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The Savoy Operas: The Complete Gilbert and Sullivan
The Savoy Operas: The Complete Gilbert and Sullivan
Nov 19, 2024 3:58 PM

Author:Arthur Sullivan,W. S. Gilbert,Mike Leigh,Ed Glinert

The Savoy Operas: The Complete Gilbert and Sullivan

Gilbert and Sullivan’s operas are some of the world’s best-loved musical works, delighting audiences with their joyous wit, topsy-turvy logic and extravagant wordplay. This glorious treasury is the definitive annotated edition of all fourteen of their operas.

From the partially lost work Thespis, the first collaboration between W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, through the triumphant comic romps The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, to lesser-performed gems such as the fanciful The Sorcerer and the acerbic lampoon Patience, Gilbert’s libretti are collected here in their most accurate and faithful form. There is a fascinating commentary on each work, telling the extraordinary stories behind the inspiration for the opera and its performance history, and giving plot summaries and original cast lists.

Reviews

Quirky and tender...beguiling

—— Rose Tremain , Sunday Telegraph

A love affair with the piano... A minor classic

—— Times Literary Supplement

Captivating...full of knowledge...suffused with Parisian sensations...he can choose words that make us feel and hear the instruments he plays...when you close it you feel you have been on holiday

—— Sunday Times

Charming...a cool, autumnal breeze of a book...written out of love

—— Guardian

A droll antidote to the standard music-biz memoir

—— Robert Sandall , Sunday Times

Imagine a love child born of The Office and High Fidelity. With Knocked Up as the slacker godfather. That captures Dan Kennedy's memoir Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, his amazingly funny yet perceptive look at rock music and big corporations in crisis

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...pitch-perfect... a brilliant, hysterical and insightful look at what happens when truly creative people try to blend into a Banana Republicized mediocracy. The author makes it clear, in laugh-out-loud fashion, that the lid was shut on the coffin of music business dreams some time ago, we've just delayed the burial

—— New York Post

Irreverent and witty . . . hilarious . . . He explores everything - from diets to sweetshops and sex to pets, with all his customary lasciviousness and self-deprecatory humour.

—— Living Edge

Splendidly entertaining, reflecting on everything from eating a loaf to Shintoism and...sex.

—— Bournemouth Daily Echo

There are . . . completely honest admissions about his drinking, and laugh-out-loud accounts of his various fashion errors . . . Enjoy gleefully politically incorrect posturing and plain old-fashioned entertainment.

—— The Resident

Clapton reveals all in this unflinching confessional.

—— Independent

A powerfully honest and very moving insight into the life of a rock legend

—— The Herald (Glasgow)

Clapton bares his soul. Fascinating. It's an absorbing read, like you've been granted access to a mind finally coming to terms with itself.

—— The Sunday Tribune (Ireland)

Difficult to put down

—— Sunday Times

Clapton provides an orderly account of life in which all other considerations are secondary to the frequently selfish needs of The Artist'

—— Guardian

Gold-plated tales of sex, drink, drugs and fame and moments of musical incandescence.

—— Observer Music Monthly

A warm portrait

—— FT Magazine

A harrowing and searingly honest book about the unreal rock star life.

—— Daily Express

Clapton lays bare his life story in this witty but also painfully honest autobiography. Compelling and accomplished.

—— Sunday Express

A painfully honest insider's account of an age all too often portrayed as one long party

—— Daily Mail

A glorious rock history.

—— New York Post

This book does what many rock historians couldn't: It debunks the legend...puts a lie to the glamour of what it means to be a rock star.

—— Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

Strong stuff. Clapton reveals its author's journey to self-acceptance and manhood. Anyone who cares about the man and his music will want to take the trip with him.

—— Anthony DcCurtis, Rolling Stone

Clapton is honest...even searing and often witty, with a hard-won survivor's humor...an honorable badge of a book.

—— Stephen King, New York Times Book Review

Riveting

—— Boston Herald

An even, unblinking sensibility defines the author's voice.

—— New York Times

An unsparing self-portrait.

—— USA Today

Both the youthful excesses and the current calm state are narrated with an engaging tone that nudges Clapton's story ahead of other rock'n'roll memoirs.

—— Publisher’s Weekly

Clapton is a confessional, an addiction memoir, and a glorious rock history rolled into one, with a smidgeon of guilt and, ultimately redemption thrown in for good measure.

—— New York Post

Clapton fills in many gray areas, recounting his highs and lows with a thoughtfulness often lacking rock memoirs.Methodically he whittles away at the larger-than-life rock god until a vulnerable, messed-up mortal emerges...Clapton is an absorbing tale of artistry, decadence and redemption.It's also an important reminder of the guitarist's imprint on rock music, as a sideman, solo artist and bandleader.Not bad for a blues snob from Surrey.

—— Los Angeles Times

Clapton: The Autobiography does what many rock historians couldn't: It debunks the legend, de-mythologizes one of the most mythologized electric guitarists ever, puts a lie to the glamour of what is means to be a rock star...It's a cautionary tale that spills over into tragedy several times as love, lives and talents are all wasted.

—— Chicago Tribune

Like the bluesmen who inspired him, Clapton has his share of scars...his compelling memoir is... a soulful performance.

—— People

Charming and surprisingly candid.

—— Entertainment Weekly

Absolutely brilliant

—— Daily Express
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