Download or read book Music Sexuality and the Enlightenment in Mozart s Figaro Don Giovanni and Cos fan tutte written by Charles Ford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music, Sexuality and the Enlightenment explains how Mozart's music for Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte 'sounds' the intentions of Da Ponte's characters and their relationships with one another. Mozart, by way of the infinitely generative and beautiful logic of the sonata principle, did not merely interpret Da Ponte's characterizations but lent them temporal, musical forms. Charles Ford's analytic interpretation of these musical forms concerns processes and structures in detail and at medium- to long-term levels. He addresses the music of a wide range of arias and ensembles, and develops original ways to interpret the two largely overlooked operatic genres of secco recitative and finales. Moreover, Ford presents a new method by which to relate musical details directly to philosophical concepts, and thereby, the music of the operas to the inwardly contradictory thinking of the European Enlightenment. This involves close readings of late eighteenth-century understandings of 'man' and nature, self and other, morality and transgression, and gendered identities and sexuality, with particular reference to contemporary writers, especially Goethe, Kant, Laclos, Rousseau, Sade, Schiller, Sterne and Wollstonecraft. The concluding discussion of the implied futures of the operas argues that their divided sexualities, which are those of the Enlightenment as a whole, have come to form our own unquestioned assumptions about gender differences and sexuality. This, along with the elegant and eloquent precision of Mozart's music, is why Figaro, Giovanni and Così still maintain their vital immediacy for audiences today.
Download or read book Music Sexuality and the Enlightenment in Mozart s Figaro Don Giovanni and Cos Fan Tutte written by Charles C. Ford and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2012 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This analytical study explains how Mozart's music for Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte 'sounds' the intentions of Da Ponte's characters and their relationships with one another. Mozart did not merely interpret Da Ponte's characterisations but lent them temporal, musical forms. Charles Ford's analysis presents a new method by which to relate the music of the operas to the thinking of the European Enlightenment, involving close readings of late eighteenth-century understandings of 'man' and nature, self and other, morality and transgression, and gendered identities and sexuality.
Download or read book Cos written by Charles C. Ford and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Librettist of Venice written by Rodney Bolt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-12-11 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1805, Lorenzo Da Ponte was the proprietor of a small grocery store in New York. But since his birth into an Italian Jewish family in 1749, he had already been a priest, a poet, the lover of many women, a scandalous Enlightenment thinker banned from teaching in Venice, the librettist for three of Mozart's most sublime operas, a collaborator with Salieri, a friend of Casanova, and a favorite of Emperor Joseph II. He would go on to establish New York City's first opera house and be the first professor of Italian at Columbia University. An inspired innovator but a hopeless businessman, who loved with wholehearted loyalty and recklessness, Da Ponte was one of the early immigrants to live out the American dream. In Rodney Bolt's rollicking and extensively researched biography, Da Ponte's picaresque life takes readers from Old World courts and the back streets of Venice, Vienna, and London to the New World promise of New York City. Two hundred and fifty years after Mozart's birth, the life and legacy of his librettist Da Ponte are as astonishing as ever.
Download or read book The Original Portrayal of Mozart s Don Giovanni written by Magnus Tessing Schneider and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni offers an original reading of Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s opera Don Giovanni, using as a lens the portrayal of the title role by its creator, the baritone Luigi Bassi (1766–1825). Although Bassi was coached in the role by the composer himself, his portrayal has never been studied in depth before, and this book presents a large number of new sources (first- and second-hand accounts), which allows us to reconstruct his performance scene by scene. The book confronts Bassi’s portrayal with a study of the opera’s early German reception and performance history, demonstrating how Don Giovanni as we know it today was not only created by Mozart, Da Ponte and Luigi Bassi but also by the early German adapters, translators, critics and performers who turned the title character into the arrogant and violent villain we still encounter in most of today’s stage productions. Incorporating discussion of dramaturgical thinking of the late Enlightenment and the difficult moral problems that the opera raises, this is an important study for scholars and researchers from opera studies, theatre and performance studies, music history as well as conductors, directors and singers.
Download or read book Inventing Eastern Europe written by Larry Wolff and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wolff explores how Western thinkers contributed to defining and characterizing Eastern Europe as half-civilized and barbaric.
Download or read book Mozart s Don Giovanni written by Hermann Abert and published by London : Eulenburg Books. This book was released on 1976 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A line-by-line analysis of the opera - its origins, structure, characters, orchestration and production history"--Back cover.
Download or read book Music in the Third Reich written by Erik Levi and published by Springer. This book was released on 1996-04-15 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this authoritative study, one of the first to appear in English, Erik Levi explores the ambiguous relationship between music and politics during one of the darkest periods of recent cultural history. Utilising material drawn from contemporary documents, journals and newspapers, he traces the evolution of reactionary musical attitudes which were exploited by the Nazis in the final years of the Weimar Republic, chronicles the mechanisms that were established after 1933 to regiment musical life throughout Germany and the occupied territories, and examines the degree to which the climate of xenophobia, racism and anti-modernism affected the dissemination of music either in the opera house and concert hall, or on the radio and in the media.
Download or read book Undressing Cherubino written by Erin Puttee and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Undressing Cherubino: Reassessing Gender and Sexuality in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro Although Le nozze di Figaro is one of Mozart's most celebrated operas, we have not yet understood one crucial element. On the surface of the drama, the opera seems to be about class disruption: the Count is the head of the household, but it is his servants who run it. This plot is made evident to the audience, and it is the message that most critics draw from the work. However, there may be a second meaning below the surface that is, in fact, more subversive than the overt one. While class structures are questioned in the foreground, another more hidden narrative explores alternate depictions of femininity and sexuality. This covert meaning is arguably embodied in Cherubino. This character is portrayed as an adolescent boy despite the fact that the role calls for a female singer. Cherubino is understood to be male, and functions as one in the drama, but, as I will suggest, may in fact be conceived as female. As a pagegirl raging with sexual love for all the women in the palace, Cherubino may be seen embodying a prototype of femininity that is contrary to the heterosexual norms of the overt narrative. The first chapter of this thesis examines how both Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais' play Le mariage de Figaro and Mozart and Da Ponte's operatic adaptation could point towards alternate depictions of women. The following two chapters survey the various ways an alternate gender identity for Cherubino can be expressed through features of the libretto (chapter 2) and the score (chapter 3). Drawing from my experience of performing Cherubino, the fourth and final chapter assesses the findings of the previous two and shows that while elements of the text and music may have characteristics that can be assigned gender attributes, neither can intrinsically embody masculinity or femininity. With this finding comes the understanding that who and what a character is is marked not by the outlines of libretto and score but by acts of musical performance.
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 Europe 1450 to 1789 written by Jonathan Dewald and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book High Low written by Kirk Varnedoe and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 1990 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readins in high & low
Download or read book Mozart s Operas written by Daniel Heartz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Renowned Mozart scholar Daniel Heartz brings his deep knowledge of social history, theater, and art to a study of the last and great decade of Mozart's operas. Mozart specialists will recognize some of Heartz's best-known essays here; but six pieces are new for the collection, and others have been revised and updated with little-known documents on the librettist's, composer's, and stage director's craft. All lovers of opera will value the elegance and wit of Professor Heartz's writing, enhanced by thirty-seven illustrations, many from his private collection. The volume includes Heartz's classic essay on Idomeneo (1781), the work that continued to inspire and sustain Mozart through his next, and final, six operas. Thomas Bauman brings his special expertise to a discussion of Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782). The ten central chapters are devoted to the three great operas composed to librettos by Lorenzo da Ponte—Le nozze di Figaro (l786), Don Giovanni (l787), and Così fan tutte (l790). The reader is treated to fresh insights on da Ponte's role as Mozart's astute and stage-wise collaborator, on the singers whose gifts helped shape each opera, and on the musical connections among the three works. Parallels are drawn with some of the greatest creative artists in other fields, such as Molière, Watteau, and Fragonard. The world of the dance, one of Heartz's specialties, lends an illuminating perspective as well. Finally, the essays discuss the deep spirituality of Mozart's last two operas, Die Zauberflöte and La Clemenza di Tito (both l79l). They also address the pertinence of opera outside Vienna at the end of the century, the fortunes and aspirations of Freemasonry in Austria, and the relation of Mozart's overtures to the dramaturgy of the operas.
Download or read book Mozart s Operas written by Mozart and published by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classics.
Download or read book Making Light written by Raymond Knapp and published by Duke University Press Books. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Making Light Raymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century. Knapp identifies in Haydn and in early popular American musical cultures such as minstrelsy and operetta a strain of high camp—a mode of engagement that relishes both the superficial and serious aspects of an aesthetic experience—that runs antithetical to German Idealism's musical paradigms. By considering the disservice done to Haydn by German Idealism alongside the emergence of musical camp in American popular music, Knapp outlines a common ground: a humanistically based aesthetic of shared pleasure that points to ways in which camp receptive modes might rejuvenate the original appeal of Haydn's music that has mostly eluded audiences. In so doing, Knapp remaps the historiographical modes and systems of critical evaluation that dominate musicology while troubling the divide between serious and popular music.
Download or read book Shakespeare Film Studies and the Visual Cultures of Modernity written by A. Guneratne and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first in-depth cultural history of cinema's polyvalent and often contradictory appropriations of Shakespearean drama and performance traditions. The author argues that these adapatations have helped shape multiple aspects of film, from cinematic style to genre and narrative construction.
Download or read book The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia written by Cliff Eisen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-11 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mozart's enduring popularity, among music lovers as a composer and among music historians as a subject for continued study, lies at the heart of The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. This reference book functions both as a starting point for information on specific works, people, places and concepts as well as a summation of current thinking about Mozart. The extended articles on genres reflect the latest in scholarship and new ways of thinking about the works while the articles on people and places provide historical framework, as well as interpretation.
