Following on from my post on the Tales of Hoffman yesterday, I thought this would be a good time to mention a book sent to me a couple of weeks ago by Oxford University Press who are extraordinarily 
generous to this grateful blogger. This is in addition to the superb book on musicals which they also sent me and you can imagine the joy with which I have fallen upon both these volumes.
When writing about Hoffman I came up with the names of Antonia, Olympia and another love, Stella, who is referred to in the pro and epi-logues but went blank when it came to Giulietta so hauled down Who Married Figaro and was able to jog my memory and get the name in no time at all.
So if I want to know who the Count and Countess Ceprano are and which opera they appear in, albeit in a very minor role, who composed an opera about Mary Queen of Scots and who is Esmeralda, who wrote Lakme and, of course, Who Married Figaro, then this book will give all the answers.
I also discovered that Lord Tristan Mickleford is an elderly foppish cousin to Lady Harriet Durham and they appear in the opera Martha by Flotow.
Not many people know that….
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