Opera in America

Opera in America PDF Author: John Dizikes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300061017
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 611

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Book Description
This text tells how opera, steeped in European aristocratic tradition, was transplanted into the democratic cultural enviroment of America. It includes vignettes of productions, personalities, audiences and theatres throughout the country from 1735 to the present day.

Opera in America

Opera in America PDF Author: John Dizikes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300061017
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 611

Get Book Here

Book Description
This text tells how opera, steeped in European aristocratic tradition, was transplanted into the democratic cultural enviroment of America. It includes vignettes of productions, personalities, audiences and theatres throughout the country from 1735 to the present day.

American Opera

American Opera PDF Author: Elise Kuhl Kirk
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252026232
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
A treasure trove of information, "American Opera" sketches musical traits and provides plot summaries, descriptions of sets and stagings, and biographical details on performers, composers, and librettists for more than 100 American operas. 86 photos.

Mad Scenes and Exit Arias

Mad Scenes and Exit Arias PDF Author: Heidi Waleson
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1627794972
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
From the Wall Street Journal's opera critic, a wide-ranging narrative history of how and why the New York City Opera went bankrupt—and what it means for the future of the arts In October 2013, the arts world was rocked by the news that the New York City Opera—“the people’s opera”—had finally succumbed to financial hardship after 70 years in operation. The company had been a fixture on the national opera scene—as the populist antithesis of the grand Metropolitan Opera, a nurturing home for young American talent, and a place where new, lively ideas shook up a venerable art form. But NYCO’s demise represented more than the loss of a cherished organization: it was a harbinger of massive upheaval in the performing arts—and a warning about how cultural institutions would need to change in order to survive. Drawing on extensive research and reporting, Heidi Waleson, one of the foremost American opera critics, recounts the history of this scrappy company and reveals how, from the beginning, it precariously balanced an ambitious artistic program on fragile financial supports. Waleson also looks forward and considers some better-managed, more visionary opera companies that have taken City Opera’s lessons to heart. Above all, Mad Scenes and Exit Arias is a story of money, ego, changes in institutional identity, competing forces of populism and elitism, and the ongoing debate about the role of the arts in society. It serves as a detailed case study not only for an American arts organization, but also for the sustainability and management of nonprofit organizations across the country.

Overtones of Opera in American Literature from Whitman to Wharton

Overtones of Opera in American Literature from Whitman to Wharton PDF Author: Carmen Trammell Skaggs
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807136751
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
Overtones of Opera explores the discourse of opera -- both the art form and the social institution -- in selected works of Whitman, Poe, Alcott, Chopin, Cather, James, and Wharton. For some, opera provided a powerful artistic medium for expressing a private aesthetic experience; in opera, they discovered the embodied voice of the artist. Others found not only the spectacle of opera but also its spaces, the opera houses and boxes, perfectly suited for displaying the class-based and commodity driven aspirations of America's new aristocracy. This noteworthy study will inform and enlighten literary scholars, musicologists, and lovers of both opera and literature.

Opera for the People

Opera for the People PDF Author: Katherine K. Preston
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199371652
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 649

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Book Description
Opera for the People is an in-depth examination of a forgotten chapter in American social and cultural history: the love affair that middle-class Americans had with continental opera (translated into English) in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Author Katherine Preston reveals how-contrary to the existing historiography on the American musical culture of this period-English-language opera not only flourished in the United States during this time, but found its success significantly bolstered by the support of women impresarios, prima-donnas, managers, and philanthropists who provided financial backing to opera companies. This rich and compelling study details the lives and professional activities of several important players in American postbellum opera, including manager Effie Ober, philanthropist Jeannette Thurber, and performers/artistic directors Caroline Richings, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Clara Louise Kellogg, and "the people's prima donna" Emma Abbott. Drawing from an impressive range of primary sources, including contemporaneous music and theater periodicals, playbills, memoirs, librettos, scores, and reviews and commentary on the performances in digitized newspapers, Preston tells the story of how these and other women influenced the activities of some of the more than one hundred opera companies touring the United States during the second half of the 19th century, performing opera in English for a diverse range of audiences. Countering a pervasive and misguided historical understanding of opera reception in the United States-unduly influenced by modern attitudes about the genre as elite, exclusive, expensive, and of interest only to a niche market-Opera for the People demonstrates the important (and hitherto unsuspected) place of opera in the rich cornucopia of late-century American musical theatre, which would eventually lead to the emergence of American musical comedy.

Blackness in Opera

Blackness in Opera PDF Author: Naomi Andre
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252093895
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Blackness in Opera critically examines the intersections of race and music in the multifaceted genre of opera. A diverse cross-section of scholars places well-known operas (Porgy and Bess, Aida, Treemonisha) alongside lesser-known works such as Frederick Delius's Koanga, William Grant Still's Blue Steel, and Clarence Cameron White's Ouanga! to reveal a new historical context for re-imagining race and blackness in opera. The volume brings a wide-ranging, theoretically informed, interdisciplinary approach to questions about how blackness has been represented in these operas, issues surrounding characterization of blacks, interpretation of racialized roles by blacks and whites, controversies over race in the theatre and the use of blackface, and extensions of blackness along the spectrum from grand opera to musical theatre and film. In addition to essays by scholars, the book also features reflections by renowned American tenor George Shirley. Contributors are Naomi André, Melinda Boyd, Gwynne Kuhner Brown, Karen M. Bryan, Melissa J. de Graaf, Christopher R. Gauthier, Jennifer McFarlane-Harris, Gayle Murchison, Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr., Eric Saylor, Sarah Schmalenberger, Ann Sears, George Shirley, and Jonathan O. Wipplinger.

Italian Opera in the Age of the American Revolution

Italian Opera in the Age of the American Revolution PDF Author: Pierpaolo Polzonetti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521897084
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
Polzonetti reveals how revolutionary America inspired eighteenth-century European audiences, and how it can still inspire and entertain us.

Opera on the Road

Opera on the Road PDF Author: Katherine K. Preston
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252070020
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
"Leads the reader on an operatic tour of pre-Civil War America in this cultural study of what was an almost ubiquitous art form. It covers orchestral and choral musicians as well as stars, impresarios, business methods, repertories, advertising techniques, itineraries, sizes of companies, and methods of travel." -- Publisher's description

Black Opera

Black Opera PDF Author: Naomi Andre
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252050614
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
From classic films like Carmen Jones to contemporary works like The Diary of Sally Hemings and U-Carmen eKhayelitsa, American and South African artists and composers have used opera to reclaim black people's place in history. Naomi André draws on the experiences of performers and audiences to explore this music's resonance with today's listeners. Interacting with creators and performers, as well as with the works themselves, André reveals how black opera unearths suppressed truths. These truths provoke complex, if uncomfortable, reconsideration of racial, gender, sexual, and other oppressive ideologies. Opera, in turn, operates as a cultural and political force that employs an immense, transformative power to represent or even liberate. Viewing opera as a fertile site for critical inquiry, political activism, and social change, Black Opera lays the foundation for innovative new approaches to applied scholarship.

Glory Denied: The Vietnam Saga of Jim Thompson, America's Longest-Held Prisoner of War

Glory Denied: The Vietnam Saga of Jim Thompson, America's Longest-Held Prisoner of War PDF Author: Tom Philpott
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393344568
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
Now hailed as a classic, one of the most unforgettable and heartbreaking books ever written about the Vietnam War. Glory Denied is the harrowing and heroic story of Floyd "Jim" Thompson, captured in March 1964, who became the longest-held prisoner of war in American history. Tom Philpott juxtaposes Thompson’s capture, torture, and multiple escape attempts with the trials of his young wife, Alyce, who, feeling trapped, made choices that forever tied her fate to the war she despised. "One of the most honest books ever written about Vietnam" (Oliver Stone), Glory Denied demands that we rethink the definition of a true American hero.