Professor of Music and Director of the Marjorie Lawrence Opera Theatre at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. She is a past-president of the National Opera Associ­ation and a frequent adjudicator for Metropolitan Opera auditions.

“[This book] will be of inestimable value to directors of opera workshops and heads of academic voice departments; [it] will also assist young singers.”—Central Opera Service Bulletin of the Metropolitan Opera