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

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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.

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.

Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth

Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth PDF Author: Lorenzo Bianconi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226045927
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
The History of Italian Opera marks the first time a team of scholars has worked together to investigate the entire Italian operatic tradition, rather than limiting its focus to major composers and their masterworks. Including both musicologists and historians of other arts, the contributors approach opera not only as a distinctive musical genre but also as a form of extravagant theater and a complex social phenomenon. This sixth volume in the series centers on the sociological and critical aspects of opera in Italy, considering the art in the context of an Italian literary and cultural canon rarely revealed in English and American studies. In its six chapters, contributors survey critics' changing attitudes toward opera over several centuries, trace the evolution of formal conventions among librettists, explore the historical relationships between opera and Italian literature, and examine opera's place in Italian popular and national culture. In perhaps the volume's most striking contribution, German scholar Carl Dahlouse offers his most important statement on the dramaturgy of opera.

Voicing Gender

Voicing Gender PDF Author: Naomi André
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025321789X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Documents the changes in approaches to gender in opera in the early 19th century.

Historical Dictionary of Opera

Historical Dictionary of Opera PDF Author: Scott L. Balthazar
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810879433
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
Opera has been around ever since the late 16th century, and it is still going strong in the sense that operas are performed around the world at present, and known by infinitely more persons than just those who attend performances. On the other hand, it has enjoyed periods in the past when more operas were produced to greater acclaim. Those periods inevitably have pride of place in this Historical Dictionary of Opera, as do exceptional singers, and others who combine to fashion the opera, whether or not they appear on stage. But this volume looks even further afield, considering the cities which were and still are opera centers, literary works which were turned into librettos, and types of pieces and genres. While some of the former can be found on the web or in other sources, most of the latter cannot and it is impossible to have the whole picture without them. Indeed, this book has an amazingly broad scope. The dictionary section, with about 340 entries, covers the topics mentioned above but obviously focuses most on composers, not just the likes of Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, but others who are scarcely remembered but made notable contributions. Of course, there are the divas, but others singers as well, and some of the most familiar operas, Don Giovanni, Tosca and more. Technical terms also abound, and reference to different genres, from antimasque to zarzuela. Since opera has been around so long, the chronology is rather lengthy, since it has a lot of ground to cover, and the introduction sets the scene for the rest. This book should not be an end but rather a beginning, so it has a substantial bibliography for readers seeking more specific or specialized works. It is an excellent access point for readers interested in opera.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Euripides

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Euripides PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004299815
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 679

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Book Description
Brill's Companion to the Reception of Euripides offers a comprehensive account of the reception of Euripides’ plays over the centuries, across cultures and within a range of different fields, such as literature, intellectual history, visual arts, music, dance, stage and cinema.

Opera and Politics

Opera and Politics PDF Author: John Bokina
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300101232
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
To what extent do operas express the political and cultural ideas of their age? How do they reflect the composer's view of the changing relations among art, politics, and society? In this book John Bokina focuses on political aspects and meanings of operas from the baroque to postmodern period, showing the varied ways that operas become sensuous vehicles for the articulation of political ideas. Bokina begins with an analysis of Monteverdi's three extant operas, which address in an oblique way the political and ideological dualities of aristocratic rule in the seventeenth-century Italy. He then moves to Mozart's "Don Giovanni", which he views as a celebration of the demise of a predatory aristocracy. He presents Beethoven's "Fidelio" as an example of the political spirit of a revolution based on republican virtue, and Wagner's "Parsifal" as a utopian music drama that projects romantic anticapitalist ideals onto an imagined past. He shows that Strauss's "Elektra" and Schoenberg's "Erwartung" transform the traditional operatic depiction of madness by reflecting the emerging Freudian psychoanalysis of that era. And he argues that operas by Pfitzner, Hindemith, and Schoenberg explore the political roles of art and the artists, each couching contemporary conditions in an allegory about the fate of art in a historical period of transition. Finally, Bokina offers a reappraisal of Henze's "The Bassarids" as a political opera that confronts the promise and limits of the sensual-sexual revolt of the twentieth-century.

The Persistence of Allegory

The Persistence of Allegory PDF Author: Jane K. Brown
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812201477
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
In an impressively comparative work, Jane K. Brown explores the tension in European drama between allegory and neoclassicism from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century. Imitation of nature is generally thought to triumph over religious allegory in the Elizabethan and French classical theater, a shift attributable to the recovery of Aristotle's Poetics in the Renaissance. But if Aristotle's terminology was rapidly assimilated, Brown demonstrates that change in dramatic practice took place only gradually and partially and that allegory was never fully cast off the stage. The book traces a complex history of neoclassicism in which new allegorical forms flourish and older ones are constantly revitalized. Brown reveals the allegorical survivals in the works of such major figures as Shakespeare, Calderón, Racine, Vondel, Metastasio, Goethe, and Wagner and reads tragedy, comedy, masque, opera, and school drama together rather than as separate developments. Throughout, she draws illuminating parallels to modes of representation in the visual arts. A work of broad interest to scholars, teachers, and students of theatrical form, The Persistence of Allegory presents a fundamental rethinking of the history of European drama.

Italian Cultural Lineages

Italian Cultural Lineages PDF Author: Jonathan White
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 144265953X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
In Italian Cultural Lineages, Jonathan White seeks answers to the elusive questions: what is Italian culture and what is the Italian identity? By tracing Italian life and art through several themes – viewing and spectatorship, fantasy, passion, justice, reputation, and lifestyles – White offers new ways of perceiving an ancient cultural tradition in the twenty-first century. In doing so, he challenges readers to discern rich poetic seams that bind together his varied subject matter. Italian Cultural Lineages is primarily concerned with factors that unify Italians, however geographically dispersed they may be. Drawing on extensive archival and historical research, White shows how oftentimes Italian cultural traditions that appear to be extinct are, in fact, enduring – pushed out of the mainstream or submerged at some given point in history, only to re-surface and take on new meanings at a later date. Other, more marginal currents might disrupt and fragment Italian identity, politically and socially. However, White proposes that the challenge to Italy in these new and difficult lessons in tolerance has the potential to produce a much stronger culture, primed to welcome the marginal into an expanded spirit of all that counts as Italian. Ideally suited to course use, and written with great lucidity, Italian Cultural Lineages will prove fascinating to students, academics, and general readers alike.

Ancient Rome in Early Opera

Ancient Rome in Early Opera PDF Author: Robert Ketterer
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252033787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
The major historians of ancient Rome wrote their works in the firm belief that the exalted history of the Roman Empire provided plentiful lessons about individual behavior, inspiration for great souls, and warnings against evil ambitions, not to mention opportunities for rich comedy. The examples of Rome have often been resurrected for the opera stage to display the exceptional grandeur, glory, and tragedy of Roman figures. In this volume, Robert C. Ketterer tracks the changes as operas’ Roman subjects crossed generations and national boundaries. Following opera from its origins in seventeenth-century Venice to Napoleon’s invasion of Italy, Ketterer shows how Roman history provided composers with all the necessary courage and intrigue, love and honor, and triumph and defeat so vital for the stirring music that makes great opera.

Nineteenth-Century Music

Nineteenth-Century Music PDF Author: Carl Dahlhaus
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520076440
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
This magnificent survey of the most popular period in music history is an extended essay embracing music, aesthetics, social history, and politics, by one of the keenest minds writing on music in the world today. Dahlhaus organizes his book around "watershed" years--for example, 1830, the year of the July Revolution in France, and around which coalesce the "demise of the age of art" proclaimed by Heine, the musical consequences of the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert, the simultaneous and dramatic appearance of Chopin and Liszt, Berlioz and Meyerbeer, and Schumann and Mendelssohn. But he keeps us constantly on guard against generalization and clich . Cherished concepts like Romanticism, tradition, nationalism vs. universality, the musical culture of the bourgeoisie, are put to pointed reevaluation. Always demonstrating the interest in socio-historical influences that is the hallmark of his work, Dahlhaus reminds us of the contradictions, interrelationships, psychological nuances, and riches of musical character and musical life. Nineteenth-Century Music contains 90 illustrations, the collected captions of which come close to providing a summary of the work and the author's methods. Technical language is kept to a minimum, but while remaining accessible, Dahlhaus challenges, braces, and excites. This is a landmark study that no one seriously interested in music and nineteenth-century European culture will be able to ignore.