Garry Willsis a historian and the author of theNew York TimesbestsellersWhat Jesus Meant,Papal Sin,Why I Am a Catholic, andWhy Priests?,among others. A frequent contributor totheNew York Review of Booksand other publications, Wills is a Pulitzer Prize winner and a professor emeritus at Northwestern University. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.
A Booklist Editors Choice Pick for
2011
“Wonderfully illuminating. This book is the product of a lifetime
of listening and watching….No lover of Verdi—or Shakespeare, for
that matter—will want to miss it.”
—Opera News
“Riveting…a double-barreled salvo that hits two bull’s-eyes.
Shakespeare scholarship is one of the world’s thriving industries,
with no factories but worldwide workshops. While you are reading
this, there must be hundreds (thousands?) of worthies turning out
articles and books from pole to pole. But Garry Wills has upped
the ante. There is a fair, but not daunting, amount of musical
analysis, as well as much acknowledged borrowing and quoting from
other relevant writers. This only makes the book more useful, what
with burrowings (rather than borrowings) a worm would be proud of,
and a panorama worthy of a fly’s multifaceted eye. “Nomen est omen”
goes a Latin adage: the name is a signifier. So the noun “Wills”
suggests manifold motivation, multiple resolve. Whatever Garry
undertakes, trust Wills to get done.”
—John Simon, The New York Times
“Wills’s joyously engaged, scholarly yet personable essay is not
just a treat but also a banquet succulent enough to make
Shakespeareans and Verdians of all who partake of it.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Opera aficionados will delight in Wills’s thoughtful, deeply
rehearsed essays. . . . [His] detailed depictions of the operas’
subtleties, sublimely rendered for opera fans, endlessly elucidate
the work of these ‘creative volcanoes.’”
—Publishers Weekly
“Wills brilliantly explores the evolution, development, and
performance histories of the three plays (actually, four, counting
both Henry IV and Merry Wives of Windsor as inspirations for
Falstaff), the three operas, and the connections among them. As
essential purchase. ”
—Library Journal, starred review
“Wills’s insights into both Verdi’s acute understanding of
Shakespeare and his ingenious methods of conveying it are
thrilling—particularly his account of how, when composing “Otello,”
Verdi encapsulated the six hundred and eighty-six lines of the
play’s first act within a few minutes of music.”
—The New Yorker
“Fascinating.”
—Commonweal Magazine
“One genius interprets another: English to Italian, words to
lyrics, immortal drama to overpowering opera. . . . While the book
has an enormous amount to teach devotees of either Shakespeare or
Verdi, opera fans in particular will enjoy the author’s close and
illuminating attention to backstage history, as well as words,
music and phrasing.”
—Kirkus
“Despite the novelty of the subject in VERDI'S SHAKESPEARE, Wills’s
writing is characteristically clear and marked with literate ping.
. . . Throughout, he demonstrates an innate understanding of drama
and music and how they can work together. His analysis of melody,
harmony and orchestration are as solid as his examination of
theatrical practice and technique. And his research is thorough. He
draws on the considerable store of data unearthed by others, citing
in his more than one hundred footnotes a veritable Who’s Who of
opera and theater scholars.”
—The Washington Independent Review of Books
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