The John Milton and Ruth Neils Ward Collection of the Harvard Theatre Collection is comprised of thousands of books, scores, librettos, playbills, illustrations, and ephemera relating to public performances that incorporate music and dance in an essential way. The revised and expanded edition of "The King's Theatre Collection: Ballet and Italian Opera in London, 1706-1883" has an additional 200 entries, 20 new illustrations, and several new indexes. With over 1,600 entries and 40 color illustrations, this volume provides a window into the historical significance of the King's Theatre to the cultural life of London and abroad, and will appeal to musicologists, historians, theater scholars, and librarians interested in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opera and ballet.

This is the first general survey of Purcell's music for a generation, and is published to coincide with the 300th anniversary of Purcell's death.

Is "passion" too strong a word to describe what drives people to stand outdoors for a dozen hours or more, regardless of the weather, to purchase fold-out seats behind the upper-tier boxes for a performance of Tristan und Isolde? Not at all, says Michel Poizat, who here guides his readers on a voyage to discover why opera rewards its devotees with such profound pleasure, mingled with equally powerful feelings of horror and loss. His fascinating book, first published in French in 1986, is now available in Arthur Denner's fluid and sensitive English translation. Predictably, Poizat's route is not at all a conventional one. Rather than taking as his point of departure the intentions of composers and librettists, he is primarily concerned with the expectations and desires of the audience. He reports on an informal group interview with overnight standees on the Paris Opera House steps as they compare notes on how opera became an addiction. They are there for a "fix", they agree. How, Poizat asks, does this "monstrous phenomenon", which stretches its interpreters to their absolute limits, captivate its audience, making them oblivious of hard seats or overheated halls and eliciting copious and unashamed tears? Poizat sees the history of opera in terms of the evolution of the voice from song to cry, from verbal expressions of emotion to such wordless outbursts as Lulu's final scream at the end of Alban Berg's opera. Calling on the insights and methods of Lacanian psychoanalysis, he distinguishes mere pleasure from jouissance--pleasure being the joy experienced when one's expectations are satisfied, and jouissance, the climactic high beyond self-control. For Poizat, the quarrel between Gluckistsand Piccinists, the disputes among composers as to which is more important, "le parole" or "la musica", become examples that demonstrate or underscore the differences between pleasure and jouissance. What is the sound of the angel's cry? Poizat believes that the voice-object stands for that which is irrevocably lost. Hence our fascination with castrati, whose voice-type will never again be heard. He discusses the role of this high, sexless "angel" voice in the Mozarabic church, as well as the gender confusions of baroque opera and the shift, originating with Mozart, of the angel-voice from male to female performers. Startling in its observations, The Angel's Cry is both daring and playful. It will surprise and delight any opera aficionado, and other lovers of music will also find it wonderfully enlightening.

Giacomo Puccini's operas are among the most widely performed in the world, and include such masterpieces as "La Boheme", "Tosca" and "Madama Butterfly". Yet although critical studies of individual operas have appeared, very few books have examined Puccini's works as a whole from an analytical perspective. Michele Girardi remedies this lack, providing detailed analyses of all of Puccini's operas, complete with 196 musical examples. Writing in clear and lively prose accessible to scholar and passionate opera enthusiast alike, Girardi considers Puccini's musical and dramatic techniques together, demonstrating how his manipulation of dense networks of themes, sophisticated harmonic techniques and masterly orchestrations work to arouse the audience's emotions. Girardi also discusses the question of Puccini's assimilation of influences from composers as diverse as Verdi, Wagner, Bizet, Richard Strauss, Debussy and Stravinsky, showing how Puccini attempted to reconcile Italian techniques with those of European musical theatre as a whole to make Italian opera a truly international art.

Although Verdi began sketching the music for Il corsaro in 1846, a lengthy illness forced him to postpone further work. He finally completed the score in early 1848, but the revolutions of that year delayed its first performance. When it finally premiered on 25 October at the Teatro Grande of Trieste, Verdi was in Paris and did not participate as usual in the production, which was poorly received. Though more successful in subsequent stagings, Il corsaro was soon eclipsed by the operas of the noted trilogy and fell from the repertory.The full score of Il corsaro, published here for the first time, as well as recent revivals based on pre-publication proofs of this critical edition, reveal the work to be far more rewarding than even Verdi himself would later admit. Showing the gradual consolidation of Verdi's mature style through his contacts with French opera, Il corsaro well repays the renewed attention it is receiving.

For listeners to the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of "The Metropolitan Opera", Boris Goldovsky's cheery 'Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!' has always heralded a quarter hour of pure enjoyment. Since 1946, Goldovsky has been treating the Met's radio audiences to his scholarly observations and personal reminiscences. Twenty six of his intermission scripts have been included in this book, including "Aida", "Carmen", "The Magic Flute", and "Tosca".

After 50 years of analysis we are only beginning to understand the quality and complexity of Alban Berg's most important twelve-tone work, the opera Lulu. Patricia Hall's new book represents a primary contribution to that understanding-the first detailed analysis of the sketches for the opera as well as other related autograph material and previously inaccessible correspondence to Berg. In 1959, Berg's widow deposited the first of Berg's autograph manuscripts in the Austrian National Library. The complete collection of autographs for Lulu was made accessible to scholars in 1981, and a promising new phase in Lulu scholarship unfolded. Hall begins her study by examining the format and chronology of the sketches, and she demonstrates their unique potential to clarify aspects of Berg's compositional language. In each chapter Hall uses Berg's sketches to resolve a significant problem or controversy that has emerged in the study of Lulu. For example, Hall discusses the dramatic symbolism behind Berg's use of multiple roles and how these roles contribute to the large-scale structure of the opera. She also revises the commonly held view that Berg frequently invoked a free twelve-tone style. Hall's innovative work suggests important techniques for understanding not only the sketches and manuscripts of Berg but also those of other twentieth-century composers. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.

In Opera as Art: Philosophical Sketches, Paul Thom argues for opera as an art, standing alongside other artforms that employ visual and sonic media to embody the great themes of human life. Thom contends that in great operatic art, the narrative and expressive content collaborate with the work's aesthetic qualities towards achieving this aim. This argument can be extended to modern operatic productions. At their best, these stagings are works of art in themselves, whether they give faithful renditions of the operas they stage and whether their aims go beyond interpretation to commentary and critique. This book is a philosophical introduction to the key practices that comprise the world of opera: the making of the work; its interpretation by directors, critics, and spectators; and the making of an operatic production. Opera has always existed in a context of philosophical ideas, and this book is written for opera-lovers who would like to learn something about that philosophical context.

Every generation or so an opera singer attains the kind of public adulation and affection usually reserved for film stars or pop singers. Luciano Pavarotti reached this level of fame: he was the most celebrated tenor of all time, his concerts attended by thousands, his records selling millions of copies. In Pavarotti: My World, he talks candidly about his successes and trials, from his forays into popular music and his performances in China, to the boos he endured at La Scala, from the near-fatal illness of his youngest daughter, to his worldwide efforts to convert people to the joys of classical music and opera. Pavarotti's acclaimed autobiography shows us how this great artist felt about his extraordinary voice, how he saw his work and how he regarded his extraordinary position in the world of music and entertainment. Generously illustrated with photographs taken from Pavarotti's private collection, this is an intimate, absorbing and wonderfully honest account of an astonishing talent.

Throughout her fiction, Willa Cather mentioned forty-three operas. References to opera appear in all but three of her twelve novels and in roughly half of her short stories. Despite a dearth of musical education, Cather produced astute writing about the genre beginning in her earliest criticism and continuing throughout her career. She counted opera stars among her close friends, and according to Edith Lewis, her companion throughout adulthood, the two women frequently visited the theater, even in the early days, when purchasing tickets to attend performances proved a financial sacrifice. Melding cultural history with thoughtful readings of her works and discussions of opera's complex place in turn-of-the-century America, David McKay Powell's Cather and Opera offers the first book-length study of what drew the writer so powerfully and repeatedly to the art form. With close attention to Cather's fiction and criticism, Powell posits that at the heart of both her work and the operatic corpus dwells an innate tension between high artistic ideals and popular acceptance, often figured as a clash between compositional integrity and raw, personal emotion. Considering her connection to opera in both historical and intertextual terms, Cather and Opera investigates what operatic references mean in Cather's writing, along with what the opera represented to her throughout her life.

Since 2006, leading opera companies have beamed their shows to thousands of cinema screens all over the world - live. 'Opera cinema' is the most successful marriage of this elaborate, esoteric artform and the silver screen. In the twenty-first century, more people watch opera on cinema screens than the stage. But what is different about watching Massenet at the multiplex, compared to a traditional stage performance? Is opera cinema a new, hybrid artform in its own right, or merely a new way of engaging with an old one? Is it bringing new opera fans into the fold? Is there a danger it could one day eclipse the stage altogether? This book deals with these questions by charting the history of opera transmissions, exploring how digital media changes our relationship with culture and inviting a group of 'opera virgins' to give their impressions on this developing cultural experience.

In the early eighteenth century, the benefit performance became an essential component of commercial music-making in Britain. Benefits, adapted from the spoken theatre, provided a new model from which instrumentalists, singers, and composers could reap financial and professional rewards. Benefits could be given as theatre pieces, concerts, or opera performances for the benefit of individual performers; or in aid of specific organizations. The benefit changed Britain's musico-theatrical landscape during this time and these special performances became a prototype for similar types of events in other European and American cities. Indeed, the charity benefit became a musical phenomenon in its own right, leading, for example, to the lasting success of Handel's Messiah. By examining benefits from a musical perspective - including performers, audiences, and institutions - the twelve chapters in this collection present the first study of the various ways in which music became associated with the benefit system in eighteenth-century Britain.

As a legacy of the Habsburg Empire, performances of Jacques Offenbach's musical stage works played an important role in Budapest musico-theatrical life in the twentieth century. However, between the collapse of the Empire and the 1956 anti-Soviet revolution, political ideologies strongly influenced the character of these productions, when they took place. Public performances of Offenbach's works were prohibited between 1938 and 1945 and they became the bases for propagandadistic adaptations in the 1950s. This element explores how the local operetta tradition and the vogue of operettas featuring composers as characters during the interwar period were also important factors in how Offenbach's stage works were performed in mid-twentieth century Budapest in versions that sometimes bore little resemblance to the originals.

Academic attention has focused on America's influence on European stage works, and yet dozens of operettas from Austria and Germany were produced on Broadway and in the West End, and their impact on the musical life of the early twentieth century is undeniable. In this ground breaking book, Derek B. Scott examines the cultural transfer of operetta from the German stage to Britain and the USA and offers a historical and critical survey of these operettas and their music. In the period 1900-1940, over sixty operettas were produced in the West End, and over seventy on Broadway. A study of these stage works is important for the light they shine on a variety of social topics of the period - from modernity and gender relations to new technology and new media - and these are investigated in the individual chapters. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Diese Festschrift ist dem Musikwissenschaftler Jurgen Maehder anlasslich seines 70. Geburtstags gewidmet und versammelt Beitrage internationaler Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler. Mit fokussiert der Band Forschungsfelder des Jubilars, die seine wissenschaftliche Vita nicht nur begleitet haben, sondern von ihm auch wesentlich gepragt worden sind. Sein Blick auf das Phanomen Musiktheater hat viele in ihrem akademischen Leben nachhaltig beeinflusst: seine Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden ebenso wie langjahrige Weggefahrten in den unterschiedlichen Communitys der Opernforschung. Ein Grossteil dieser Kolleginnen und Kollegen ist in der vorliegenden Festgabe vertreten.

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 (italianita) 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.

Becoming Audible explores the phenomenon of human and animal acoustic entanglements in art and performance practices. Focusing on the work of artists who get into the spaces between species, Austin McQuinn discovers that sounding animality secures a vital connection to the creatural. To frame his analysis, McQuinn employs Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's concept of becoming-animal, Donna Haraway's definitions of multispecies becoming-with, and Mladen Dolar's ideas of voice-as-object. McQuinn considers birdsong in the work of Beatrice Harrison, Olivier Messiaen, Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, Daniela Cattivelli, and Marcus Coates; the voice of the canine as a sacrificial lab animal in the operatic work of Alexander Raskatov; hierarchies of vocalization in human-simian cultural coevolution in theatrical adaptations of Franz Kafka and Eugene O'Neill; and the acoustic exchanges among hybrid human-animal creations in Harrison Birtwistle's opera The Minotaur. Inspired by the operatic voice and drawing from work in art and performance studies, animal studies, zooarchaeology, social and cultural anthropology, and philosophy, McQuinn demonstrates that sounding animality in performance resonates "through the labyrinths of the cultural and the creatural," not only across species but also beyond the limits of the human. Timely and provocative, this volume outlines new methods of unsettling human exceptionalism during a period of urgent reevaluation of interspecies relations. Students and scholars of human-animal studies, performance studies, and art historians working at the nexus of human and animal will find McQuinn's book enlightening and edifying.