English National Opera Guides are ideal companions to the opera. They provide stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text of each opera in English and the original. "If I were not afraid of being called Utopian, I should be tempted to say that to reach perfection in a musical work a single mind should create the verses and the music" - not Wagner, but Cammarano to Verdi as he worked on the libretto of Il Trovatore. Marcello Conati of the Institute for Verdi Studies points out that, although audiences have always adored it, critics are only now coming to see that it represents a step forward, and by no means a step back, from the revolutionary drama of Rigoletto, completed a year before. Professor D.R.B. Kimbell, an expert on Verdi's music, clarifies the story and takes us through the score, while Professor Donald Shaw examines the unusual symbolism of the Spanish Romantic movement. Il Trovatore may cry out to be approached just as a theatrical experience, but these essays give brief and valuable insights into the type of drama it is, and the way it works.