Operatic Italian

Robert Thomson was born in Vancouver in 1940. He graduated with honors (1st class) in French and Italian at the University of British Columbia. In 1966 he received his PhD from Yale University. After a career of teaching he retired at age 55, and founded a publishing house, Godwin Books. He is credited with raising awareness of several books by his great-uncle, George Godwin (1889-1974). These books had been out of print for decades. ＂The Eternal Forest＂ (1929) and ＂Why Stay We Here?＂ (1930--a memoir of World War One) have received wide critical acclaim. See www.godwinbooks.com Thomson wrote a shorter earlier book on operatic Italian: ＂Italian for the Opera＂ (1990). ＂Operatic Italian＂ is a massive expansion of that earlier work (460 pages versus 150 pages). Thomson spent his junior year in Florence, taught Italian at Emory University, and is fluent in Italian and French. He has also written a book, ＂Love songs in Spanish for Enjoyment and Learning.＂