Best of
Italy

1973

Happiness, as Such


Natalia Ginzburg - 1973
    This novel is part epistolary: his mother writes letters to him, nagging him; his sister Angelica writes, missing him; so does Mara, his former lover, telling him about the birth of her son who may be his own. Left to clean up Michele’s mess, his family and friends complain, commiserate, tease, and grieve, struggling valiantly with the small and large calamities of their interconnected lives.Natalia Ginzburg’s most beloved book in Italy and one of her finest achievements, Happiness, as Such is an original, wise, raw, comic novel that cuts to the bone.

The Operas of Verdi: From Oberto to Rigoletto


Julian Budden - 1973
    In writing the first edition of this classic work--which appeared to great acclaim in 1973--Julian Budden mined the vast resources of European archives to provide a groundbreaking interpretation of Verdi's work, and along the way discovered much new material, including an unpublished additional aria for I Due Foscari. Now available in a revised edition, The Operas of Verdi is now brought up to date in light of the most recent scholarship, making it more useful and entertaining than ever. Volume 1 traces the organic growth and development of the composer's style from 1839 to 1851--from Oberto to Rigoletto--and examines each opera in detail, offering a full account of its dramatic and historical origins as well as a brief critical evaluation. More than 350 musical examples make the significance of these early operas to Verdi's developing style especially clear. In the second volume, Budden covers those operas written during the decadence of the post-Rossini period. During this time Verdi, having exhausted the simple lyricism found in such works as Il Trovatore and La Traviata, found new life as he directly confronted the masters of the Paris opera with his Les V�pres Siciliennes. The new scale and variety of musical thought that can be sensed in the Italian operas which followed is shown here to culminate in La Forza del Destino. The third and final volume of the study covers the quarter century which saw grand opera on the Parisian model established throughout Italy, and the spread of cosmopolitan influences that convinced many that Italian music was losing its identity. Verdi produced his four last and greatest operas during this time--Don Carlos, Aida, Otello, and Falstaff--operas which helped inaugurate versimo, in which a new, recognizably Italian idiom was realized. These three volumes cover every aspect of Verdi's rich and varied operatic achievement. Every lover of opera in particular and music in general will want a set in their library.

Venice for Pleasure


J.G. Links - 1973
    “Its simple object,” in the author’s own words, “is to guide the reader to places he might otherwise miss and, having reached them, to tell him what he might wish to know and then leave him, preferably at a café..." Extensive color illustrations, including classic paintings and historical maps accompany the text to reveal a Venice of 50, 100, and 500 years ago.

The Prisons / Le Carceri


Giovanni Battista Piranesi - 1973
    Combining the influences of Tiepolo, Bibiena, and Rembrandt, these works of architectural fantasy challenge the boundaries of perception, creating a vast system of visual provocation. Innumerable staircases, immense vaults, and other ambiguous structures are compounded with projecting beams, pulleys, rickety catwalks and gangways, dangling ropes and chains, and the occasional shadowy human figure.This full reproduction in book form of The Prisons, made directly from mint copies of original prints, presents both editions of Piranesi's work, with prints on facing pages for convenient comparison. The first edition (circa 1745) ranks among the most rare and valuable print collections in existence and abounds in a multiplicity of perspectives—an innovation that predates Cubism by two centuries. For the second (1761) edition, Piranesi reworked the plates, adding elaborate details that alter some of them almost beyond recognition. It is in the second, more emotionally challenging renditions that his masterful management of light and shadow is most evident. This edition features an informative Introduction by Philip Hofer, in addition to a Preface by John Howe, a conceptual designer on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

The Wine-Dark Sea


Leonardo Sciascia - 1973
    Writing about his native Sicily and its culture of secrecy and suspicion, Sciascia matched sympathy with skepticism, unflinching intellect with a street fighter's intransigent poise. Sciascia was particularly admired for his short stories, and The Wine-Dark Sea offers what he considered his best work in the genre: thirteen spare and trenchant miniatures that range in subject from village idiots to mafia dons, marital spats to American dreams. Here, in unforgettable form, Sciascia examines the contradictions—sometimes comic, sometimes deadly, and sometimes both—of Sicily's turbulent history and day-to-day life.

Venice: A Maritime Republic


Frederic C. Lane - 1973
    Among the many cities men have made, Frederic C. Lane writes, Venice stands out as a symbol of beauty, of wise government, and of communally controlled capitalism. Drawing on a lifetime of study and reflection, the author shows how that resplendent city came to have the institutions, the buildings, and the pattern of urban life that make it unique.

The Last Medici


Harold Acton - 1973
    Much has been written about the phenomenal career of the early Medici: and there are many biographies of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cosimo I, and the Medicean Popes. But less has been written of the final phase, and Acton demonstrates the hand of death overshadowing the great family in a series of unfortunate marriages - how one by one they vanished into the void. "The Last Medici" centres mainly round the fantastic figures of Princess Marguerite-Louise d'Orleans and her husband Cosimo III, most fatal of all the Medicean sovereigns. The last act closes on Gian Gastone, their cynical younger son, bedridden in the Pitti Palace, a florid figure of despair, with the Powers of Europe ever on the alert for the sound of his death-rattle. Full of brilliant colour, rich comedy and lurid tragedy, "The Last Medici" is at the same time a scientific contribution to the records of an extraordinary and unforgettable period.

Poetic Diaries 1971 and 1972


Eugenio Montale - 1973
    The poet meditates on the very conditions of his art: language reveals itself to be madness, and poetry a broken promise. The Muse has become a scarecrow: “She still has / one sleeve, with which she conducts her scrannel / straw quartet. It’s the only music I can stand.” And yet music it is, and time and time again Montale attains a contrarian grandeur that renews faith in the art he punishes. These poems are dense and dramatic, evasive and erotic and vividly alive.

The Private Life of the Romans


Harold Whetstone Johnston - 1973
    These things are of interest to us in the case of any ancient or foreign people; in the case of the Romans they are of especial importance, because they help to explain the powerful influence that nation exerted over the old world, and make it easier to understand why that influence is still felt in some degree today.At the time of original publication in 1903, Harold Whetstone Johnston was Professor of Latin at Indiana University. He was also the author of Selected Orations and Letters of Cicero, Latin Manuscripts, and The Metrical Licenses of Vergil.

Final Edition (Lives & Letters)


E.F. Benson - 1973
    Benson (1867-1940), describing his family and London snobs, literary sybils and the Lotus Eaters of Capri - where he shared a house with John Ellingham Brooks and Somerset Maugham and where his neighbours included Norman Douglas, Compton Mackenzie, Axel Munthe and Maxim Gorki. He evokes the little world of Rye, immortalized in "Mapp and Lucia", where he gloried in the splendid robes of Lord Mayor, happy to end as "a big fish in a small pond". "Final Edition" is Benson's own final tribute to those he loved, completed ten days before his death. E.F. Benson, one of six children of the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote biography, essays, memoirs and fiction, including such novels as "Paying Guests" and the "Mapp and Lucia" series. A previous memoir, "As We Were" is also published by Hogarth.