Download or read book Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverdi to Bourdieu written by Victoria Johnson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-03 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume brings together academic specialists writing on the multi-media operatic form from a range of disciplines: comparative literature, history, sociology, and philosophy. The presence in the volume's title of Pierre Bourdieu, the leading cultural sociologist of the late twentieth century, signals the editors' intention to synthesise advances in social science with advances in musicological and other scholarship on opera. Through a focus on opera in Italy and France, the contributors to the volume draw on their respective disciplines both to expand our knowledge of opera's history and to demonstrate the kinds of contributions that stand to be made by different disciplines to the study of opera. The volume is divided into three sections, each of which is preceded by a concise and informative introduction explaining how the chapters in that section contribute to our understanding of opera.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon written by Cormac Newark and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opera has always been controversial, not only because of how vastly expensive it is to produce. It has historically been a vital and complex mixture of high art and commerce, socially elite and popular or middle-class, the new and the increasingly old. When a city wants a new landmark building, an opera house is very often the solution: why should this still be the case? The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon examines how opera has become the concrete edifice it was never meant to be, by looking at how it evolved from a market entirely driven by novelty to one of the most arthritically canonic art forms still in existence. This new collection addresses questions that are key to opera's past, present and future. Why is the art form apparently so arthritically canonical, with the top ten titles, all more than a century old, accounting for nearly a quarter of all performances world-wide? Why is this top-heavy system of production becoming still more restrictive, even while the repertory is seemingly expanding, notably to include early music? Why did the operatic canon evolve so differently from that of concert music? And why has that evolution attracted so comparatively little attention from scholars? Why, finally, if opera houses all over the world are dutifully honoring their audiences' loyalty to these favorite works, are they having to struggle so hard financially? Answers to these and other problems are offered here by 26 musicologists, historians, and industry professionals working in a wide range of contexts. Topics range from the seventeenth century to the present day, and from Russia to England and continental Europe to the Americas. In an effort to reflect the contested nature of most of the issues facing opera, each topic is addressed by two essays, introduced jointly by the respective authors, and followed by a jointly compiled list of further reading. These paired essays complement each other in different ways: for example, by treating the same geographical location in different periods, by providing different national or regional perspectives on the same period, or by thinking through similar conceptual issues in contrasting or changing contexts. Posing its questions in fresh, provocative terms, The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon challenges scholarly assumptions and expectations, and breathes fresh air into the fields of music and cultural history.
Download or read book Reader s Guide to Music written by Murray Steib and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 928 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).
Download or read book Changing the Score written by Hilary Poriss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study seeks to explore the role and significance of aria insertion, the practice that allowed singers to introduce music of their own choice into productions of Italian operas. Each chapter investigates the art of aria insertion during the nineteenth century from varying perspectives, beginning with an overview of the changing fortunes of the practice, followed by explorations of individual prima donnas and their relationship with particular insertion arias: Carolina Ungher's difficulties in finding a "perfect" aria to introduce into Donizetti's Marino Faliero; Guiditta Pasta's performance of an aria from Pacini's Niobe in a variety of operas, and the subsequent fortunes of that particular aria; Maria Malibran's interpolation of Vaccai's final scene from Giulietta e Romeo in place of Bellini's original setting in his I Capuleti e i Montecchi; and Adelina Patti's "mini-concerts" in the lesson scene of Il barbiere di Siviglia. The final chapter provides a treatment of a short story, "Memoir of a Song," narrated by none other than an insertion aria itself, and the volume concludes with an appendix containing the first modern edition of this short story, a narrative that has lain utterly forgotten since its publication in 1849. This book covers a wide variety of material that will be of interest to opera scholars and opera lovers alike, touching on the fluidity of the operatic work, on the reception of the singers, and on the shifting and hardening aesthetics of music criticism through the period.
Download or read book Opera and Modern Spectatorship in Late Nineteenth Century Italy written by Alessandra Campana and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-22 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alessandra Campana explores how operas and their stage manuals participated in the making of a modern public in late nineteenth-century Italy.
Download or read book Place Culture and Identity written by Alan R. H. Baker and published by Presses Université Laval. This book was released on 2001 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alan R.H. Baker, of the Geography Department of the University of Cambridge, has played a leading role in the development of historical geography. This book, which features twelve specially commissioned essays, recognizes his highly influential and innovative contributions. The contributors address the following topics: methodology and ideology in historical geography; historical geographies of state regulation and political discourse; the social and cultural use of public and private space; and the interpretation of images of place in relation to cultural and national identity.
Download or read book Verdis Exceptional Women Giuseppina Strepponi and Teresa Stolz written by Caroline Ellsmore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This investigation offers new perspectives on Giuseppe Verdi’s attitudes to women and the functions which they fulfilled for him. The book explores Verdi’s professional and personal relationship with women who were exceptional within the traditional socio-sexual structure of patria potestà, in the context of women’s changing status in nineteenth-century Italian society. It focusses on two women; the singers Giuseppina Strepponi, who supported and enhanced Verdi’s creativity at the beginning of his professional life and Teresa Stolz, who sustained his sense of self-worth at its end. Each was an essential emotional benefactor without whom Verdi’s career would not have been the same. The subject of the Strepponi-Verdi marriage and the impact of Strepponi’s past deserve further detailed and nuanced discussion. This book demonstrates Verdi’s shifting power-balance with Strepponi as she sought to retain intellectual self-respect while his success and control increased. The negative stereotypes concerning operatic ‘divas’ do not withstand scrutiny when applied either to Strepponi or to Stolz. This book presents a revisionist appraisal of Stolz through close examination of her letters. Revealing Stolz’s value to Verdi, they also provide contemporary operatic criticism and behind-the-scenes comment, some excerpts of which are published here in English for the first time.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Music written by Jim Samson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-03 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most informed reference book on nineteenth-century music currently available, this comprehensive overview of music in the nineteenth century draws on the most recent scholarship in the field. Essays investigate the intellectual and socio-political history of the time, and examine topics such as nations and nationalism, the emergent concept of an avant garde, and musical styles and languages at the turn of the century. It contains a detailed chronology, and extensive glossaries.
Download or read book The Late Romantic Era written by Jim Samson and published by Springer. This book was released on 1992-01-10 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Late Romantic Era treats the period bounded by the 1848 revolutions and the outbreak of World War I. It examines several musical dimensions of the bourgeois cultural ascendancy of the second half of the 19th century - the growth of independent institutions of music-making, the consolidation of a standard classical repertory and the emergence of increasingly specific repertories of popular music, professional and amateur. Single chapters on particular countries or regions are framed by pairs of chapters on Vienna, Paris and the German cities. In an opening chapter Dr Samson places the later geographical surveys within a thematic context which embraces social and economic change, political ideology and the climate of ideas.
Download or read book Divas and Scholars written by Philip Gossett and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2007 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society and the 2007 Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Divas and Scholars is a dazzling and beguiling account of how opera comes to the stage, filled with Philip Gossett’s personal experiences of triumphant—and even failed—performances and suffused with his towering and tonic passion for music. Writing as a fan, a musician, and a scholar, Gossett, the world's leading authority on the performance of Italian opera, brings colorfully to life the problems, and occasionally the scandals, that attend the production of some of our most favorite operas. Gossett begins by tracing the social history of nineteenth-century Italian theaters in order to explain the nature of the musical scores from which performers have long worked. He then illuminates the often hidden but crucial negotiations opera scholars and opera conductors and performers: What does it mean to talk about performing from a critical edition? How does one determine what music to perform when multiple versions of an opera exist? What are the implications of omitting passages from an opera in a performance? In addition to vexing questions such as these, Gossett also tackles issues of ornamentation and transposition in vocal style, the matters of translation and adaptation, and even aspects of stage direction and set design. Throughout this extensive and passionate work, Gossett enlivens his history with reports from his own experiences with major opera companies at venues ranging from the Metropolitan and Santa Fe operas to the Rossini Opera Festival at Pesaro. The result is a book that will enthrall both aficionados of Italian opera and newcomers seeking a reliable introduction to it—in all its incomparable grandeur and timeless allure.
Download or read book Il barbiere di Siviglia Moise et Pharaon written by Gioacchino Rossini and published by Alma Books. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rossini was one of the major innovators in the field of opera. Moise et Pharaon is a score which he revised for Paris ten years after it had been composed for Naples; the result shows the evolution of his taste over a decade - from the neoclassical sublime to spectacular Romantic grand opera. Il barbiere di Siviglia has been a favourite with the public since it opened, and Marco Spada analyses how its stylish comedy has been misunderstood. Other essays throw light on the working conditions of the "e;opera industry"e; in Rossini's Italy, on Balzac's delightful novel concerning Moses and on the exceptional challenge of performing this type of music to a high standard.Contents: Rossini: the Serious and the Comic, Philip Gossett; The Composer at Work, John Rosselli; The Roots of a Masterpiece, Marco Spada; A Personal View of Rossini, Ubaldo Gardini; Il barbiere di Siviglia: Libretto by Cesare Sterbini; The Barber of Seville: English version by Edward J. Dent; Balzac, Stendhal and Rossini's 'Moses', Pierluigi Petrobelli; From Sublime to Romantic, Richard Bernas; Moise et Pharaon: Libretto by Victor de Jouy and Louis Balochy; Moses: English translation by John and Nell Moody
Download or read book Curating Opera written by Stephen Mould and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-02-09 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Curation as a concept and a catchword in modern parlance has, over recent decades, become deeply ingrained in modern culture. The purpose of this study is to explore the curatorial forces at work within the modern opera house and to examine the functionaries and processes that guide them. In turn, comparisons are made with the workings of the traditional art museum, where artworks are studied, preserved, restored, displayed and contextualised – processes which are also present in the opera house. Curatorial roles in each institution are identified and described, and the role of the celebrity art curator is compared with that of the modern stage director, who has acquired previously undreamt-of licence to interrogate operatic works, overlaying them with new concepts and levels of meaning in order to reinvent and redefine the operatic repertoire for contemporary needs. A point of coalescence between the opera house and the art museum is identified, with the transformation, towards the end of the nineteenth century, of the opera house into the operatic museum. Curatorial practices in the opera house are examined, and further communalities and synergies in the way that ‘works’ are defined in each institution are explored. This study also considers the so-called ‘birth’ of opera around the start of the seventeenth century, with reference to the near-contemporary rise of the modern art museum, outlining operatic practice and performance history over the last 400 years in order to identify the curatorial practices that have historically been employed in the maintenance and development of the repertoire. This examination of the forces of curation within the modern opera house will highlight aspects of authenticity, authorial intent, preservation, restoration and historically informed performance practice.
Download or read book Sourcebook for Research in Music Third Edition written by Allen Scott and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-01 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since it was first published in 1993, the Sourcebook for Research in Music has become an invaluable resource in musical scholarship. The balance between depth of content and brevity of format makes it ideal for use as a textbook for students, a reference work for faculty and professional musicians, and as an aid for librarians. The introductory chapter includes a comprehensive list of bibliographical terms with definitions; bibliographic terms in German, French, and Italian; and the plan of the Library of Congress and the Dewey Decimal music classification systems. Integrating helpful commentary to instruct the reader on the scope and usefulness of specific items, this updated and expanded edition accounts for the rapid growth in new editions of standard works, in fields such as ethnomusicology, performance practice, women in music, popular music, education, business, and music technology. These enhancements to its already extensive bibliographies ensures that the Sourcebook will continue to be an indispensable reference for years to come.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Opera written by Helen M. Greenwald and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2014 with total page 1217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty of the world's most respected scholars cast opera as a fluid entity that continuously reinvents itself in a reflection of its patrons, audience, and creators.
Download or read book Networking Operatic Italy written by Francesca Vella and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-01-26 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the networks of opera production and critical discourse that shaped Italian cultural identity during and after Unification. Opera’s role in shaping Italian identity has long fascinated both critics and scholars. Whereas the romance of the Risorgimento once spurred analyses of how individual works and styles grew out of and fostered specifically “Italian” sensibilities and modes of address, more recently scholars have discovered the ways in which opera has animated Italians’ social and cultural life in myriad different local contexts. In Networking Operatic Italy, Francesca Vella reexamines this much-debated topic by exploring how, where, and why opera traveled on the mid-nineteenth-century peninsula, and what this mobility meant for opera, Italian cities, and Italy alike. Focusing on the 1850s to the 1870s, Vella attends to opera’s encounters with new technologies of transportation and communication, as well as its continued dissemination through newspapers, wind bands, and singing human bodies. Ultimately, this book sheds light on the vibrancy and complexity of nineteenth-century Italian operatic cultures, challenging many of our assumptions about an often exoticized country.
Download or read book The Operatic State written by Ruth Bereson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Operatic State examines the cultural, financial, and political investments that have gone into the maintenance of opera and opera houses in Europe, the USA and Australia. It analyses opera's nearly immutable form throughout wars, revolutions, and vast social changes throughout the world. Bereson argues that by legitimising the power of the state through universally recognised ceremonial ritual, opera enjoys a privileged status across three continents, often to the detriment of popular and indigenous art forms.
Download or read book Arpa D or Dei Fatidici Vati written by Roger Parker and published by EDT srl. This book was released on 1997 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
