Michael Keith Steen

The Enchantress of Nations: Pauline Viardot: Soprano, Muse and Lover

This is a picturesque but painstakingly researched biography of the life - and the times - of the nineteenth century's Maria Callas. She was among 'the most brilliant dramatic stars of our time', according to Franz Liszt, and billed as 'the most talked of opera singer in Europe'. Dickens - reduced t...

Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor: A Short Guide to a Great Opera (Great Operas)

Sir Walter Scott’s story of a Scottish girl forced by her family into an arranged marriage still resonates today, two centuries after it was published. Donizetti’s opera, which premièred in Naples in 1835, is famous particularly for the Mad Scene when Lucia, after leaving for her nuptials, reappears...

Puccini's Madama Butterfly: A Short Guide to a Great Opera (Great Operas)

Butterfly is a delicate andimpressionable geisha who thinks she has married Pinkerton, a US navalofficer briefly stationed in Japan. Naive and loving as she is, she does notrealise that for him the marriage is a sham, an extended 'date'. It’s not long before he goes away, leaving her pregnant. Still...

Great Operas: A Guide to Twenty-Five of the World's Finest Musical Experiences

From Great Composers author Michael Steen, a unique multi-platform project offering a royal box view into one of mankind’s greatest art forms. From the soaring heights of Wagner’s epic Ring cycle to the tear-jerking emotion of Mozart’s breathtakingly beautiful Don Giovanni, opera is one of the most ...

The Lives and Times of the Great Composers

A grand and panoramic biograhical history of the giants of classical music, The Lives and Times of Great Composers is a new, unique, and lovingly constructed modern reference--and a beguiling read which you will return to again and again.Interlinked yet self-contained, each chapter distills the life...

The Lives and Times of the Great Composers

The Lives and Times of the Great Composers