The most original, ambitious and encyclopaedic book ever written about tenors and the tenor voice.

One hundred years after the death of Enrico Caruso, and the births of Franco Corelli, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Mario Lanza, this landmark history of the tenor charts the cultural and musical evolution of the tenor voice, and the achievements of almost 400 of its greatest exponents, from the 17th century to the 21st. Through extensive research and detailed musical analysis, Matthew Boyden traces for the first time the profound influence of religion, architecture, socio-economics, politics, technology and taste on the sound, technique and perception of the tenor as a cultural and musical phenomenon. By reference to hundreds of works of music, literature, painting, and cinema, Boyden reveals how changes in cultural and social experience across Europe, Russia and the United States formed the modern tenor voice. Spanning opera, art music, theatre and popular song, it is the most comprehensive and original study of its kind. Ambitious and thought-provoking, The Tenor: a Cultural History is a fascinating resource for anyone interested in the art, science and history of singing.

The author

Matthew Boyden

Matthew Boyden is the author of nine acclaimed books on music, including The Soprano: A Cultural History, the best-selling Rough Guide to Opera, an award-winning biography of Richard Strauss (published in Britain, the United States, Hungary, France and Germany, where Die Welt awarded it Book of the Year), and Beethoven and the Gothic. He has written for numerous newspapers and music journals, and was Editor of CD Review. He was previously the amanuensis of the legendary British pianist, John Ogdon, and he is the producer and editor of more than 150 recordings, many of them recognised internationally by prizes and awards. He was the Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival of Words and Music and is the composer of twelve tediously derivative quartets. He is still working on an operatic setting of Boewulf, using the language as it survives in the Nowell Codex. He is consulting on the creation of a new music festival in Turin, of which he will be Artistic Director.  At the same time, he is writing The Baritone: a Cultural History, for publication in 2025 (to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau). Boyden is giving a number of talks on Maria Callas in Italy, Greece and the United States throughout 2023.