The Bals Publics at the Paris Opéra in the Eighteenth Century PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Bals Publics at the Paris Opéra in the Eighteenth Century PDF full book. Access full book title The Bals Publics at the Paris Opéra in the Eighteenth Century by Richard Templar Semmens. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Richard Templar Semmens
Publisher: Pendragon Press
ISBN: 9781576470343
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Get Book Here
Book Description
The range of possibilities for what was termed a ball in eighteenth-century France was quite considerable. At one extreme were the carefully regulated bals parés at the other were the elaborately staged bals masqués. Alternatively, a bal could also be an entirely impromptu affair. Throughout this colorful range of possibilities, the repertoire of dance styles and types was generally shared: danses figures, new as well as old, for couples; and group dances, among which the contredanse reigned supreme.There was another kind of ball, however, that has not yet been examined systematically by scholars. The bals publics held at the opera house in Paris were initiated not long after Louis XIV's death in 1715, and remained popular until the fall of the ancienne régime. This book explores the advent and early development of the bal public through 1763, when a fire destroyed the home of the Académie Royale de Musique (the 'Opera'). The bal public was unlike any other kind of ball, although, as with bals masqués, those in attendance were masked. This study aims, in part, to explore how the bal public might have influenced social dancing more generally. By 1744, there was a dramatic shift in social modeling from the royal balls at Versailles (and elsewhere) to the public balls at the Opera.
Author: Richard Templar Semmens
Publisher: Pendragon Press
ISBN: 9781576470343
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Get Book Here
Book Description
The range of possibilities for what was termed a ball in eighteenth-century France was quite considerable. At one extreme were the carefully regulated bals parés at the other were the elaborately staged bals masqués. Alternatively, a bal could also be an entirely impromptu affair. Throughout this colorful range of possibilities, the repertoire of dance styles and types was generally shared: danses figures, new as well as old, for couples; and group dances, among which the contredanse reigned supreme.There was another kind of ball, however, that has not yet been examined systematically by scholars. The bals publics held at the opera house in Paris were initiated not long after Louis XIV's death in 1715, and remained popular until the fall of the ancienne régime. This book explores the advent and early development of the bal public through 1763, when a fire destroyed the home of the Académie Royale de Musique (the 'Opera'). The bal public was unlike any other kind of ball, although, as with bals masqués, those in attendance were masked. This study aims, in part, to explore how the bal public might have influenced social dancing more generally. By 1744, there was a dramatic shift in social modeling from the royal balls at Versailles (and elsewhere) to the public balls at the Opera.
Author: Helen M. Greenwald
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199714843
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1217
Get Book Here
Book Description
What IS opera? Contributors to The Oxford Handbook of Opera respond to this deceptively simple question with a rich and compelling exploration of opera's adaption to changing artistic and political currents. 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. The synergy of power, performance, and identity recurs thematically throughout the volume's major topics: Words, Music, and Meaning; Performance and Production; Opera and Society; and Transmission and Reception. Individual essays engage with repertoire from Monteverdi, Mozart, and Meyerbeer to Strauss, Henze, and Adams in studies of composition, national identity, transmission, reception, sources, media, iconography, humanism, the art of collecting, theory, analysis, commerce, singers, directors, criticism, editions, politics, staging, race, and gender. The title of the penultimate section, Opera on the Edge, suggests the uncertainty of opera's future: is opera headed toward catastrophe or have social and musical developments of the last hundred years stimulated something new and exciting, and, well, operatic? In an epilogue to the volume, a contemporary opera composer speaks candidly about opera composition today. The Oxford Handbook of Opera is an essential companion to scholars, educators, advanced students, performers, and knowledgeable listeners: those who simply love opera.
Author: Mary Cyr
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317048814
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 294
Get Book Here
Book Description
Mary Cyr addresses the needs of researchers, performers, and informed listeners who wish to apply knowledge about historically informed performance to specific pieces. Special emphasis is placed upon the period 1680 to 1760, when the viol, violin, and violoncello grew to prominence as solo instruments in France. Part I deals with the historical background to the debate between the French and Italian styles and the features that defined French style. Part II summarizes the present state of research on bowed string instruments (violin, viola, cello, contrebasse, pardessus de viole, and viol) in France, including such topics as the size and distribution of parts in ensembles and the role of the contrebasse. Part III addresses issues and conventions of interpretation such as articulation, tempo and character, inequality, ornamentation, the basse continue, pitch, temperament, and "special effects" such as tremolo and harmonics. Part IV introduces four composer profiles that examine performance issues in the music of Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, Marin Marais, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, and the Forquerays (father and son). The diversity of compositional styles among this group of composers, and the virtuosity they incorporated in their music, generate a broad field for discussing issues of performance practice and offer opportunities to explore controversial themes within the context of specific pieces.
Author: Michael Talbot
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351575171
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 452
Get Book Here
Book Description
As shown by the ever-increasing volume of recordings, editions and performances of the vast repertory of secular cantatas for solo voice produced, primarily in Italy, in the second half of the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century, this long neglected genre has at last 'come of age'. However, scholarly interest is currently lagging behind musical practice: incredibly, there has been no general study of the Baroque cantata since Eugen Schmitz's handbook of 1914, and although many academic theses have examined microscopically the cantatas of individual composers, there has been little opportunity to view these against the broader canvas of the genre as a whole. The contributors in this volume choose aspects of the cantata relevant to their special interests in order to say new things about the works, whether historical, analytical, bibliographical, discographical or performance-based. The prime focus is on Italian-born composers working between 1650 and 1750 (thus not Handel), but the opportunity is also taken in one chapter (by Graham Sadler) to compare the French cantata tradition with its Italian parent in association with a startling new claim regarding the intended instrumentation. Many key figures are considered, among them Tomaso Albinoni, Giovanni Bononcini, Giovanni Legrenzi, Benedetto Marcello, Alessandro Scarlatti, Alessandro Stradella, Leonardo Vinci and Antonio Vivaldi. The poetic texts of the cantatas, all too often treated as being of little intrinsic interest, are given their due weight. Space is also found for discussions of the history of Baroque solo cantatas on disc and of the realization of the continuo in cantata arias - a topic more complex and contentious than may at first be apparent. The book aims to stimulate interest in, and to win converts to, this genre, which in its day equalled the instrumental sonata in importance, and in which more than a few composers invested a major part of their creativity.
Author: John Gay
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191645753
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Get Book Here
Book Description
'Gamesters and Highwaymen are generally very good to their Whores, but they are very Devils to their Wives.' With The Beggar's Opera (1728), John Gay created one of the most enduringly popular works in English theatre history, and invented a new dramatic form, the ballad opera. Gay's daring mixture of caustic political satire, well-loved popular tunes, and a story of crime and betrayal set in the urban underworld of prostitutes and thieves was an overnight sensation. Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum have become famous well beyond the confines of Gay's original play, and in its sequel, Polly, banned in Gay's lifetime, their adventures continue in the West Indies. With a cross-dressing heroine and a cast of female adventurers, pirates, Indian princes, rebel slaves, and rapacious landowners, Polly lays bare a culture in which all human relationships are reduced to commercial transactions. Raucous, lyrical, witty, ironic and tragic by turns, The Beggar's Opera and Polly - published together here for the first time - offer a scathing and ebullient portrait of a society in which statesmen and outlaws, colonialists and pirates, are impossible to tell apart. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Author: Lela F. Kerley
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807166359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Get Book Here
Book Description
From 1889 to 1914 nude spectacles increased at an astonishing rate as a result of burgeoning artistic experimentation, the commercialization of the female body, and the rise of urban nightlife. In particular, artists’ balls and music halls provided creative spaces in which women, artists, impresarios, and the illustrated press could cast the natural body as a source of sexual pleasure, identity, and reform. Emphasizing the role of erotic entertainment as an outlet and agent of modern sensibilities, Uncovering Paris: Scandals and Nude Spectacles in the Belle Époque offers a fresh approach to important topics of the period—Bohemian artists, the New Woman, and press censorship—and reinterprets them through the lens of la femme nue. Having inherited her name from the pictorial female Nude and the Nude’s real-life counterpart, the artist’s model, la femme nue operated as a screen onto which various groups projected their artistic drives, sexual desires, monetary interests, and cultural anxieties. A struggle to define pornography and art, freedom and censorship, and public and private spheres ensued among artists, theater directors, and moral leagues as a century-long tradition of equating civilization with clothing broke down in the face of performative challenges. In posing, singing, acting, and dancing in naturalist presentations, the artist’s model-turned-erotic entertainer engendered crises in ways of seeing the female body that contributed to and was indicative of a changing moral climate within which women were accorded more freedom to corporeally express themselves. Once denigrated and denounced as a sign of vulgar working-class sexuality, the revelation of female flesh became an integral aspect of twentieth-century French body culture. Drawing upon a range of colorful commentaries, dramatic debates, and evocative photos, Lela F. Kerley highlights the importance of nudity in the redrawing of moral boundaries as she uncovers key moments that amounted to a “culture war” in the years leading up to World War I. Through an investigation of street riots, court cases, and anti-pornography campaigns, Uncovering Paris offers an interdisciplinary approach to the scholarship on Belle Époque sexual politics and a rich glimpse into the social construction of morality in Belle Époque France.
Author: Eleanor Selfridge-Field
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804744379
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 794
Get Book Here
Book Description
From 1637 to the middle of the eighteenth century, Venice was the world center for operatic activity. No exact chronology of the Venetian stage during this period has previously existed in any language. This reference work, the culmination of two decades of research throughout Europe, provides a secure ordering of 800 operas and 650 related works from the period 1660 to 1760. Derived from thousands of manuscript news-sheets and other unpublished materials, the Chronology provides a wealth of new information on about 1500 works. Each entry in this production-based survey provides not only perfunctory reference information but also a synopsis of the text, eyewitness accounts, and pointers to surviving musical scores. What emerges, in addition to secure dates, is a profusion of new information about events, personalities, patronage, and the response of opera to changing political and social dynamics. Appendixes and supplements provide basic information in Venetian history for music, drama, and theater scholars who are not specialists in Italian studies.
Author: Roderick Coover
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226038319
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 443
Get Book Here
Book Description
Half a century into the digital era, the profound impact of information technology on intellectual and cultural life is universally acknowledged but still poorly understood. The sheer complexity of the technology coupled with the rapid pace of change makes it increasingly difficult to establish common ground and to promote thoughtful discussion. Responding to this challenge, Switching Codes brings together leading American and European scholars, scientists, and artists—including Charles Bernstein, Ian Foster, Bruno Latour, Alan Liu, and Richard Powers—to consider how the precipitous growth of digital information and its associated technologies are transforming the ways we think and act. Employing a wide range of forms, including essay, dialogue, short fiction, and game design, this book aims to model and foster discussion between IT specialists, who typically have scant training in the humanities or traditional arts, and scholars and artists, who often understand little about the technologies that are so radically transforming their fields. Switching Codes will be an indispensable volume for anyone seeking to understand the impact of digital technology on contemporary culture, including scientists, educators, policymakers, and artists, alike.
Author: Eric McKee
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025335692X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Get Book Here
Book Description
Much music was written for the two most important dances of the 18th and 19th centuries, the minuet and the waltz. In Decorum of the Minuet, Delirium of the Waltz, Eric McKee argues that to better understand the musical structures and expressive meanings of this dance music, one must be aware of the social contexts and bodily rhythms of the social dances upon which it is based. McKee approaches dance music as a component of a multimedia art form that involves the interaction of physical motion, music, architecture, and dress. Moreover, the activity of attending a ball involves a dynamic network of modalities—sight, sound, bodily awareness, touch, and smell, which can be experienced from the perspectives of a dancer, a spectator, or a musician. McKee considers dance music within a larger system of signifiers and points-of-view that opens new avenues of interpretation.
Author: Melissa Percival
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351566792
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Get Book Here
Book Description
A fresh interpretation of the group of Fragonard?s paintings known as the ?figures de fantaisie?, Fragonard and the Fantasy Figure: Painting the Imagination reconnects the fantasy figures with neglected visual traditions in European art and firmly situates them within the cultural and aesthetic contexts of eighteenth-century France. Prior scholarship has focused on the paintings? connections with portraiture, whereas this study relocates them within a tradition of fantasy figures, where resemblance was ignored or downplayed. The book defines Fragonard as a painter of the imagination and foregrounds the imaginary at a time when Enlightenment rationalism and Classical aesthetics contrived to delimit the imagination. The book unravels scholarly writing on these Fragonard paintings and examines the history of the fantasy figure from early modern Europe to eighteenth-century France. Emerging from this background is a view of Fragonard turning away from the academically sanctioned ?invention?, towards more playful variants of the imaginary: fantasy and caprice. Melissa Percival demonstrates how fantasy figures engage both artists and viewers, allowing artists to unleash their imagination through displays of virtuosity and viewers to use their imagination to explore the paintings? unusual juxtapositions and humour.
