The Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer

The Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer PDF Author: Robert Ignatius Letellier
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838640937
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
But these operas are far more than imitations: they show an apprehension of convention and genre that is nothing less than a dismantling of accepted formulas, and a highly original reconstruction of them."--Jacket.

The Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer

The Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer PDF Author: Robert Ignatius Letellier
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838640937
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
But these operas are far more than imitations: they show an apprehension of convention and genre that is nothing less than a dismantling of accepted formulas, and a highly original reconstruction of them."--Jacket.

The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera

The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera PDF Author: David Charlton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521646833
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
Table of contents

Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète

Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète PDF Author: Robert Ignatius Letellier
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527527182
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
For a period of close to half a century, French grand opéra, as exemplified by the works of Giacomo Meyerbeer and his school, was the preferred form of music for the theatre in most of the civilized world. During the July Monarchy, French grand operas, with their plots drawn from historical events, tended to be received as metaphors for current political themes. Meyerbee’s Le Prophète illustrates the complex, contested nature of political meaning during this period. This opera was set in the context of the emerging liberal historiography pioneered by Jules Michelet, and reactions to it illustrate the manner in which audiences and critics constructed ‘meanings’ with reference to their personal and collective experience and memories, with grand opera occupying a central role at that time. Le Prophète was once one of the most famous of operas, performed over 500 times at the Paris Opéra, and given throughout the civilized world, in the days when opera was ever-present in society. The plot has been called absurd, based as it is on the history of the Anabaptists in Münster (1534-35). However, history is far stranger than fiction, and Eugene Scribe’s libretto provides a modification of the garish facts in the interests of a highly symbolic scenario based on a tragic Reformation episode, and exploring the implication of the role of religion, power and politics in the fate of humanity. The music is powerful, gripping, and torrential in its flow. Each act is beautifully structured, each set piece crafted to perfection, dominated by an overwhelming sound world of instrumental colours and disturbing harmony. The ballet plays a vital function as a countersign to the human deeds of darkness and despair that characterize the action. The Coronation Scene is fascinating, and overwhelming in its impact, one of opera’s greatest moments. This study examines the origins and creation of the opera, its dramaturgy and musical style, the history of its astonishing reception around the world until the 1930s. One of the special features of this book is the collection of iconography associated with the work and its interpretation by many of the greatest singers of the Golden Age of opera.

The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera

The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera PDF Author: David Charlton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139825895
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
This 2003 Companion is a fascinating and accessible exploration of the world of grand opera. Through this volume a team of scholars and writers on opera examine those important Romantic operas which embraced the Shakespearean sweep of tragedy, history, love in time of conflict, and the struggle for national self-determination. Rival nations, rival religions and violent resolutions are common elements, with various social or political groups represented in the form of operatic choruses. The book traces the origins and development of a style created during an increasingly technical age, which exploited the world-renowned skills of Parisian stage-designers, artists, and dancers as well as singers. It analyses in detail the grand operas by Rossini, Auber, Meyerbeer and Halévy, discusses grand opera in Russia and Germany, and also in the Czech lands, Italy, Britain and the Americas. The volume also includes an essay by the renowned opera director David Pountney.

Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective

Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective PDF Author: Axel Körner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108843867
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
This volume of essays discusses the European and global expansion of Italian opera and the significance of this process for debates on opera at home in Italy. Covering different parts of Europe, the Americas, Southeast and East Asia, it investigates the impact of transnational musical exchanges on notions of national identity associated with the production and reception of Italian opera across the world. As a consequence of these exchanges between composers, impresarios, musicians and audiences, ideas of operatic Italianness (italianit...) constantly changed and had to be reconfigured, reflecting the radically transformative experience of time and space that throughout the nineteenth century turned opera into a global aesthetic commodity. The book opens with a substantial introduction discussing key concepts in cross-disciplinary perspective and concludes with an epilogue relating its findings to different historiographical trends in transnational opera studies.

Mozart's Ghosts

Mozart's Ghosts PDF Author: Mark Everist
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199344221
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Mozart's Ghosts traces the many lives of this great composer that emerged following his early death in 1791. Crossing national boundaries and traversing two hundred years-worth of interpretation and reception, author Mark Everist investigates how Mozart's past status can be understood as part of today's veneration. Everist forges new paths to reach the composer, examining a number of ways in which Western culture has absorbed the idea of Mozart, how various cultural agents have appropriated, deployed, and exploited Mozart toward both authoritarian and subversive ends, and how the figure of Mozart and his impact illuminate the cultural history of the last two centuries in Europe, England, and America. Modern reverence for the composer is conditioned by earlier responses to his music, and Everist argues that such earlier responses are more complex than allowed by a simple "reception studies" model. Closely linking nine case studies in an innovative cultural and theoretical framework, the book approaches the developing reputation of the composer from death to the present day along three paths: "Phantoms of the Opera" deals with stage music, "Holy Spirits" addresses the trope of the sacred, and "Specters at the Feast" considers the impact of Mozart's music in literature and film. Mozart's Ghosts adeptly moves the study of Mozart reception away from hagiography and closer to cultural and historical criticism, and will be avidly read by Mozart scholars and students of eighteenth-century music history, as well as literary critics, historians of philosophy and aesthetics, and cultural historians in general.

Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-Century Paris

Giacomo Meyerbeer and Music Drama in Nineteenth-Century Paris PDF Author: Mark Everist
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100093912X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Nineteenth-century Paris attracted foreign musicians like a magnet. The city boasted a range of theatres and of genres represented there, a wealth of libretti and source material for them, vocal, orchestral and choral resources, to say nothing of the set designs, scenery and costumes. All this contributed to an artistic environment that had musicians from Italian- and German-speaking states beating a path to the doors of the Académie Royale de Musique, Opéra-Comique, Théâtre Italien, Théâtre Royal de l'Odéon and Théâtre de la Renaissance. This book both tracks specific aspects of this culture, and examines stage music in Paris through the lens of one of its most important figures: Giacomo Meyerbeer. The early part of the book, which is organised chronologically, examines the institutional background to music drama in Paris in the nineteenth century, and introduces two of Meyerbeer's Italian operas that were of importance for his career in Paris. Meyerbeer's acculturation to Parisian theatrical mores is then examined, especially his moves from the Odéon and Opéra-Comique to the opera house where he eventually made his greatest impact - the Académie Royale de Musique; the shift from Opéra-Comique is then counterpointed by an examination of how an indigenous Parisian composer, Fromental Halévy, made exactly the same leap at more or less the same time. The book continues with the fates of other composers in Paris: Weber, Donizetti, Bellini and Wagner, but concludes with the final Parisian successes that Meyerbeer lived to see - his two opéras comiques.

French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination

French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination PDF Author: Sarah Hibberd
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Technology and the Diva

Technology and the Diva PDF Author: Karen Henson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316760448
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
In Technology and the Diva, Karen Henson brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore the neglected subject of opera and technology. Their essays focus on the operatic soprano and her relationships with technology from the heyday of Romanticism in the 1820s and 1830s to the twenty-first-century digital age. The authors pay particular attention to the soprano in her larger than life form, as the 'diva', and they consider how her voice and allure have been created by technologies and media including stagecraft and theatrical lighting, journalism, the telephone, sound recording, and visual media from the painted portrait to the high definition simulcast. In doing so, the authors experiment with new approaches to the female singer, to opera in the modern - and post-modern - eras, and to the often controversial subject of opera's involvement with technology and technological innovation.

The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer: The last years, 1857-1864

The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer: The last years, 1857-1864 PDF Author: Giacomo Meyerbeer
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838638453
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 732

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Book Description
Volume 4 is devoted to the last years (1857-64); while age and declining health saw a waning of the composer's personal optimism. It contains a series of glossaries listing his compositions and the musical and theatrical works he attended throughout his life, as well as a bibliography.