OPERA -  A NOVEL APPROACH The "play within the play?" - consider the genre of the "opera within the novel." As opera has inspired other forms and imitations of its musically dramatic nature, so has opera stimulated the novelist to render opera itself as a background setting for plots and dramatic situations equal to, or surpassing, those of the famous operatic librettists.  There is often the round-up of the "usual (operatic stereotypes) suspects," while the forms of mayhem, trickery and deceit rule the action.   The Durbeck Archive, with the intention of observing the widest probable parameters of operatic influence in the world of arts and letters, has made an extended effort to obtain as many of these operatically inspired novels as possible.  With these novels as another aspect of the multi-layered spheres of operatic influence, the Archive offers a continuing expansion of perspective of opera as a universal art, in all of its many facets.  These are some of the operatic novels and works of opera-based fiction in The Durbeck Archive. Barbara Paul Prima Donna at Large New York: New American Library, Signet Books 251 pages, PB © 1985 Gladys Swarthout Come Soon, Tomorrow! New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 278 pages, HB, DJ © 1944 autographed by Gladys Swarthout Helen Traubel The Metropolitan Opera Murders New York: Simon and Schuster 192 pages, HB, DJ © 1951 Mary Deasy Ella Gunning Boston: Little, Brown and Co. 316 pages, HB, DJ © 1950 Joseph Machlis The Career of Magda V. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 313 pages, HB, DJ © 1985 Carol Kane Diva New York: HarperCollins 487 pages, HB, DJ First Edition, © 1990 Conrad L. Osborne O Paradiso New York: Arbor House, Morrow 349 pages, HB, DJ First Edition, © 1988 Lotte Lehmann Eternal Flight trans: Elsa Krauch New York: G.B. Putnam's Sons 265 pages, HB, DJ © 1937 Robert Merrill  and Fred Jarvis The Divas New York: Simon and Schuster 414 pages, HB, DJ First Edition, © 1978 autographed by  Robert Merrill Thomas Godfrey, ed. Murder at the Opera New York: The Mysterious Press 250 pages, HB, DJ © 1989 This is an anthology of opera murder mysteries  by: Albert Herring Agatha Christie O. Henry  James Yaffe  A.E.W. Mason  Hector Berlioz  Rex Stout  Vincent Starrett  Baynard Kendrick  Helen Traubel Edward  D. Hoch Fred G. Jarvis Murder at the Met New York: Coward-McCann Inc. 237 pages, HB, DJ © 1971 Brown Meggs Aria London: Hamish-Hamilton Ltd. 466 pages, HB, DJ © 1978 Lilian Lauferty Baritone Garden City: Doubleday & Co. 276 pages, HB, DJ First Edition, © 1948 inscribed and autographed by  Lilian Lauferty James McCourt Mawrdew Czgowchwz New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 230 pages, HB, DJ © 1971, 1973, 1975 Anne Rice Cry To Heaven New York: Alfred A. Knopf 534 pages, HB, DJ First Edition, © 1982 autographed by Anne Rice Phil Georgeff The Man Who Loved  Mario Lanza Private  Printing 182 pages, PB © 1997 Gustav Kobbé Signora: A Child of the Opera House New York: R. H. Russell 205 pages, HB, no DJ First Edition, © 1902 Martin Mayer A Voice That Fills The House New York: Simon and Schuster 249 pages, HB, DJ,  First Edition, © 1959 Ann Patchett Bel Canto New York: Perrenial HarperCollins Publishers  318 pages, PB © 2001 Barbara Paul A Cadenza for Caruso New York: St. Martin's Press 146 pages, HB, DJ,  First Edition, © 1984 Willa Cather The Song of the Lark Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company 490 pages, HB, no DJ © 1932 Lawrence Louis Goldman The Castrato New York: The John Day Company 264 pages, HB, DJ,  First Edition, © 1973 Susanne Dunlap Émilie's Voice New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster 304 pages, Paperback © 2005 MacDonald Harris Herma New York: Atheneum 431 pages, HB, DJ,  First Edition, © 1981 Richard Powers The Time of our Singing New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 631 pages, HB, DJ First Edition, © 2003 Jacqueline DeJohn Antonio's Wife New York: ReganBooks 434 pages, PB First PB Edition, © 2004 Carol Dines The Queen's Soprano New York: Harcourt, Inc. 318 pages, HB, DJ First Edition, © 2006 Dan Billany The Opera House Murders Portway, Bath: Cedric Chivers, Ltd. 323 pages, hardcover © 1940 Alison York No Sad Song New York: Harlequin Enterprises 187 pages, pb, © 1987   Tom Holt Expecting Someone Taller New York: Ace Books 231 pages, paperback © 1990 Note: A comic variation of Wagner's Ring Cycle   Jack Vance Space Opera New York: Daw Books, Inc. 168 pages, paperback © 1965 Paul Myers Deadly Aria New York: Vanguard Press, Inc. 272 pages, hardcover © 1987   Return to The Gallery                    Return to Home Page