Scholars will scoff, but I think one of the best pieces of criticism ever written is Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr. W.H.
Lee discusses some 23 operas – from the well known and popular, like Aïda, to the obscure, like Wagner’s Rienzi, to the (to me, at least) oddly repellent, like Pfitzner’s Palestrina. No snob, he includes Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! in his survey. He occasionally lets theory obscure what is actually happening on stage – it is all very well, for example, to describe Monostatos in Mozart’s Flute as “an ambivalent villain, symbolically dark-skinned,” when what the audience sees is the much less edifying sight of a rapacious black man eventually mocked and punished.

Mostly, though, his analyses are revelatory – partly because he is so unashamedly a Roman Catholic priest. As such, he has no problem acknowledging what cultural sophisticates all too frequently find embarrassing – that opera’s overwhelming impact can have a spiritual dimension; that you can actually leave the theatre feeling more humane, understanding, and tolerant than when you entered.

This book, like Wilde’s, is a joy in itself, and sends you eagerly back to works you thought you knew all too well. You can’t ask much more of a book than that.