Opera Books to Read Free Online

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Pick fiction or non-fiction, then a genre, then a topic inside it. A book can sit in more than one genre.

The full library classification — every book has exactly one, more granular than Genre. Different counts for a same-named bucket here vs. Genre reflect two different systems, not an error.

Opera

Featured — award winners and classics first, when available. Use “Show different books” for a new selection.

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A Nut at the Opera

Maurice Vellekoop

2006

Stars of the opera, 1950-1985, in photographs

James Camner

1986

Overture to Tannhauser

Staatsoper Berlin, Richard Wagner

1868

Opera's second death

Slavoj Žižek

2002

Costuming for opera

Leo Van Witsen

1981

Così

Louis Nowra

1994

Opera in Italy today

Nick Rossi

1995

Literature as opera

Gary Schmidgall

1977

Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Richard Wagner, Karl Klindworth

1896

Gilbert and Sullivan and their world

Leslie Baily

1973

Some musicians of former days

Romain Rolland

1915

Der Fliegende Holländer

Gary Khan, Heinrich Heine, James Cartwright Macy et al.

1876

The muses are heard

Truman Capote

1956

Tosca

Giacomo Puccini

1900

The opera companion to twentieth-century opera

George Whitney Martin

1979

Aïda

Giuseppe Verdi, Antonio Ghislanzoni

1870 ★ 4.0

Song & dance : the complete story of stage musicals

Kurt Ganzl

1995

Music, right and left

Virgil Thomson

1951

Gertrud

Hermann Hesse

1910 ★ 4.3

Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan

Andrew Crowther

2011

Opera and its symbols

Robert Donington

1990

The New Grove Book of Operas

Stanley Sadie

1996

Chapters of opera

Henry Edward Krehbiel

1908

Learn to Play Opera Tunes

Caroline R. Hooper

1996

Serenade

James M. Cain

1946

Carmen

Henning. Mehnert, Henri Meilhac, Ludovic Halévy et al.

1880

Venetian opera in the seventeenth century

Simon Towneley Worsthorne

1954

Salome and Judas in the cave of sex

Ewa Kuryluk

1987

The World of the Castrati

Patrick Barbier

2001

Molto agitato

Johanna Fiedler

2003

Browse free books to read online

Book Explorer lets readers browse the free, readable part of the Open Library catalogue by familiar genres, or by the exact subject tags Open Library assigns each book. Every book has its own page with a reader where one is available, plus links to Open Library, your library, Libby and Amazon.