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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Theatre, drama > Opera
Che cos'""? (What is it?) mezzo-soprano Celestine Galli-Marie asked
when offered the title role in the 1875 premier of Bizet's new
opera, Carmen. She was only the first in a long succession of
performers to ask that question. In the more than 140 years since,
each singer has delved into the character of Carmen to craft her
own portrayal of the inscrutable Gypsy. As the famous American
soprano Geraldine Farrar wrote: "Each one of us probably sees
something that the others have not seen--or thinks she does--and
that `something' is her individual Carmen." This book explores the
history of operatic portrayals of Bizet's elusive enchantress,
tracing the development of vocal and dramatic interpretations from
generation to generation around the globe.
Scholars have long recognized Carl Maria von Weber as the father of
the German Romantic and Nationalist music. The success of his opera
Der Freischutz almost single handedly brought German operatic style
onto the world stage, competing with and challenging established
operatic traditions in France and Italy. Indeed the overtures to
his last three operas, Der Freischutz, Euryanthe, and Oberon
initiated the genre of the concert overture and are a part of the
standard repertoire for most modern symphony orchestras. His works
in other genres, including his various concerti and chamber works
also stand as centerpieces in the modern concert hall. In
Experiencing Carl Maria von Weber: A Listener's Companion, Joseph
Morgan walks readers through the many masterpieces that comprise
Weber's oeuvre, providing key insights by integrating critical
points in the composer's life with the burgeoning Romantic and
Nationalist movements in Germany that Weber's music came to
champion. Morgan brings to life the musical character of Weber's
most important compositions, from his most popular works such as
his programme work Aufforderung zum Tanz (Invitation to the Dance),
his majestic solo pieces, and his path-breaking song cycle Die
Temperamente beim Verluste der Geliebten (Temperaments on the Loss
of a Lover). At every turn, Morgan brings together biographical,
political, aesthetic, and historical matters to inform our
understanding of Weber's compositional genius. From the virtuosity
of his piano works and their influence on Liszt and Chopin to his
relationships with composers from the earliest parts of the 19th
century, including Giacomo Meyerbeer, Franz Schubert and Beethoven,
Experiencing Carl Maria von Weber reveals not only the
compositional genius of this figure in Romantic music, but his
achievements as well as a conductor, music director, and critic who
lent his powerful support to his musical peers on stage and page.
Of all operas in the standard repertory, none has had a more
complicated genesis and textual history than Offenbach's Tales of
Hoffmann. Based on a highly successful 1851 play inspired by the
short stories by the German Romantic writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, the
work occupied the last decade of Offenbach's life. When he died in
October 1880, the work was being rehearsed at the Opera-Comique. At
once cut and rearranged, the work was performed from the start in
versions that ignored the composer's final intentions. Only a few
decades ago, when previously unavailable manuscripts came to light,
it became possible to reconstitute the score in its real form.
Vincent Giroud and Michael Kaye's The Real 'Tales of Hoffmann'
tells the full story for the first time in English. After
discussing how the work of Hoffmann became known and influential in
France, the book includes little-known sources for the opera,
especially the complete Barbier and Carre play, in French and
English. It describes the genesis of the opera. The annotated
libretto is published in full, with the variants, for the two
versions of the opera: with spoken dialogue or recitatives. Essays
explain what was done to the opera after Offenbach's death, from
the 1881 Opera-Comique production to more recent restoration
attempts. There is also a survey of Les contes d'Hoffmann in
performance from the 1970s to the present, and supplementary
information, including discography, filmography, and videography.
The Real 'Tales of Hoffmann' is intended to appeal to anyone
interested in the work, specialists or non-specialists. Audiences,
musicologists and students of French opera and opera-comique will
find it of particular interest, as will opera houses, conductors,
singers, directors, and dramaturgs involved in performances of the
opera.
The Italian opera company in Prague managed by Pasquale Bondini and
Domenico Guardasoni played a central role in promoting Mozart's
operas during the final years of his life. Using a wide range of
primary sources which include the superb collections of
eighteenth-century opera posters and concert programmes in Leipzig
and the Indice de' teatrali spettacoli, an almanac of Italian
singers and dancers, this study examines the annual schedules,
recruitment networks, casting policies and repertoire selections of
this important company. Ian Woodfield shows how Italian-language
performances of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte and La
clemenza di Tito flourished along the well-known cultural axis
linking Prague in Bohemia to Dresden and Leipzig in Saxony. The
important part played by concert performances of operatic arias in
the early reception of Mozart's works is also discussed and new
information is presented about the reception of Josepha Duschek and
Mozart in Leipzig.
Verdi's operas - composed between 1839 and 1893 - portray a
striking diversity of female protagonists: warrior women and
peacemakers, virgins and courtesans, princesses and slaves, witches
and gypsies, mothers and daughters, erring and idealised wives,
and, last of all, a feisty quartet of Tudor townswomen in Verdi's
final opera, Falstaff. Yet what meanings did the impassioned crises
and dilemmas of these characters hold for the nineteenth-century
female spectator, especially during such a turbulent span in the
history of the Italian peninsula? How was opera shaped by society -
and was society similarly influenced by opera? Contextualising
Verdi's female roles within aspects of women's social, cultural and
political history, Susan Rutherford explores the interface between
the reality of the spectators' lives and the imaginary of the
fictional world before them on the operatic stage.
How did revolutionary America appear to European audiences through
their opera glasses? The operas studied in this volume are
populated by gun-toting and slave-holding Quakers, handsome Native
Americans, female middle-class political leaders, rebellious
British soldiers and generous businessmen. Most of them display an
unprecedented configuration of social and gender roles, which led
leading composers of the time, including Mozart, Haydn, Anfossi,
Piccinni and Paisiello, to introduce far-reaching innovations in
the musical and dramatic fabric of Italian opera. Polzonetti
presents a fresh perspective on the European cultural reception of
American social and political identity. Through detailed but
accessible analysis of music examples, including previously
unpublished musical sources, the book documents and explains
important transformations of opera at the time of Mozart's
masterpieces, and its long-term consequences up to Puccini.
Shedding new light on familiar and less-familiar operatic works,
the study represents groundbreaking research in music, cultural and
political history.
David Beard presents the first definitive survey of Harrison
Birtwistle's music for the opera house and theatre, from his
smaller-scale works, such as Down by the Greenwood Side and Bow
Down, to the full-length operas, such as Punch and Judy, The Mask
of Orpheus and Gawain. Blending source study with both music
analysis and cultural criticism, the book focuses on the sometimes
tense but always revealing relationship between abstract musical
processes and the practical demands of narrative drama, while
touching on theories of parody, narrative, pastoral, film, the body
and community. Each stage work is considered in terms of its own
specific musico-dramatic themes, revealing how compositional scheme
and dramatic conception are intertwined from the earliest stages of
a project's genesis. The study draws on a substantial body of
previously undocumented primary sources and goes beyond previous
studies of the composer's output to include works unveiled from
2000 onwards.
This book answers questions from real classical music lovers about
things they have always wondered but didn't know whom to ask. The
information in this book is not readily found in music history or
appreciation books, nor can it be found on line. Questions explored
are: Do string players in orchestras get paid more because they
play more than other instruments? Why does an orchestra tune to an
oboe when there are electronic tuners? How does a composer decide
what key to compose in? Why is the 1812 Overture played on the 4th
of July? And many, many more! The answers represent behind the
scenes, real world, insights into how classical musicians view and
discuss these questions. There is even some insight into the jokes
classical musicians find funny. This book is intended for the
person who loves listening to classical music, either live or
recorded and will provide hours of enjoyment as the reader
invariably shakes his or her head and asks in wonderment "Who
knew!"
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Carmen
(Paperback)
Georges Bizet; Volume editing by Nicholas John
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R303
R260
Discovery Miles 2 600
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"Bizet describes himself as 'pagan', and Carmen has a savage
Mediterranean beauty quite unique in music. The essays included in
this guide suggest some reasons for its legendary theatrical
appeal. Martin Cooper describes the traditional mixture of spoken
words and song that stimulated Bizet to exclaim, 'I want to
revolutionize opera-comique!': the translators show the ingenious
and inspired ways in which he set about it. Lesley Wright analyses
the score and Michael Rabaud shows the uncanny appropriateness of
Nietzche's support for Bizet in his famous attacks on the decadence
of Wagner. This is the first time that the complete text of the
verses that Bizet set to music and the full dialogue (much of it
especially translated for this Opera Guide), have ever been
published. Contents: Introduction, Nicholas John; Opera-Comique,
Martin Cooper; A Musical Commentary, Lesley A. Wright; 'Carmen': A
tragedy oflove, sun and death, Michel Rabaud; Carmen: French text
by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy after the novel by Prosper
Merimee; Carmen: English version by Nell and John Moody"
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La boheme
(Paperback)
Giacomo Puccini; Volume editing by Nicholas John
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R314
R272
Discovery Miles 2 720
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These Opera Guides are ideal com-panions to the opera. They provide
stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text
of each opera in English and the original. Italian opera expert
William Ashbrook asks why this love story attracted new audiences
to the opera house when it was first performed, and what gives this
'tragedy of fragile sentiment' such an enduring appeal. Neither
subject nor score is conventional, yet the sound picture is bound
together with a quickness and lightness of touch that the young
composer learnt from the eighty-year-old Verdi, whose Falstaff was
premiered while La boheme was being conceived. Joanna Richardson
surveys the actual Bohemians who inspired, or at least unwittingly
supplied the raw material for, Murger's book on which the story is
based. Edward Greenfield and Nicholas John examine the subtleties
of this best-loved of operas and the merits of a libretto which
took Italy's best librettists over three years to finish.
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Don Giovanni
(Paperback)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; Volume editing by Gary Khan
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R309
R266
Discovery Miles 2 660
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These Opera Guides are ideal com-panions to the opera. They provide
stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text
of each opera in English and the original. This famous opera ends,
after the hero is dragged down to hell, with a warning that evil
shall not go unpunished. 'Hardly', as Michael F. Robinson notes,
'one's usual idea of a "comic" subject!' So this guide opens with a
brief look at what is actually comic about it. David Wyn Jones
gives an overall view of the score: he shows how the musical keys
are arranged so that the dramatic momentum over two long acts is
maintained and discusses orchestration and dramatic pacing in the
most important scenes. Christopher Raeburn contributes a lively
portrait of the 'libertine librettist' who, after his Vienna
triumphs, was hounded out of London for his debts and eventually
died in New York - 'revered as the father of Italian studies in
America'. The full original text is given, with a pointed modern
translation.
The Shubert name has been synonymous with Broadway for almost as
long as Broadway entertainment itself. With seventeen Broadway
theatres including the Ambassador, the Music Box, and the Winter
Garden, The Shubert Organization perpetuates brothers Lee and Jacob
Shubert's business legacy. In The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows:
The Untold Tale of Ziegfeld's Rivals, author Jonas Westover
investigates beyond the Shuberts' business empire into their early
revues and the centrifugal role they played in developing American
theatre as an art form. The Shubert-produced revues, titled Passing
Shows, were terrifically popular in the teens and twenties,
consistently competing with Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies for the
greatest numbers of stars, biggest spectacles, and ultimately the
largest audiences. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows is the
first-ever book to unpack the colorful history of the productions,
delving into their stars, costumes, stagecraft, and orchestration
in unprecedented detail. Providing a fresh and exciting window into
American theatrical history, Westover traces the fascinating
history of the Shuberts' revue series, presented annually from
1912-1924, and covers more broadly the glorious days of early
Broadway. In addition to its compelling history of Broadway's
Golden Age, The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows also provides a
revisionary argument about the overarching history of the revue.
Bolstered by a rich collection of documents in the Shubert Theater
Archive, Westover argues against the popular misconception that the
Shubert's competitor, producer Florenz Ziegfield - responsible for
the better-known Follies - was the sole proprietor of Broadway
audiences. As Westover proves, not only were the Passing Shows as
popular as the Follies but also a key component in a history of the
revue that is vastly more complex than previous scholarship has
shown. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows brings to fruition
years of original research and invaluable insights into the gilded
formation of present day Broadway.
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