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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Theatre, drama > Opera
At the turn of the twentieth century Italian opera participated to
the making of a modern spectator. The Ricordi stage manuals testify
to the need to harness the effects of operatic performance,
activating opera's capacity to cultivate a public. This book
considers how four operas and one film deal with their public: one
that in Boito's Mefistofele is entertained by special effects, or
that in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra is called upon as a political body
to confront the specters of history. Also a public that in Verdi's
Otello is subjected to the manipulation of contemporary acting, or
one that in Puccini's Manon Lescaut is urged to question the
mechanism of spectatorship. Lastly, the silent film Rapsodia
satanica, thanks to the craft and prestige of Pietro Mascagni's
score, attempts to transform the new industrial medium into art,
addressing its public's search for a bourgeois pan-European
cultural identity, right at the outset of the First World War.
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the
form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and
spoken dialogue. The work premiered in 1791 at Schikaneder's
theatre, the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna.
Modernity between Wagner and Nietzsche analyzes the operas and
writings of Wagner in order to prove that the ideas on which they
are based contradict and falsify the values that are fundamental to
modernity. This book also analyzes the ideas that are central to
the philosophy of Nietzsche, demonstrating that the values on the
basis of which he breaks with Wagner and repudiates their common
mentor, Schopenhauer, are those fundamental to modernity. Brayton
Polka makes use of the critical distinction that Kierkegaard draws
between Christianity and Christendom. Christianity represents what
Nietzsche calls the faith that is presupposed in unconditionally
willing the truth in saying yes to life. Christendom, in contrast,
represents the bad faith of nihilism in saying no to life. Polka
then shows that Wagner, in following Schopenhauer, represents
Christendom with the demonstration in his operas that life is
nothing but death and death is nothing but life. In other words,
the purpose of the will for Wagner is to annihilate the will, since
it is only in and through death that human beings are liberated
from life as willfully sinful. Nietzsche, in contrast, is
consistent with the biblical concept that existence is created from
nothing, from nothing that is not made in the image of God, that
any claim that the will can will not to will is contradictory and
hence false. For not to will is, in truth, still to will nothing.
There is then, Nietzsche shows, no escape from the will. Either
human beings will the truth in saying yes to life as created from
nothing, or in truly willing nothing, they say no to life in
worshiping the God of Christendom who is dead.
This generously illustrated selection of fifty reviews and essays,
written between 1914 and 1962 by thirty American critics, draws
together some of the best, most influential, and most interesting
writing on Montemezzi, revealing for the first time the full depth
of his impact in the United States, the country to which he moved
in 1939.
This exhibition catalogue traces more than one hundred years of
Cantonese opera in Edmonton within the changing dynamics of the
Chinese community. It tells a story of life experiences on the
Prairies by highlighting the inextricable relationship between
Cantonese opera and the Edmonton Chinese community as this cultural
practice moves deftly through historical periods between 1890 and
2009. This period has been selected to coincide with the arrival of
the first Chinese in Edmonton in 1890 and the inscription of
Cantonese opera onto the Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible
Heritage of Humanity list of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2009. The text
brings to life many stories of the struggles and successes of the
Chinese in Edmonton, highlighting their resiliency and love of life
through the cultural practice of Cantonese opera.
Originally published in 1922, this book contains a history of
English opera described through the lens of The Beggar's Opera,
first performed in 1728. Kidson details the background to the
opera's creation, its author, and its lasting impact on the English
opera scene. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest
in the English opera and English musical history.
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