From the Score to the Stage

From the Score to the Stage PDF Author: Evan Baker (Opera historian)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226035086
Category : Opera
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Without scenery, costumes, and stage action, an opera would be little more than a concert. But in the audience, we know little (and think less) about the enormous efforts of those involved in bringing an opera to life--by the stagehands who shift scenery, the scenic artists who create beautiful backdrops, the electricians who focus the spotlights, and the stage manager who calls them and the singers to their places during the performance. The first comprehensive history of the behind-the-scenes world of opera production and staging, From the Score to the Stage follows the evolution of visual style and set design in continental Europe from its birth in the seventeenth century up to today. In clear, witty prose, Evan Baker covers all the major players and pieces involved in getting an opera onto the stage, from the stage director who creates the artistic concept for the production and guides the singers' interpretation of their roles to the blocking of singers and placement of scenery. He concentrates on the people--composers, librettists, designers, and technicians--as well as the theaters and events that generated developments in opera production. Additional topics include the many difficulties in performing an opera, the functions of impresarios, and the business of music publishing. Delving into the absorbing and often neglected history of stage directing, theater architecture and technology, and scenic and lighting design, Baker nimbly links these technical aspects of opera to actual performances and performers, and the social context in which they appeared. Out of these details arise illuminating discussions of individual productions that cast new light on the operas of Wagner, Verdi, and others. Packed with nearly two hundred color illustrations, From the Score to the Stage is a revealing, always entertaining look at what happens before the curtain goes up on opening night at the opera house.

From the Score to the Stage

From the Score to the Stage PDF Author: Evan Baker (Opera historian)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780226035086
Category : Opera
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Without scenery, costumes, and stage action, an opera would be little more than a concert. But in the audience, we know little (and think less) about the enormous efforts of those involved in bringing an opera to life--by the stagehands who shift scenery, the scenic artists who create beautiful backdrops, the electricians who focus the spotlights, and the stage manager who calls them and the singers to their places during the performance. The first comprehensive history of the behind-the-scenes world of opera production and staging, From the Score to the Stage follows the evolution of visual style and set design in continental Europe from its birth in the seventeenth century up to today. In clear, witty prose, Evan Baker covers all the major players and pieces involved in getting an opera onto the stage, from the stage director who creates the artistic concept for the production and guides the singers' interpretation of their roles to the blocking of singers and placement of scenery. He concentrates on the people--composers, librettists, designers, and technicians--as well as the theaters and events that generated developments in opera production. Additional topics include the many difficulties in performing an opera, the functions of impresarios, and the business of music publishing. Delving into the absorbing and often neglected history of stage directing, theater architecture and technology, and scenic and lighting design, Baker nimbly links these technical aspects of opera to actual performances and performers, and the social context in which they appeared. Out of these details arise illuminating discussions of individual productions that cast new light on the operas of Wagner, Verdi, and others. Packed with nearly two hundred color illustrations, From the Score to the Stage is a revealing, always entertaining look at what happens before the curtain goes up on opening night at the opera house.

Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater

Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater PDF Author: Nina Penner
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253049989
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater is the first systematic exploration of how sung forms of drama tell stories. Through examples from opera's origins to contemporary musicals, Nina Penner examines the roles of character-narrators and how they differ from those in literary and cinematic works, how music can orient spectators to characters' points of view, how being privy to characters' inner thoughts and feelings may evoke feelings of sympathy or empathy, and how performers' choices affect not only who is telling the story but what story is being told. Unique about Penner's approach is her engagement with current work in analytic philosophy. Her study reveals not only the resources this philosophical tradition can bring to musicology but those which musicology can bring to philosophy, challenging and refining accounts of narrative, point of view, and the work-performance relationship within both disciplines. She also considers practical problems singers and directors confront on a daily basis, such as what to do about Wagner's Jewish caricatures and the racism of Orientalist operas. More generally, Penner reflects on how centuries-old works remain meaningful to contemporary audiences and have the power to attract new, more diverse audiences to opera and musical theater. By exploring how practitioners past and present have addressed these issues, Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater offers suggestions for how opera and musical theater can continue to entertain and enrich the lives of 21st-century audiences.

The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera PDF Author:
Publisher: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation
ISBN: 9781423400080
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
12 songs from the hit motion picture arranged for easy piano.

Opera Scenes for Class and Stage

Opera Scenes for Class and Stage PDF Author: Mary Elaine Wallace
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809309030
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Musically sound and fully annotated, this new reference work provides ready access to over 700 excerpts from 100 operas, by voice categories, and thus provides information on a wide variety of matters of interest to directors, teachers, and singers. A table of voice categories, coded excerpts (including length and reference to accessible scores), character descriptions (including estimations of degrees of difficulty of the music), summaries of the action of each excerpt, and indexes to titles, composers, and well-known arias and ensembles make this book an indispensable tool.

Fire Shut Up in My Bones

Fire Shut Up in My Bones PDF Author: Charles M. Blow
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544228049
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
A respected journalist describes the abuse he suffered at the hands of a close family relative, the effect this had on his formative years and how he overcame the anger and self-doubt it left behind.

The Last Five Years

The Last Five Years PDF Author:
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 145843270X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 129

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Book Description
(Vocal Selections). Jason Robert Brown, the creator of Parade and Songs for a New World , has written a distinctive new Off-Broadway musical. The Last Five Years tells the story of a failed marriage of 20-somethings: he a successful novelist, she a struggling actress. Her story is told in reverse, his conventionally moving forward. They meet in the middle at the point of their wedding. Brown's strong writing has found a solid following among musical theatre fans. Our songbook features piano/vocal arrangements of 12 songs: Goodbye Until Tomorrow * I Can Do Better Than That * If I Didn't Believe in You * Moving Too Fast * The Next Ten Minutes * Nobody Needs to Know * A Part of That * The Schmuel Song * Shiksa Goddess * Still Hurting * A Summer in Ohio * When You Come Home to Me. "Short, bittersweet and nearly perfect, Brown has come up with a winning combination of music and book." Variety

Divas and Scholars

Divas and Scholars PDF Author: Philip Gossett
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226304884
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 699

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Book Description
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.

Concert Halls and Opera Houses

Concert Halls and Opera Houses PDF Author: Leo Beranek
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387216367
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 662

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Book Description
This illustrated guide to 100 of the world's most important concert halls and opera houses examines their architecture and engineering and discusses their acoustical quality as judged by conductors and music critics. The descriptions and photographs will serve as a valuable guide for today's peripatetic performers and music lovers. With technical discussions relegated to appendices, the book can be read with pleasure by anyone interested in musical performance. The photographs (specially commissioned for this book) and architectural drawings (all to the same scale) together with modern acoustical data on each of the halls provide a rich and unmatched resource on the design of halls for presenting musical performances. Together with the technical appendices, the data and drawings will serve as an invaluable reference for architects and engineers involved in the design of spaces for the performance of music.

The Gilded Stage

The Gilded Stage PDF Author: Daniel Snowman
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1848874367
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
Fascinating and highly readable, this is the definitive social history of the world's most romantic, flamboyant, glamorous, and politically influential art-form: opera From its beginnings in the Renaissance cities of northern Italy opera has permeated through Europe, America, and beyond, becoming a global business in the digital age. This history unwraps the story of opera from the charm and chaos of Mozart's Vienna to Frederick the Great's Berlin. It covers the lure of fin-de-siècle Paris, the rough and tumble of the Australian outback, and the new world of the Americas—colorful backdrops to the always dramatic, sometimes tragic, sometimes hilarious episodes that make up this rich and fascinating story.

Unsettling Opera

Unsettling Opera PDF Author: David J. Levin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226475255
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
What happens when operas that are comfortably ensconced in the canon are thoroughly rethought and radically recast on stage? What does a staging do to our understanding of an opera, and of opera generally? While a stage production can disrupt a work that was thought to be established, David J. Levin here argues that the genre of opera is itself unsettled, and that the performance of operas, at its best, clarifies this condition by bringing opera’s restlessness and volatility to life. Unsettling Opera explores a variety of fields, considering questions of operatic textuality, dramaturgical practice, and performance theory. Levin opens with a brief history of opera production, opera studies, and dramatic composition, and goes on to consider in detail various productions of the works of Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, and Alexander Zemlinsky. Ultimately, the book seeks to initiate a dialogue between scholars of music, literature, and performance by addressing questions raised in each field in a manner that influences them all.