The Ultimate Art

Anyone who cares about opera will find "The Ultimate Art" an engaging book. David Littlejohn's essays reflect his deep love of opera - that exotic, extravagant and perpetually popular hybrid performing art form - and his fascination with the many worlds from which it sprang. From its 17th-century beginnings, opera has been decried by its detractors for its elitism, its artifice, its absurd costliness, and its social irrelevance. Littlejohn argues that opera embraces an extraordinary amount of intense human emotion and experience, Western culture, and individual psychology. It is also the most complex, challenging and demanding form of public performance ever developed. At its most spectacular, it pulls together in one evening a play, a concert, a ballet and a pageant, not to mention an exhibition of painting and sculpture.