Download or read book A Dictionary of Opera Characters written by Joyce Bourne Kennedy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique reference work containing over 2,500 A-Z entries on operatic characters. Includes synopses for over 200 operas and operettas, as well as feature articles written by well-known personalities from the world of opera, including Plácido Domingo and Dame Janet Baker. It is an essential book for anyone with an interest in opera.
Download or read book Opera Or The Undoing of Women written by Catherine Clement and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This was the first work to have applied a systematised feminist theory to opera. It concentrates on the stories & text of opera, that perhaps have more relevence today in a growing literature than it had when it was the "sacrilegious" pioneering work.
Download or read book Verdi and Puccini Heroines written by Geoffrey Edwards and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New in paperback! This book comes at a time when opera-lovers, singers, directors, and critics alike are taking a new look at the dramatic soprano heroines created by Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini, endeavoring to delve beyond inherited scholarly interpretation and gain a richer understanding of these compelling female characters. Artistically limited by the bel canto musical tradition popular at the time, Verdi launched a new style dramma per musica which also demanded a new soprano archetype. This book illustrates the musical evolution of the Verdi and Puccini soprano while illuminating the dramatic scope and power of these great heroines. Avoiding critical reductionism, Verdi and Puccini Heroines provides an unprecedented and probing discussion of how these great soprano roles were conceived and executed. Accordingly, the authors take a three-dimensional look at these heroines, examining seven operas: Il Trovatore, La Forza del Destino, Aida, La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot. The chapters, which are fully self-contained analyses, contain translations, illustrative musical examples, supplementary notes, and references to each opera's literary sources. The musical analysis, while thorough, is descriptive and accessible to all levels of readers.
Download or read book Great Opera Heroines written by Joan Carden and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Who Married Figaro written by Joyce Bourne Kennedy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From Aeneas to Zaida, Who Married Figaro? contains more than 2,500 entries on operatic characters from around the world. Giving details of the composer of each role as well as notable performances, this unique reference book also provides comprehensive synopses for over 200 operas and operettas. It features articles by well-known personalities from the world of opera, including Placido Domingo, Dame Janet Baker, and, new to this edition, Christine Brewer, Susan Bullock, Simon Keenlyside, and Joyce DiDonato. This fully revised edition now contains an appendix of contemporary opera of the last ten years, offering detailed synopses and world premiere cast lists. Up to date, authoritative, and packed with valuable information, this A-Z is an essential book for opera lovers."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Vocal Victories written by Nila Parly and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vocal Victories is the first musicological comparison of all of Richard Wagner's great female characters, from Senta in The Flying Dutchman to Kundry in Parsifal. It has long been customary to view these and other opera heroines as victims, because these women, as a rule, perish during the plot of the opera. A closer study of the music of the women - their singing and the orchestral voices that surround them - reveals, however, that it is in the female characters that the new and groundbreaking musical material comes into being, and that the women are far more in command of the development of the works. Vocal Victories claims that Wagner was far ahead of his time in terms of equality between the sexes, and the musicological analyses are supported by quotations from the composer's own writings, so that a picture of Wagner as a radical critic of the oppressive patriarchal society emerges clearly and unmistakably. The feminist approach to the material also provides an opportunity for new
Download or read book Understanding the Women of Mozart s Operas written by Kristi Brown-Montesano and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is The Marriage of Figaro just about Figaro? Is Don Giovanni’s story the only one—or even the most interesting one—in the opera that bears his name? For generations of critics, historians, and directors, it’s Mozart’s men who have mattered most. Too often, the female characters have been understood from the male protagonist’s point of view or simply reduced on stage (and in print) to paper cutouts from the age of the powdered wig and the tightly cinched corset. It’s time to give Mozart’s women—and Mozart’s multi-dimensional portrayals of feminine character—their due. In this lively book, Kristi Brown-Montesano offers a detailed exploration of the female roles in Mozart’s four most frequently performed operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte. Each chapter takes a close look at the music, libretto text, literary sources, and historical factors that give shape to a character, re-evaluating common assumptions and proposing fresh interpretations. Brown-Montesano views each character as the subject of a story, not merely the object of a hero’s narrative or the stock figure of convention. From amiable Zerlina, to the awesome Queen of the Night, to calculating Despina, all of Mozart’s women have something unique to say. These readings also tackle provocative social, political, and cultural issues, which are used in the operas to define positive and negative images of femininity: revenge, power, seduction, resistance, autonomy, sacrifice, faithfulness, class, maternity, and sisterhood. Keenly aware of the historical gap between the origins of these works and contemporary culture, Brown-Montesano discusses how attitudes about such concepts—past and current—influence our appreciation of these fascinating representations of women.
Download or read book Who s who in Opera written by Joyce Bourne Kennedy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide to over 2,500 operatic characters provides both an invaluable source of reference and an absorbing and enjoyable read. Covering a wide range of works across the whole compass of opera and operetta, it contains plot synopses for over 250 operas as well as full information about eachoperatic role, including its creator and notable performers. Box features, illustrated with photographs, commissioned from well-known personalities in the world of opera, such as Janet Baker, Placido Domingo, Thomas Hampson, and Jonathan Miller, who write about their favourite opera characters. Over 2,500 characters from 280 operas Articles by well-known personalities from the world of opera about the roles they have played, directed, or enjoyed - from Janet Baker, Placido Domingo, Anne Evans, and Thomas Hampson to Jonathan Miller, Robert Tear, Theodor Uppman, and Susanna Walton From Arabella to Wozzeck, entries give a description of the role, its vocal category, by whom the part was created, and notable performers and performances Details of who first performed a particular role Plot synopses for over 250 operas Important arias and ensembles mentioned, with English translations 'a reference book for operaphiles who read synopses, but feel short-changed about information on the characters touched upon in such potted accounts . . . the answer to a prayer for those who attend operas without doing their homework properly . . . simply enjoy the fruits of her researches - withthe bonus of coming out considerably better informed and much the wiser.' From the Foreword by Sir George Christie, (Chairman, Glyndebourne)
Download or read book Verdi Opera Women written by Susan Rutherford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Verdi's operas - composed between 1839 and 1893 - portray a striking diversity of female protagonists: warrior women and peacemakers, virgins and courtesans, princesses and slaves, witches and gypsies, mothers and daughters, erring and idealised wives, and, last of all, a feisty quartet of Tudor townswomen in Verdi's final opera, Falstaff. Yet what meanings did the impassioned crises and dilemmas of these characters hold for the nineteenth-century female spectator, especially during such a turbulent span in the history of the Italian peninsula? How was opera shaped by society - and was society similarly influenced by opera? Contextualising Verdi's female roles within aspects of women's social, cultural and political history, Susan Rutherford explores the interface between the reality of the spectators' lives and the imaginary of the fictional world before them on the operatic stage.
Download or read book Twelve Great Actresses written by Edward Robins and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sing Sorrow written by Marianne McDonald and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2001-09-30 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opera has often used classical literature as a means of expressing the most vital concerns of the period in which the operas were written. Sing Sorrow explores the classical roots of many noted operas, illustrating the ways in which the operas reflected the political concerns of their time through these ancient narratives. In particular, though female opera characters are often regarded as victims, they are actually quite heroic, frequently shaping their own destinies. Each chapter provides background and historical context, examines the relationship between the opera and the original work of literature, and suggests what the music contributes to the interpretation. Through the lens of the classics, Sing Sorrow approaches opera from a unique aesthetic and cultural standpoint, giving a new perspective to both opera and its literary and dramatic ancestors.
Download or read book Famous Prima Donnas written by Lewis Clinton Strang and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famous Prima Donnas is a delightful collection of biographies of a variety of famous singers and actors in New York during the late 1800s. Contents: "Alice Nielsen, Virginia Earle, Lillian Russell, Josephine Hall, Mabelle Gillman, Fay Templeton, Madge Lessing, Jessie Bartlett Davis, Edna Wallace Hopper..."
Download or read book Histories of Violence written by Brad Evans and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-01-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there is a tacit appreciation that freedom from violence will lead to more prosperous relations among peoples, violence continues to be deployed for various political and social ends. Yet the problem of violence still defies neat description, subject to many competing interpretations. Histories of Violence offers an accessible yet compelling examination of the problem of violence as it appears in the corpus of canonical figures – from Hannah Arendt to Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault to Slavoj Žižek – who continue to influence and inform contemporary political, philosophical, sociological, cultural, and anthropological study. Written by a team of internationally renowned experts, this is an essential interrogation of post-war critical thought as it relates to violence.
Download or read book Life is Strife written by Monica A. Hershberger and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American opera--meaning opera written in English by composers in the United States--experienced unparalleled popularity after World War II. In this dissertation, I argue that by centering on the struggles of American women both real and imagined, a number of composers, librettists, and perhaps most importantly, sopranos, revitalized opera in and of the United States. Suddenly, American opera flourished in opera houses, on Broadway, in universities and conservatories, and on television. Combining extensive archival research, close musical and textual analysis, oral history, and reception history, I investigate and prioritize the voices and stories of the women in and of American opera. I examine Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's The mother of us all (1947), Gian-Carlo Menotti's The consul (1950), Carlisle Floyd's Susannah (1955), and Jack Beeson, Kenward Elmslie, and Richard Plant's Lizzie Borden: a family portrait (1965), four operas that revolve around compelling heroines. I approach these works as both texts and as lived experiences, and I argue that through them and from a variety of feminist vantage points including those illuminated by American sopranos, we can see how on stage and off, American women often uttered and embodied the complex quest for national identity that accompanied the Cold War in the United States. By focusing on the way national and feminist identities sometimes collude and at other times collide in these operas and on their heroines, I show how we may better understand operatic authorship, American opera as a genre, the nature of American composition and performance within the context of the Cold War, the culture of the Cold War more broadly, and the advent of modern feminism.
Download or read book A Short History of Opera written by Donald Jay Grout and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 1049 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The fourth edition incorporates new scholarship that traces the most important developments in the evolution of musical drama. After surveying anticipations of the operatic form in the lyric theater of the Greeks, medieval dramatic music, and other forerunners, the book reveals the genre's beginnings in the seventeenth century and follows its progress to the present day."--Jacket.
Download or read book Siren Songs written by Mary Ann Smart and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-25 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been argued that opera is all about sex. Siren Songs is the first collection of articles devoted to exploring the impact of this sexual obsession, and of the power relations that come with it, on the music, words, and staging of opera. Here a distinguished and diverse group of musicologists, literary critics, and feminist scholars address a wide range of fascinating topics--from Salome's striptease to hysteria to jazz and gender--in Italian, English, German, and French operas from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The authors combine readings of specific scenes with efforts to situate these musical moments within richly and precisely observed historical contexts. Challenging both formalist categories of musical analysis and the rhetoric that traditionally pits a male composer against the female characters he creates, many of the articles work toward inventing a language for the study of gender and opera. The collection opens with Mary Ann Smart's introduction, which provides an engaging reflection on the state of gender topics in operatic criticism and musicology. It then moves on to a foundational essay on the complex relationships between opera and history by the renowned philosopher and novelist Catherine Clément, a pioneer of feminist opera criticism. Other articles examine the evolution of the "trouser role" as it evolved in the lesbian subculture of fin-de-siècle Paris, the phenomenon of opera seria's "absent mother" as a manifestation of attitudes to the family under absolutism, the invention of a "hystericized voice" in Verdi's Don Carlos, and a collaborative discussion of the staging problems posed by the gender politics of Mozart's operas. The contributors are Wye Jamison Allanboork, Joseph Auner, Katherine Bergeron, Philip Brett, Peter Brooks, Catherine Clement, Martha Feldman, Heather Hadlock, Mary Hunter, Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon, M.D., Lawrence Kramer, Roger Parker, Mary Ann Smart, and Gretchen Wheelock.
Download or read book The Metropolitan Opera Stories of the Great Operas written by John W. Freeman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1984 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains the plots of 150 of the world's most popular operas, short biographies of the 72 composers represented, plus background material pertinent to each work.
