This is the second edition of this comprehensive one-volume work. Each entry has been revised and updated and 120 new opera entries, 250 new full-plot summaries, 75 new composers, and 55 new singers and conductors have been added to the book. An extensive new bibliography is also included. This edition contains expanded sections on unusual operatic deaths, literary sources and real revolutions and assassination attempts which began or took place in opera houses, including that of Stolypin the Russian Prime Minister, shot in front of the Tzar at the Kiev Opera. The work also covers operetta, an often neglected genre, with hundreds of plot summaries and composer biographies.