Opera & Ideas

Opera & Ideas PDF Author: Paul A. Robinson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801494284
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Opera and Ideas is a study of the connections between music and intellectual history. Through lucid analysis of six operas and two song cycles, Paul Robinson shows how operas give musical and dramatic expression to ideas about the self, society, and history.

Opera & Ideas

Opera & Ideas PDF Author: Paul A. Robinson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801494284
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Opera and Ideas is a study of the connections between music and intellectual history. Through lucid analysis of six operas and two song cycles, Paul Robinson shows how operas give musical and dramatic expression to ideas about the self, society, and history.

Opera, Sex and Other Vital Matters

Opera, Sex and Other Vital Matters PDF Author: Paul Robinson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226721828
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters gathers both classic and never-before-published essays from one of the leading stylists in contemporary American letters, and one of our more revered public intellectuals, Paul Robinson. Diverse and elegant, the essays in this new collection showcase the sly wit and lightly worn erudition of their author. Each celebrates art and the flesh, directing us to the twin ecstasies of music and eros. The essays on opera gathered here explore how masterpieces like Fidelio and The Magic Flute reflect the intellectual currents of their day. Be it the work of Verdi or Mozart, Wagner or Strauss, Robinson compels us to search for meaning not just in the lyrics of opera but also in the music. In melody, not libretto, we are more likely to discern key historical complexities and appreciate the way opera transcends language and time. The essays on sexuality, meanwhile, are ruminative, funny, and even moving. At one moment, Robinson measures whether homosexuality is the result of destiny or free choice. In another, he shares a touching exchange of letters with a gay student in the process of coming out. The final essays that encompass "other vital matters" find Robinson at his most incisive. Whether defending Freud as the most influential thinker of the twentieth century, attacking the dreaded use of semicolons, reflecting on his own mortality, or even meditating on the nature of cats, Sex, Opera, and Other Vital Matters is an eclectic work that will appeal to any reader interested in the continuing relevance of ideas to life.

1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think

1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think PDF Author: Robert Arp
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1667201743
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 960

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Book Description
Trace the progress of humanity—from prehistoric times to the present day—through 1,001 ideas that changed how we connect to each other and the world around us. From the ability to control fire to augmented reality, the power of humanity’s ideas has revolutionized how we live and experience the world around us. 1001 Ideas That Changed the Way We Think looks at the innovations and concepts that have played a key role in our progress since before recorded history. Covering a wide range of topics—from political and religious ideas to modern innovations such as social media and clean energy—this captivating volume offers a comprehensive look at how human ideas have evolved over the millennia.

Essays In Love

Essays In Love PDF Author: Alain de Botton
Publisher: Picador Collection
ISBN: 9781035038589
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Style and Idea

Style and Idea PDF Author: Arnold Schoenberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520266072
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 567

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Book Description
One of the most influential collections of music ever published, Style and Idea includes Schoenberg's writings about himself and his music as well as studies of many other composers and reflections on art and society. An interpretive essay by Joseph Auner, Chair and Professor of Music at Tufts University, augments this anniversary edition.

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.

The Drama of Ideas

The Drama of Ideas PDF Author: Martin Puchner
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199730326
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Most philosophy has rejected the theater, denouncing it as a place of illusion or moral decay; the theater in turn has rejected philosophy, insisting that drama deals in actions, not ideas. Challenging both views, The Drama of Ideas shows that theater and philosophy have been crucially intertwined from the start.Plato is the presiding genius of this alternative history. The Drama of Ideas presents Plato not only as a theorist of drama, but also as a dramatist himself, one who developed a dialogue-based dramaturgy that differs markedly from the standard, Aristotelian view of theater. Puchner discovers scores of dramatic adaptations of Platonic dialogues, the most immediate proof of Plato's hitherto unrecognized influence on theater history. Drawing on these adaptations, Puchner shows that Plato was central to modern drama as well, with figures such as Wilde, Shaw, Pirandello, Brecht, and Stoppard using Plato to create a new drama of ideas. Puchner then considers complementary developments in philosophy, offering a theatrical history of philosophy that includes Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Burke, Sartre, Camus, and Deleuze. These philosophers proceed with constant reference to theater, using theatrical terms, concepts, and even dramatic techniques in their writings.The Drama of Ideas mobilizes this double history of philosophical theater and theatrical philosophy to subject current habits of thought to critical scrutiny. In dialogue with contemporary thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum, Iris Murdoch, and Alain Badiou, Puchner formulates the contours of a "dramatic Platonism." This new Platonism does not seek to return to an idealist theory of forms, but it does point beyond the reigning philosophies of the body, of materialism and of cultural relativism.

Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg

Political and Religious Ideas in the Works of Arnold Schoenberg PDF Author: Charlotte M. Cross
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135653941
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The original essays in this collection chronicle the transformation of Arnold Schoenberg's works from music as pure art to music as a vehicle of religious and political ideas, during the first half of the twentieth century. This interdisciplinary volume includes contributions from musicologists, music theorists, and scholars of German literature and of Jewish studies.

Opera Outside the Box

Opera Outside the Box PDF Author: Roberta Montemorra Marvin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000775577
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Opera Outside the Box: Notions of Opera in Nineteenth-Century Britain addresses operatic “experiences” outside the opera houses of Britain during the nineteenth century. The essays adopt a variety of perspectives exploring the processes through which opera and ideas about opera were cultivated and disseminated, by examining opera-related matters in publication and performance, in both musical and non-musical genres, outside the traditional approaches to transmission of operatic works and associated concepts. As a group, they exemplify the broad array of questions to be grappled with in seeking to identify commonalities that might shed light in new and imaginative ways on the experiences and manifestations of opera and notions of opera in Victorian Britain. In unpacking the significance, relevance, uses, and impacts of opera within British society, the collection seeks to enhance understanding of a few of the manifold ways in which the population learned about and experienced opera, how audiences and the broader public understood the genre and the aesthetics surrounding it, how familiarity with opera played out in British culture, and how British customs, values, and principles affected the genre of opera and perceptions of it.

On Opera

On Opera PDF Author: Bernard Williams
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300142285
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
A lifelong opera lover, Bernard Williams's articles and essays, talks for the BBC, contributions to the Grove Dictionary of Opera, and program notes for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the English National Opera, generated a devoted following. This volume brings together these widely scattered and largely unobtainable pieces, including two that have not been previously published. It covers an engaging range of topics from Mozart to Wagner, including essays on specific operas by those composers as well as Verdi, Puccini, Strauss, Debussy, Janacek, and Tippett. --From publisher's description.