Audiobooks

 

History of the Musical, The

Author : Richard Fawkes

Performed By : Kim Criswell

Publisher : Select Music & Distribution

Runtime : 5 hours 15 minutes

Categories : Social & Economic
Music Related
Music Related

Our Price : $18.75

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The musical is one of the great art forms of the 20th century. Showboat Anything Goes, Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma!, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Oliver, Cabaret - one masterpiece after another packed the theatres on Broadway, in London's West End and around the world. And it made a successful transfer to the cinema. A truly popular art, the musical closely reflected society and its needs - sometimes providing a message and often providing a much-needed romantic escape.

Richard Fawkes traces the development of the musical, from its origins in European light opera and operetta to its transformation in the hands of the great American song composers and lyricists - among them Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe. The talent of Lloyd Webber and Sondheim has assured that in the 21st century, it is as lively as ever.

The History of The Musical is presented by the vivacious singer Kim Criswell, who starred in Cats, sang on Broadway, won awards for her recordings and has lived and breathed the musical since she was a young girl.

It is an enthralling story - and it is told with nearly 100 famous musical extracts.

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Garden Party and Other Stories, The

Author : Katherine Mansfield

Performed By : Marguerite Gavin

Publisher : Blackstone Audio Inc

Runtime : 6 hours 30 minutes

Categories : Classic Literature

Our Price : $14.95

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"With the timing and phrasing of a musician, Marguerite Gavin narrates this last-published collection of Katherine Mansfield's short stories. Gavin has a lovely singing voice that particularly enhances one of the stories about a singing teacher. She generally reads with a great deal of enthusiasm and expression."--AudioFile

"[Marguerite Gavin's] voices are marvelous; presenting British accents of every description from cockney to Queen, with clear delineation between characters male and female, is a skill especially important in these character-driven tales. Her sound effects (birdcalls, running water, etc.) are perfect, and she sings in such a lovely clear soprano that the listener wishes there were more songs in the stories....highly recommended."--Library Journal

The fifteen stories collected in this volume demonstrate the genius of a woman who, in her own short lifetime, was compared to Chekhov. The tales are sensitive revelations of human behavior in quite ordinary situations. The men, women, and especially the children whom Mansfield portrays in such delicate pastels are involved in no sensational episodes, yet they are vividly true to life. With careful, quiet observation and subtle irony, Mansfield investigates the variety of relationships that make up a life and the complex emotions of unfulfilled longings. In the title story, a young woman's garden party coincides with the death of a working-class neighbor, bringing a brush of mortality and realism into her carefully constructed plans and ideals. The Garden Party was the last of Mansfield's works to be published before her untimely death at the age of 35.