First Impressions: Twenty-One Great Operas Explored, Explained, and Brought to Life from the Met

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University.

Father M. Owen Lee says his introduction to opera began when he heard a
landmark 1940 radio broadcast of Wagner’s Tannhдuser live from the
Metropolitan Opera in New York. “The music simply swept over me like a
tidal wave. Long after the broadcast was over, the new, strange,
wonderful Tannhдuser harmonies were buzzing around in my head.” Lee
could hardly have imagined that, more than 40 years later, he would
himself would be the first-intermission commentator on those same
Saturday afternoon broadcasts. But it turns out that Lee, a Catholic
priest who teaches classics at the University of Toronto, was the right
man for the job.

First Intermissions, a compilation of his talks on 21 great operas,
splendidly exemplifies how criticism can act as an intermediary between
the composer, the performer, and the audience. Lee’s Catholic moral
sense serves him well, in that he recognizes that the great operas can
be seen as parables of the human condition. Whether it is the profound
message of redemption that permeates Wagner’s music or Verdi’s
unparalleled ability to read the human heart, we come away enriched by
Lee’s penetrating insights and pellucid prose. He is also sensitive to
innovations on the purely musical plane, such as Massenet’s subtle
phrasing or Mozart’s adaptation of opera seria form.

About two-thirds of the book is taken up with the music of Verdi,
Wagner, Puccini, and Strauss. But there are also chapters on French
opera as well as Mozart’s Idomeneo. Lee notes that Mozart is
underrepresented because of the Metropolitan broadcast format, which
requires operas to be at least three acts in length for him to do a
commentary. However, cassettes of his talks on Mozart’s Don Giovanni
and Magic Flute, as well as Beethoven’s Fidelio, are available from
the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

The concluding selected bibliography and discography are excellent for
anyone seeking to build an opera collection.