Opera and the Politics of Tragedy

Opera and the Politics of Tragedy PDF Author: Katharina Clausius
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1648250491
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book

Book Description
A curated collection of Enlightenment operas, paintings, and literary works that were all marked by the "Telemacomania" scandal, a furious cultural frenzy with dangerous political stakes. Imaginatively structured as a guided tour, Opera and the Politics of Tragedy captures the tumultuous impact of the so-called Telemacomania crisis through its key artifacts: literary pamphlets, spoken dramas, paintings, engravings, and opera librettos (drammi per musica). Prominently featured in the gallery are two operas with direct ties to this aesthetic and political war: Mozart and Cigna-Santi's Mitridate (1770) and Mozart and Varesco's Idomeneo (1781). Reading and listening across the Enlightenment's cultural spaces (its new public museums, its first encyclopedias, and its ever-controversial operatic theater), this book showcases the Enlightenment's disorderly historical revisionism alongside its progressive politics to expose the fertile creativity that can emerge out of the ambiguous space between what is "ancient" and what is "modern."

Opera and the Politics of Tragedy

Opera and the Politics of Tragedy PDF Author: Katharina Clausius
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1648250491
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 265

Get Book

Book Description
A curated collection of Enlightenment operas, paintings, and literary works that were all marked by the "Telemacomania" scandal, a furious cultural frenzy with dangerous political stakes. Imaginatively structured as a guided tour, Opera and the Politics of Tragedy captures the tumultuous impact of the so-called Telemacomania crisis through its key artifacts: literary pamphlets, spoken dramas, paintings, engravings, and opera librettos (drammi per musica). Prominently featured in the gallery are two operas with direct ties to this aesthetic and political war: Mozart and Cigna-Santi's Mitridate (1770) and Mozart and Varesco's Idomeneo (1781). Reading and listening across the Enlightenment's cultural spaces (its new public museums, its first encyclopedias, and its ever-controversial operatic theater), this book showcases the Enlightenment's disorderly historical revisionism alongside its progressive politics to expose the fertile creativity that can emerge out of the ambiguous space between what is "ancient" and what is "modern."

The Politics of Opera

The Politics of Opera PDF Author: Mitchell Cohen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211515
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 510

Get Book

Book Description
A wide-ranging look at the interplay of opera and political ideas through the centuries The Politics of Opera takes readers on a fascinating journey into the entwined development of opera and politics, from the Renaissance through the turn of the nineteenth century. What political backdrops have shaped opera? How has opera conveyed the political ideas of its times? Delving into European history and thought and music by such greats as Monteverdi, Lully, Rameau, and Mozart, Mitchell Cohen reveals how politics—through story lines, symbols, harmonies, and musical motifs—has played an operatic role both robust and sotto voce. This is an engrossing book that will interest all who love opera and are intrigued by politics.

Viva La Liberta!

Viva La Liberta! PDF Author: Anthony Arblaster
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9780860916185
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Get Book

Book Description
An impassioned guide to opera's political dimension. Taking us on a tour of 200 years of great opera, from "The Marriage of Figaro" to "Nixon in China", Anthony Arblaster uncovers the political dimension of an art form all too often considered as purely aesthetic and reveals opera's full vitality and passion for liberty.

Opera, Tragedy, and Neighbouring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi

Opera, Tragedy, and Neighbouring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi PDF Author: Blair Hoxby
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487518099
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book

Book Description
Since the nineteenth century, some of the most influential historians have portrayed opera and tragedy as wholly distinct cultural phenomena. These historians have denied a meaningful connection between the tragedy of the ancients and the efforts of early modern composers to arrive at styles that were intensely dramatic. Drawing on a series of case studies, Opera, Tragedy, and Neighbouring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi traces the productive, if at times rivalrous, relationship between opera and tragedy from the institution of French regular tragedy under Richelieu in the 1630s to the reform of opera championed by Calzabigi and Gluck in the late eighteenth century. Blair Hoxby and his fellow contributors shed light on “neighbouring forms” of theatre, including pastoral drama, tragédie en machines, tragédie en musique, and Goldoni’s dramma giocoso. Their analysis includes famous masterpieces by Corneille, Voltaire, Metastasio, Goldoni, Calzabigi, Handel, and Gluck, as well as lesser-known artists such as Luisa Bergalli, the first female librettist to write for the public theatre in Italy. Opera, Tragedy, and Neighbouring Forms from Corneille to Calzabigi delves into a series of quarrels and debates in order to illuminate the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theatre.

Monstrous Opera

Monstrous Opera PDF Author: Charles Dill
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140086481X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book

Book Description
One of the foremost composers of the French Baroque operatic tradition, Rameau is often cited for his struggle to steer lyric tragedy away from its strict Lullian form, inspired by spoken tragedy, and toward a more expressive musical style. In this fresh exploration of Rameau's compositional aesthetic, Charles Dill depicts a much more complicated figure: one obsessed with tradition, music theory, his own creative instincts, and the public's expectations of his music. Dill examines the ways Rameau mediated among these often competing values and how he interacted with his critics and with the public. The result is a sophisticated rethinking of Rameau as a musical innovator. In his compositions, Rameau tried to highlight music's potential for dramatic meanings. But his listeners, who understood lyric tragedy to be a poetic rather than musical genre, were generally frustrated by these attempts. In fact, some described Rameau's music as monstrous--using an image of deformity to represent the failure of reason and communication. Dill shows how Rameau answered his critics with rational, theoretical arguments about the role of music in lyric tragedy. At the same time, however, the composer sought to placate his audiences by substantially revising his musical texts in later performances, sometimes abandoning his most creative ideas. Monstrous Opera illuminates the complexity of Rameau's vision, revealing not only the tensions within the music but also the conflicting desires that drove the man--himself caricatured by his contemporaries as a monster. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Opera From the Greek

Opera From the Greek PDF Author: Michael Ewans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351555758
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
Michael Ewans explores how classical Greek tragedy and epic poetry have been appropriated in opera, through eight selected case studies. These range from Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, drawn from Homer's Odyssey, to Mark-Antony Turnage's Greek, based on Sophocles's Oedipus the King. Choices have been based on an understanding that the relationship between each of the operas and their Greek source texts raise significant issues, involving an examination of the process by which the librettist creates a new text for the opera, and the crucial insights into the nature of the drama that are bestowed by the composer's musical setting. Ewans examines the issues through a comparative analysis of significant divergences of plot, character and dramatic strategy between source text, libretto and opera.

Tragedy and Lieto Fine in Romantic Opera Seria

Tragedy and Lieto Fine in Romantic Opera Seria PDF Author: Jehoash Hirshberg
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503586427
Category : Opera
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
In a seminal essay Carl Dahlhaus has pointed out that "often it is possible to turn the ending in a different direction without making any difference to the substance of the tragic course of events leading to it". Dahlhaus' statement is especially relevant to Italian Romantic opera seria. Whereas Lieto fine was central to the ethics of eighteenth-century Enlightenment opera, Romantic opera turned to heartbreaking tragic endings, often as means of social and political criticism. Yet the ending of a Romantic opera was not inevitable, and a significant proportion of Romantic operas have Lieto fine. An example is Rossini's "Tancredi" that was premiered in 1813 first with Lieto fine (Venice), then with a tragic ending (Ferrara), and again with Lieto fine (Milan), suggesting that the ending was not essential to the opera. The book analyzes the processes leading to Lieto fine in 23 operas from "Tancredi" to Puccini's "La Fanciulla del West". This includes mixed endings, such as in Verdi's "Macbeth" that ends with a hymn of victory, yet centers on the human tragedy of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The book discusses both canonic and unjustly neglected operas, such as the socialist "Papa Martin" by Antonio Cagnoni.

Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy

Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy PDF Author: Jan Bloemendal
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004323422
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Get Book

Book Description
Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy is a volume of essays investigating European tragedy in the seventeenth century, comparing Shakespeare, Vondel, Gryphius, Racine and several other vernacular tragedians, together with consideration of neo-Latin dramas by Jesuits and other playwrights. To what extent were similar themes, plots, structures and styles elaborated? How is difference as well as similarity to be accounted for? European drama is beginning to be considered outside of the singular vernacular frameworks in which it has been largely confined (as instanced in the conferences and volumes of essays held in the Universities of Munich and Berlin 2010-12), but up-to-date secondary material is sparse and difficult to obtain. This volume intends to help remedy that deficit by addressing the drama in a full political, religious, legal and social context, and by considering the plays as interventions in those contexts. Contributors are: Christian Biet, Jan Bloemendal, Helmer J. Helmers, Blair Hoxby, Sarah M. Knight, Tatiana Korneeva, Frans-Willem Korsten, Joel B. Lande, Russell J. Leo, Howard B. Norland, Kirill Ospovat, James A. Parente, Jr., Freya Sierhuis, Nienke Tjoelker and Emily Vasiliauskas.

Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France

Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France PDF Author: Olivia Bloechl
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022652275X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book

Book Description
From its origins in the 1670s through the French Revolution, serious opera in France was associated with the power of the absolute monarchy, and its ties to the crown remain at the heart of our understanding of this opera tradition (especially its foremost genre, the tragédie en musique). In Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France, however, Olivia Bloechl reveals another layer of French opera’s political theater. The make-believe worlds on stage, she shows, involved not just fantasies of sovereign rule but also aspects of government. Plot conflicts over public conduct, morality, security, and law thus appear side-by-side with tableaus hailing glorious majesty. What’s more, opera’s creators dispersed sovereign-like dignity and powers well beyond the genre’s larger-than-life rulers and gods, to its lovers, magicians, and artists. This speaks to the genre’s distinctive combination of a theological political vocabulary with a concern for mundane human capacities, which is explored here for the first time. By looking at the political relations among opera characters and choruses in recurring scenes of mourning, confession, punishment, and pardoning, we can glimpse a collective political experience underlying, and sometimes working against, ancienrégime absolutism. Through this lens, French opera of the period emerges as a deeply conservative, yet also more politically nuanced, genre than previously thought.

Tragedy and International Relations

Tragedy and International Relations PDF Author: T. Erskine
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230390331
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book

Book Description
Nowhere are clashes between competing ethical perspectives more prevalent than in the realm of International Relations. Thus, understanding tragedy is directly relevant to understanding IR. This volume explores the various ways that tragedy can be used as a lens through which international relations might be brought into clearer focus.