The World Opera Chronicle. Presentatiom of the 3rd volume. (06.04.2016).

Mikhail Muginshtein is a renowned musicologist and opera critic, an Honoured Artist of Russia, Ph.D. in Art History, a professor at the Russian Theatre Arts Academy – GITIS and the Mussorgsky Urals State Conservatory, the founder and director of the Music Theatre Centre (the University for the Humanities in Yekaterinburg), the chairman of the jury of the Casta Diva Award and of the Boris Pokrovsky Prize of the Russian Theatre Workers’ Union, a compiler and editor of academic digests, an author of numerous publications in Russia and abroad. From recently he has been a member of the Artistic Board of the Novaya Opera Theatre.

The host is Dmitry Yurovsky. The presentation will be accompanied by performances of the Novaya Opera’s soloists.

The first volume of Muginshtein’s encyclopaedia (2005), which covers two and a half centuries of the history of (1600–1850), is a bestseller. Its electronic version, with 1000 video excerpts of opera productions (2001), is a unique multimedia edition in Russia.

The second volume of The World Opera Chronicle covers the second part of the 19th century, the golden age of romantic opera. This book includes masterpieces by outstanding masters of the opera genre such as Verdi, Wagner, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Puccini, Smetana, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky to name a few.

The third volume covers the most complicated and amazingly diverse 20th century: the completely different “position of man in the world” conditioned the new image of opera (drama, language and so on). Escalated search for the artistic truth required new instruments of learning and a special expression of utterance in different styles and genres. Opera stepped in probably the crucial epoch of its 400-year history.

“Opera is becoming international: Russian singers perform all over the world while Western producers and world celebrities come to work in Russia. “/The World Opera Chronicle / is part of this global movement. This is the Russian view of the world opera process… The World Opera Chronicle covers achievements of the modern theatre, with Saltsburg, Munich, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. For the first time in Russia, the book describes opera according to the world standards. This is the 400-year-long opera history. The monograph contains an impressive number of operatic compositions and shows a lively process with opera being a key player in our life and not a record of the past. The appearance of The World Opera Chronicle is a kind of statement: Russia is an active participant in the opera boom. ”

Valery Gergiev

“When you hold the weighty World Opera Chronicle, you experience an incredible feeling: a human being couldn’t do it anyway! Isn’t capable! ”

Vladimir Kobekin, composer

“It happened! The 3rd, concluding volume of The World Opera Chronicle by Mikhail Muginshtein is published. A massive chronological review of the four-century history of the opera art unfolding like a great parade of four hundred best operas, presented in the light of their performing life, is completed. It took the author 11 years to accomplish this Cyclopean work (the first volume of Chronicle was published in 2005) and enormous preparation work. Along with an impressive array of historical details, a special, even unique value, is added by Muginshtein’s colossal experience as a spectator, as he has watched thousands (literally) of performances all over the world. This fact gives emotional veracity to the work. The publishing of /The World Opera Chronicle/is a real creative achievement of Mikhail Muginshtein, an unprecedented event in the opera world, the importance of which cannot be overestimated!”

Evgeny Tsodokov, Chief Editor of operanews.ru