Inside Bluebeard's Castle

Inside Bluebeard's Castle PDF Author: Carl S. Leafstedt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195355059
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This is the first book-length examination of Bartók's 1911 opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle, one of the twentieth century's enduring operatic works. Writing in an engaging style, Leafstedt adopts an interdisciplinary approach to the opera by introducing, in addition to music-dramatic analysis, a number of topics that are new to the field of Bartók studies. These new areas of critical and scholarly terrain include a detailed literary study of the libretto and a gender-focused analysis of the opera's female character, Judith. Leafstedt begins with a short introductory chapter that places Duke Bluebeard's Castle within the context of Bartók's early composing career, his discovery of folk music, and its impact on his later work. The book goes on to explore the composition's troubled history, its failure to win two early Hungarian opera competitions, and the three versions of the ending that resulted, discussed here in depth for the first time. The core of the book is devoted to the musical and dramatic organization of the opera and offers an analysis of the seven individual door scenes, including a detailed analysis of scene six, the "lake of tears" scene, illustrating the work's complex tonal organization and dramatic structure. A separate chapter places this darkly psychological version of the Bluebeard story within the broader context of European history and literature. Throughout the book, Leafstedt draws on original Hungarian source material, much of it newly translated by the author and available here for the first time in English, and he includes a generous selection of musical examples. Inside Bluebeard's Castle is an ideal starting point for research in twentieth-century music, Hungarian cultural history, and opera studies, as well as an invaluable guide for anyone interested in Bartók's only opera.

Ariane & Bluebeard

Ariane & Bluebeard PDF Author: Matthew Brown
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253063191
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Maurice Maeterlinck described his libretto Ariane et Barbe-bleue as "a sort of legendary opera, or fairy [opera], in three acts." In 1907, Paul Dukas finished setting Maeterlinck's libretto to music, and the opera's Paris premiere was lauded as a landmark in operatic history. Ariane & Bluebeard: From Fairy Tale to Comic Book Opera offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary look at this historic opera, including its structure, reception, and cultural implications. This lively collection juxtaposes chapters from experts in music, literature, the visual arts, gender studies, and religion and philosophy with vibrant illustrations by comic artist P. Craig Russell and interviews with performers and artists. Featuring material from newly discovered documents and the first English translation of several important sources, Ariane & Bluebeard allows readers to imagine the operain its various incarnations: as symbolist show, comic book, children's fairy tale, and more.

Bluebeard

Bluebeard PDF Author: Casie Hermansson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1604733535
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Bluebeard is the main character in one of the grisliest and most enduring fairy tales. A serial wife murderer, he keeps a horror chamber in which remains of all his previous matrimonial victims are secreted from his latest bride. She is given all the keys but forbidden to open one door of the castle. This is a major study of the tale and its many variants in English: from the 18th and 19th century chapbooks, children's toybooks, pantomimes, melodramas, and circus spectaculars, to the 20th century in music, literature, art, film, and theatre.

Secrets Beyond the Door

Secrets Beyond the Door PDF Author: Maria Tatar
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691127832
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
Maria Tatar analyses the many forms the tale of Bluebeard's wife has taken over time, showing how artists have taken the Bluebeard theme and revived it with their own signature twists.

Bluebeard

Bluebeard PDF Author: Casie E. Hermansson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1628467622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Bluebeard is the main character in one of the grisliest and most enduring fairy tales of all time. A serial wife murderer, he keeps a horror chamber in which remains of all his previous matrimonial victims are secreted from his latest bride. She is given all the keys but forbidden to open one door of the castle. Astonishingly, this fairy tale was a nursery room staple, one of the tales translated into English from Charles Perrault's French Mother Goose Tales. Bluebeard: A Reader's Guide to the English Tradition is the first major study of the tale and its many variants (some, like “Mr. Fox,” native to England and America) in English: from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century chapbooks, children's toybooks, pantomimes, melodramas, and circus spectaculars, through the twentieth century in music, literature, art, film, and theater. Chronicling the story's permutations, the book presents examples of English true-crime figures, male and female, called Bluebeards, from King Henry VIII to present-day examples. Bluebeard explores rare chapbooks and their illustrations and the English transformation of Bluebeard into a scimitar-wielding Turkish tyrant in a massively influential melodramatic spectacle in 1798. Following the killer's trail over the years, Casie E. Hermansson looks at the impact of nineteenth-century translations into English of the German fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, and the particularly English story of how Bluebeard came to be known as a pirate. This book will provide readers and scholars an invaluable and thorough grasp on the many strands of this tale over centuries of telling.

The Bellman

The Bellman PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 814

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Book Description


Reconfiguring Myth and Narrative in Contemporary Opera

Reconfiguring Myth and Narrative in Contemporary Opera PDF Author: Yayoi Uno Everett
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253018056
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Yayoi Uno Everett focuses on four operas that helped shape the careers of the composers Osvaldo Golijov, Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, and Tan Dun, which represent a unique encounter of music and production through what Everett calls "multimodal narrative." Aspects of production design, the mechanics of stagecraft, and their interaction with music and sung texts contribute significantly to the semiotics of operatic storytelling. Everett's study draws on Northrop Frye's theories of myth, Lacanian psychoanalysis via Slavoj Žižek, Linda and Michael Hutcheon's notion of production, and musical semiotics found in Robert Hatten's concept of troping in order to provide original interpretive models for conceptualizing new operatic narratives.

Enchantment

Enchantment PDF Author: Jean Starobinski
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231140904
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
"This book examines some figures of seduction as they have appeared over the course of opera's history." --introd.

The Story of a Hundred Operas

The Story of a Hundred Operas PDF Author: Felix Mendelsohn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Operas
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description


The Opera, History and Guide

The Opera, History and Guide PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Opera
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description