Puccini the Thinker

The Author: John Louis DiGaetani is Professor of English at Hofstra University on Long Island, New York. He has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His previous books include: An Invitation to the Opera; Carlo Gozzi: A Life in the Eighteenth-Century Venetian Theater, An Afterlife in Opera; Penetrating Wagner’s Ring: An Anthology; Richard Wagner and the Modern British Novel; Opera and the Golden West; and A Search for a Postmodern Theater.

Contents: Though Puccini's operas are very popular with the opera-going public and many singers, his operas have received little critical attention from musicologists, and that attention has often been negative - This book analyzes Puccini's ideas as they appear in his operas. Those ideas include myth, economics, politics, sociology, and religion. The book, as a result, will interest the general public as well as opera critics and musicologists.