The Complete Opera Book

The Complete Opera Book is a guide to operas by American music critic and author Gustav Kobbé first published (posthumously) in the United States in 1919 and the United Kingdom in 1922. A revised edition from 1954 by the Earl of Harewood is known as Kobbé's Complete Opera Book. The 1997 revision, edited by Harewood and Antony Peattie, is titled The New Kobbé's Opera Book.

Gustav Kobbé was on the point of completing the book which was afterwards published as The Complete Opera Book when he died. Various additions were made to it before publication, and also in subsequent editions or reprints, as the subject demands constant revision and renewal, both through new works and through the discovery or revival of lesser known existing ones. The work in its original form was first finally edited and brought together for publication by Katharine Wright, who at the same time included some additional operas in sections that bear her initials. Its full title was The Complete Opera Book : the Stories of the Operas, Together with 400 of the Leading Airs and Motives in Musical Notation. The early American editions were copyrighted in 1919 (first), and then in 1922 and 1924, by C. W. Kobbé.

Much of the additional material first appeared in a supplement or appendix to the main work. The last opera of the main text is the Goyescas of Enrique Granados, and the Supplement is still (in the English edition, p. 851 ff.) described as such in 1929, but in other editions called "Recent and Revised Operas." This continued to evolve, and incorporated additional material written by Ferruccio Bonavia (signed F.B.). The earlier supplement included works by Maeterlinck, Reginald de Koven, Ravel, Henry Hadley, Andre Messager, Holst, Rutland Boughton, Ethel Smyth, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and Stravinsky, and Mozart's Il Seraglio, occupying pp. 851–901. After 1929 it was enlarged to include Verdi's Simone Boccanegra, Boito's Nerone, Alban Berg's Wozzeck, Puccini's Turandot, Rossini's La Cenerentola, Mozart's Così fan tutte, Jaromir Weinberger's Schwanda the Bagpiper and Vaughan Williams's Hugh the Drover (pp. 901–930). The English 1935 imprint included Bonavia's notes on Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, Rimsky-Korsakov's Snegourochka and two operas of Ildebrando Pizzetti: parts of the former supplement had by now been incorporated into the main text, and the overall page-count before index was now 945 pages.

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