RaveThe American ScholarAucoin happily wrestles with multiple impossibilities in this highly personal book. In vivid, granular detail, he explores composers and operas he loves ... a sense of delight and wry humor also permeates the book. He revels in the sheer joy of figuring out how composers manage to negotiate opera’s immense challenges. Whether analyzing Desdemona’s final lament in Verdi’s Otello (1887) or the way Stravinsky gives unexpected grit to the pious Anne Trulove in The Rake’s Progress (1951), Aucoin’s pleasure is palpable ... Even those who may not know much about music will have no trouble following his minutely detailed musical analyses. Aucoin has the impulses of a master auto mechanic, relishing the act of getting under the hood and pulling the engine apart. Best of all, he wants to pass that knowledge on to us. Eschewing musicological jargon, he conveys his enthusiasm and wonder as he spells out, bar by musical bar, how Monteverdi creates a mood or Mozart manages to touch our hearts in the final scene of The Marriage of Figaro.
