Ashbrook As Opera Scholar
Although William Ashbrook trained to be an English professor, he had a lifelong interest in Italian opera. In reference to his pioneering work in opera scholarship, musicologist Philip Gossett described him as "the father of us all" and his scholarly publications in the field of music far outshown his contributions in other areas.
He is best remembered for his 1965 biographical work on Donizetti and for the books The Operas of Puccini (1968; rev. 1985) and Donizetti and His Operas (1982), the latter described by Gossett as "for any serious study of a Donizetti opera today, it is with (this book) that one must begin".
Ashbrook was also a regular contributor to several classical music journals, magazines, and other publications, including Opera News, Opera, Donizetti Society Journal and the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He was editor of Opera Quarterly from 1993 to 1997.
Read more about this topic: William Ashbrook
Famous quotes containing the words opera and/or scholar:
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)