A respected Chicago attorney and entrepreneur, Edward Reicin has also been a professional opera singer for many years and had roles in Verdi and Mozart productions. Edward Reicin has an extensive knowledge of the various conventions of opera, including the libretto.

Meaning “little book,” the libretto takes much the same role as the script in stage plays and the screenplay in films in delineating a story. Not confined to opera, the (traditionally verse) libretto can also be used for musicals, masques, oratorios, and even liturgical works such as a requiem or mass.

While most librettists stand in the shadow of the composer of the opera, some composers, most notably Wagner, did write their own libretti. There have also been times, such as with Gilbert (words) and Sullivan (music), where the librettist took center stage in his own right.

A unique aspect of libretti is that many of them take their narrative from older texts, such as Rossini’s “William Tell,” which retells the legend of a Swiss folk hero, archer, and mountain climber. In addition, plays such as Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and “Macbeth” have been adapted for the operatic stage through libretti that faithfully follow the original story.