Composer, cultural diplomat, and man about town, Nicolas Nabokov (1903-78) counted among his intimate friends everyone from Igor Stravinsky to George Kennan. While today he is overshadowed by his more famous cousin Vladimir, Nicolas Nabokov was during his lifetime an outstanding and far-sighted player in international cultural exchanges during the Cold War and admired by some of the most distinguished minds of his century for his political acumen and his talents as a composer. This first-ever biography of Nabokov follows the fascinating stages of his life: a privileged childhood before the Revolution; the beginnings of a promising musical career launched under the aegis of Diaghilev; his involvement in anti-Stalinist causes in the first years of the Cold War; his participation in the Congress for Cultural Freedom; his role as cultural advisor to the Mayor of Berlin and director of the Berlin Festival in the early 1960s; his American academic and musical career in the late 1960s and 1970s. Nabokov is unique not only in that he was involved on a high level in international cultural politics, but also in that his life intersected at all times with a vast array of people within - and also well beyond - the confines of classical music. Drawing on a vast array of primary sources, Vincent Giroud's biography opens a window into history for readers interested in twentieth-century music, Russian emigration, and the Cold War, particularly in its cultural aspects. Musicians and musicologists interested in Nabokov as a composer, or in twentieth century Russian composers in general, will find in this book information not available anywhere else.

Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music

Biographies & Memoirs

GIROUD, Vincent

Arts & Literature

Oxford University Press

French opera is second only to Italian opera in the length, breadth, and diversity of its history. Yet most people, if asked to come up with titles, could mention only a handful of titles—Carmen, Faust, Pelleas et Melisande, Samson et Dalila—a small list for an operatic tradition that began in the seventeenth century and is still very much alive.This book provides a full, single-volume account of opera in France from its origins to the present day. 
Vincent Giroud looks at the leading composers, from Lully to Messiaen and beyond; at the development of French operatic form and style; at performance, performers, and audience; and at the impact of French opera beyond France’s borders. Lovers of opera will find this an ideal companion to their appreciation of the form.

French Opera: A Short History

Arts & Photography

Music

Yale University Press

The Portrait of Gertrude Stein was the first major work by Pablo Picasso to enter The Metropolitan Museum of Art, bequeathed by Stein herself in 1946. A century after it was painted, this portrait remains one of the most powerful images of early-20th-century modernism.What was to be a lifelong friendship was but a few months old in the spring of 1906, when Picasso began his portrait of Stein. He was 24 years old at the time and she was 32, and both of their careers were at a critical stage. This engaging book recounts the extraordinary circumstances that led to Stein’s first posing session and argues that the portrait played a key role not only in Picasso’s work as a painter but also in his subject’s creative life, as he became, in turn, the subject of several of Stein’s literary portraits.

Picasso and Gertrude Stein

History & Criticism

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This catalogue celebrates the 2003 exhibition at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, highlighting unique materials form Yale’s research collections, brought together to celebrate St. Petersburg in its tercentennial year. Accounts by visitors to the city, engravings, maps, and photographs (including unique shots of the last tsar and his family) create a timeline for the rise of one of the world’s most written-about cities.

St. Petersburg: A Portrait of a Great City

History

Russia

Witold Gombrowicz, author of Ferdydurke, Cosmos, Pornografia and The Wedding, remains one of the most influential Polish writers of all time. This catalogue, produced to accompany the 2004 exhibition at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, tells the story of his life, his writings, and his profound influence on modern letters and theatre. Drawn from the archive of Gombrowicz papers at Yale, this volume serves as a valuable introduction to the work of this celebrated writer.

The World of Witold Gombrowicz 1904-1969: Catalog of a Centenary Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Beinecke Rare Book Library

William Walton, Composer catalogs an exhibition held at the Beinecke Library of Yale University to commemorate the centennial of one of England's foremost modern composers. The work draws on Walton's rich archive, which is present at the Beinecke in near entirety as part of the important recent accession, the Frederick R. Koch collection. Manuscript and printed scores, letters, photographs, books, and memorabilia document Walton's career beginning with his teenage years at Oxford and into his early twenties, when he was "adopted" by Edith Sitwell, who combined his music and her poems in Facade. The result enlivened the London art scene and would eventually find great fame as a ballet. Among his many works in his fifty years as a composer, Walton wrote such works as Portsmouth Point, the Viola Concerto, Belshazzar's Feast, and the coronation march of 1937. These, and his very popular patriotic scores for war-time films, would secure his place in English musical history.

William Walton, Composer: A Centenary Exhibition in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University

Beinecke Rare Book &

This book celebrates the unique collections of Yale University, chiefly of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, on the occasion of the tercentenary of the city of St. Petersburg. They are unique in that we have here those accounts of early visitors to the capital of the Russian empire set down in books and manuscripts. Other material includes engravings, maps, and photographs, especially a number of candid snapshots of the last tsar and his family.

Americas

The greatest prose writer of twentieth-century Polish letters, Witold Gombrowicz is also recognized as a figure whose literary standing is comparable to Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Musil, or Beckett. Yet his reputation in the United States and the English-speaking world has never been equal to his renown in continental Europe or in Latin America. In a letter to an American publisher preserved in his archive at the Beinecke Library, he writes that he hoped to be read in America someday, at least by the elite. Yet Gombrowicz is no elitist writer. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Gombrowicz's birth, the Yale commemoration is part of the "Gombrowicz Autumn" in the United States, featuring performances of his plays, screenings of film adaptations of his works, photographic exhibitions, and publications by and about him.

The World Of Witold Gombrowicz 1904-1969

Reference

The Real Tales of Hoffmann: Origin, History, and Restoration of an Operatic Masterpiece

Of all operas in the standard repertory, none has had a more complicated genesis and textual history than Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. Based on a highly successful 1851 play inspired by the short stories by the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, the work occupied the last decade of Offenbach’s life. When he died in October 1880, the work was being rehearsed at the Opéra-Comique. At once cut and rearranged, the work was performed from the start in versions that ignored the composer’s final intentions. Only a few decades ago, when previously unavailable manuscripts came to light, it became possible to reconstitute the score in its real form. Vincent Giroud and Michael Kaye’s The Real 'Tales of Hoffmann' tells the full story for the first time in English. After discussing how the work of Hoffmann became known and influential in France, the book includes little-known sources for the opera, especially the complete Barbier and Carré play, in French and English. It describes the genesis of the opera. The annotated libretto is published in full, with the variants, for the two versions of the opera: with spoken dialogue or recitatives. Essays explain what was done to the opera after Offenbach’s death, from the 1881 Opéra-Comique production to more recent restoration attempts. There is also a survey of Les contes d’Hoffmann in performance from the 1970s to the present, and supplementary information, including discography, filmography, and videography. The Real 'Tales of Hoffmann' is intended to appeal to anyone interested in the work, specialists or non-specialists. Audiences, musicologists and students of French opera and opéra-comique will find it of particular interest, as will opera houses, conductors, singers, directors, and dramaturgs involved in performances of the opera.

Kaye, Michael

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Giroud and Kaye tell the full story of The Tales of Hoffman for the first time. After discussing the work's influences and history, the book details sources for the opera, including the complete Barbier and Carré play. The annotated libretto is published in full, with the variants, and essays explain the enduring evolution of the opera.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by GIROUD, Vincent. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by GIROUD, Vincent

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by GIROUD, Vincent. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music

French Opera: A Short History

Picasso and Gertrude Stein

St. Petersburg: A Portrait of a Great City

The World of Witold Gombrowicz 1904-1969: Catalog of a Centenary Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University

William Walton, Composer: A Centenary Exhibition in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University

St. Petersburg: A Portrait of a Great City

The World Of Witold Gombrowicz 1904-1969

The Real Tales of Hoffmann: Origin, History, and Restoration of an Operatic Masterpiece

The Real Tales of Hoffmann: Origin, History, and Restoration of an Operatic Masterpiece