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".

From the New York Times review of the Dallas Opera's performance of Orlando furioso and the international symposium on Baroque opera:". . . it was a serious, thoughtful, consistent and imaginative realization of a beautiful, long-neglected work, one that fully deserved all the loving attention it received. As such, the production and its attendant symposium made a positive contribution to the cause of Baroque opera . . . . "Baroque opera experienced a revival in the late twentieth century. Its popularity, however, has given rise to a number of perplexing and exciting questions regarding literary sources, librettos, theater design, set design, stage movement, and costumes-even the editing of the operas. In 1980, the Dallas Opera produced the American premier of Vivaldi's Orlando furioso, which met with much acclaim. Concurrently an international symposium on the subject of Baroque opera was held at Southern Methodist University. Authorities from around the world met to discuss the operatic works of Vivaldi, Handel, and other Baroque composers as well as the characteristics of the genre. Michael Collins and Elise Kirk, deputy chair and chair of the symposium, edited the papers to produce this groundbreaking study, which will be of great interest to music scholars and opera lovers throughout the world. Contributors to Opera and Vivaldi include Shirley Wynne, John Walter Hill, Andrew Porter, Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Howard Mayer Brown, William Holmes, Ellen Rosand, and the editors.

Giuseppe Verdi hat mit seiner Oper "Nabucco" 1842 den Durchbruch zu seinem Welterfolg geschaffen. Wie ist dies in seiner Zeit einzuordnen? Ist sie die musikalische und politische Grundlage des Risorgimento - Judaer kampfen um ihre Freiheit wie jetzt die Italiener - oder wurde sie spater dazu stilisiert? In der Gestalt des Nabucco vereinen sich die drei altorientalischen Herrscher Nebukadnezar II, Nabonid und Kyros II.

From an award-winning author, the first thorough examination of the important influence of opera on Brecht's writings. Brecht at the Opera looks at the German playwright's lifelong ambivalent engagement with opera. An ardent opera lover in his youth, Brecht later denounced the genre as decadent and irrelevant to modern society even as he continued to work on opera projects throughout his career. He completed three operas and attempted two dozen more with composers such as Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith, Hanns Eisler, and Paul Dessau. Joy H. Calico argues that Brecht's simultaneous work on opera and Lehrstuck in the 1920s generated the new concept of audience experience that would come to define epic theater, and that his revisions to the theory of Gestus in the mid-1930s are reminiscent of nineteenth-century opera performance practices of mimesis.

Is The Marriage of Figaro just about Figaro? Is Don Giovanni's story the only one-or even the most interesting one-in the opera that bears his name? For generations of critics, historians, and directors, it's Mozart's men who have mattered most. Too often, the female characters have been understood from the male protagonist's point of view or simply reduced on stage (and in print) to paper cutouts from the age of the powdered wig and the tightly cinched corset. It's time to give Mozart's women-and Mozart's multi-dimensional portrayals of feminine character-their due. In this lively book, Kristi Brown-Montesano offers a detailed exploration of the female roles in Mozart's four most frequently performed operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, and Die Zauberfloete. Each chapter takes a close look at the music, libretto text, literary sources, and historical factors that give shape to a character, re-evaluating common assumptions and proposing fresh interpretations. Brown-Montesano views each character as the subject of a story, not merely the object of a hero's narrative or the stock figure of convention. From amiable Zerlina, to the awesome Queen of the Night, to calculating Despina, all of Mozart's women have something unique to say. These readings also tackle provocative social, political, and cultural issues, which are used in the operas to define positive and negative images of femininity: revenge, power, seduction, resistance, autonomy, sacrifice, faithfulness, class, maternity, and sisterhood. Keenly aware of the historical gap between the origins of these works and contemporary culture, Brown-Montesano discusses how attitudes about such concepts-past and current-influence our appreciation of these fascinating representations of women.

Richard Wagner's vast Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle comprises four full-length operas (Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung) and is arguably the most extraordinary achievement in the history of opera. His own libretto to the operas, translated by Andrew Porter, is an intricate system of metric patterns, imaginative metaphors and alliteration, combining to produce the music in text.

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2022 "When the world comes to an end," Viennese writer Karl Kraus lamented in 1908, "all the big city orchestras will still be playing The Merry Widow." Viennese operettas like Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow were preeminent cultural texts during the Austro-Hungarian Empire's final years. Alternately hopeful and nihilistic, operetta staged contemporary debates about gender, nationality, and labor. The Operetta Empire delves into this vibrant theatrical culture, whose creators simultaneously sought the respectability of high art and the popularity of low entertainment. Case studies examine works by Lehar, Emmerich Kalman, Oscar Straus, and Leo Fall in light of current musicological conversations about hybridity and middlebrow culture. Demonstrating a thorough mastery of the complex early twentieth-century Viennese cultural scene, and a sympathetic and redemptive critique of a neglected popular genre, Micaela Baranello establishes operetta as an important element of Viennese cultural life-one whose transgressions helped define the musical hierarchies of its day.

Based on Dr. Lang s experience as music critic of the New York Herald Tribune, this book preserves the immediate reactions of a working reviewer, his on-the-spot responses to the actual experience of theatrical productions, spanning the active repertory from Gluck to the present day. It is at once an introduction to the art of opera and a rich repository of perceptions about the changing nature and esthetics of the musical theater. All of the major composers are discussed: Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Strauss, Berg, and Stravinsky. There are also chapters on opera buffa, verismo, French opera, Russian opera, American opera, operetta, opera in English, and opera in concert form."

Das Buch behandelt literarische Texte, die zur Vertonung fur musikalischen Vortrag bestimmt waren. Der erste Hauptteil handelt vom deutschen Singspiel des 18. Jahrhunderts, vor allem in seiner oesterreichisch-suddeutschen, speziell Wiener, Auspragung. Das Singspiel wahlte hoefische und burgerliche Sujets, aber auch Marchenstoffe, und war fur ausgebildete Sanger gedacht. Seinen Hoehepunkt fand es in der gemeinsamen Arbeit von Emanuel Schikaneder und Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart an der "Zauberfloete" und in Goethes "Zweiter Zauberfloete". Der zweite Hauptteil behandelt die Operndichtungen, die der Wiener Hugo von Hofmannsthal fur den Komponisten Richard Strauss schrieb, besonders die symboltrachtige, vielfach an die "Zauberfloete" anknupfende Oper "Die Frau ohne Schatten" und "Arabella", das letzte gemeinsame Werk beider Kunstler.

An examination of the ultimate power opera grants to singing: the reversal of death. In Operatic Afterlives, Michal Grover-Friedlander examines the implications of opera's founding myth-the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: Orpheus's attempt to revive the dead Eurydice with the power of singing. Grover-Friedlander examines instances in which opera portrays an existence beyond death, a revival of the dead, or a simultaneous presence of life and death. These portrayals-in operas by Puccini and other composers and performances by Maria Callas-are made possible, she argues, by the unique treatment of voice in the operas in question: the occurrence of a breach in which singing itself takes on an afterlife in the face of the singer's death. This may arise from the multiplication of singing voices inhabiting the same body, from disembodied singing, from the merging of singing voices, from the disconnection of voice and character. The instances developed in the book take on added significance as they describe a reconfiguration of operatic singing itself. Singing reigns over text, musical language, and dramatic characterization. The notion of the afterlife of singing reveals the singularity of the voice in opera, and how much it differs categorically from any other elaboration of the voice. Grover-Friedlander's examples reflect on the meanings of the operatic voice as well as on our sense of its resonating, unending, and haunting presence. Traditionally, opera kills its protagonists, but Grover-Friedlander argues that opera at times also represents the ways that the voice, singing, or song acquire their own forms of aliveness and indestructibility. Operatic Afterlives shows the ultimate power that opera grants to singing: the reversal of death.

Der Band enthalt Studien zum Musiktheater von der Fruhen Neuzeit bis ins spate 19. Jahrhundert. Im Mittelpunkt stehen Fragen der Poetik und AEsthetik sowie der spezifischen Bedeutungserzeugung im Musiktheater. Als Kombination sprachlicher, musikalischer und szenischer Komponenten erfordert das Musiktheater eigene Methoden der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung. Dies wird an konkreten Fallbeispielen (auch aus der historischen Operntheorie) gezeigt. Behandelt werden dabei u.a. Werke von Gluck, Mozart und Wagner, Libretti von Goethe und Hoffmann sowie theoretische Schriften von Martello und Algarotti. Die Studien zeigen, welch herausforderndes Potential das Musiktheater insbesondere fur die literaturwissenschaftliche Forschung bereithalt.

'In this highly readable biography of Nellie Melba...Robert Wainwright tells the story of the girl with the incredible voice who, by sheer force of her personality and power of her decibels, took the operatic world by storm and managed to escape from her violent husband' Ysenda Maxtone Graham, DAILY MAIL Nellie Melba is remembered as a squarish, late middle-aged woman dressed in furs and large hats, an imperious Dame whose voice ruled the world for three decades and inspired a peach and raspberry dessert. But to succeed, she had to battle social expectations and misogyny that would have preferred she stay a housewife in outback Queensland rather than parade herself on stage. She endured the violence of a bad marriage, was denied by scandal a true love with the would-be King of France, and suffered for more than a decade the loss of her only son - stolen by his angry, vengeful father. Despite these obstacles, she built and maintained a career as an opera singer and businesswoman on three continents which made her one of the first international superstars. Award-winning biographer Robert Wainwright presents a very different portrait of this great diva, one that celebrates both her musical contributions and her rich and colourful personal life.

Winner of the 2007 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society and the 2007 Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. "Divas and Scholars" is a dazzling and beguiling account of how opera comes to the stage, filled with Philip Gossett's personal experiences of triumphant--and even failed--performances and suffused with his towering and tonic passion for music. Writing as a fan, a musician, and a scholar, Gossett, the world's leading authority on the performance of Italian opera, brings colorfully to life the problems, and occasionally the scandals, that attend the production of some of our most favorite operas.
Gossett begins by tracing the social history of nineteenth-century Italian theaters in order to explain the nature of the musical scores from which performers have long worked. He then illuminates the often hidden but crucial negotiations opera scholars and opera conductors and performers: What does it mean to talk about performing from a critical edition? How does one determine what music to perform when multiple versions of an opera exist? What are the implications of omitting passages from an opera in a performance? In addition to vexing questions such as these, Gossett also tackles issues of ornamentation and transposition in vocal style, the matters of translation and adaptation, and even aspects of stage direction and set design.
Throughout this extensive and passionate work, Gossett enlivens his history with reports from his own experiences with major opera companies at venues ranging from the Metropolitan and Santa Fe operas to the Rossini Opera Festival at Pesaro. The result is a book that will enthrallboth aficionados of Italian opera and newcomers seeking a reliable introduction to it--in all its incomparable grandeur and timeless allure.

Leontyne Price remains one of the twentieth century's most revered opera singers and, notably, the first African American to achieve such international acclaim. In movements encompassing poetry and prose, writer and musician Kevin Simmonds explores Price as an icon, a diva, a woman, and a patriot-and himself as a fan, a budding singer, and a gay man-through passages that move polyphonically through the contested spaces of Black identity, Black sound, Black sensibility, and Black history. Structured operatically into overture, acts, and postlude, The Monster I Am Today guides the reader through associative shifts from arias like 'weather events' and Price's forty-two-minute ovation to memories of Simmonds's coming of age in New Orleans. As he melds lyric forms with the biography of one of classical music's greatest virtuosos, Simmonds composes a duet that spotlights Price's profound influence on him as a person and an artist: 'That's how I hear: Her.'

Dieses Buch rekonstruiert die von 1910 bis 1917 reichende Entstehungsgeschichte der 1919 uraufgefuhrten Oper "Die Frau ohne Schatten" von Richard Strauss und Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Anhand neu aufgefundener Quellen war es moeglich, die Arbeitsweise von Strauss zu beschreiben und eine Systematik der Kompositionsskizzen zu erstellen. Die detaillierte Ruckverfolgung der Werkgenese umfasst die Eingriffe von Strauss in Hofmannsthals Libretto, eine Klassifikation der einzelnen Skizzentypen sowie eine Darstellung des vielschichtigen Kompositionsprozesses auf der Grundlage der Kompositionsstadien. Die Prasentation des Monologs der Kaiserin im III. Akt in seiner ursprunglichen, durchkomponierten Fassung bietet eine zusammenfassende Erlauterung der Kompositionsweise von Richard Strauss.

AEneas i Carthago von Joseph Martin Kraus bildete das umfangreichste und langwierigste Opernprojekt am Hofe des schwedischen Koenigs Gustav III. Das Libretto verfasste der Dichter Johan Henrik Kellgren nach einem Entwurf des Koenigs. Etwa ein Jahrzehnt, von 1781 bis 1792, wurde an dem opulenten Werk gearbeitet, ohne dass es zu einer Auffuhrung gekommen ware. Das permanente Scheitern erweist sich freilich aus Sicht der heutigen Forschung als Glucksfall, da die reichhaltig uberlieferten Quellen Entstehung und Entwicklung der Oper anschaulich dokumentieren. Jens Dufner untersucht die dramaturgische und musikalische Umsetzung des Aeneas-Stoffes am schwedischen Hof und analysiert anhand der Genese von Libretto und Musik die komplexen Rahmenbedingungen der "gustavianischen Oper".

Amazonen, die Kriegerinnen aus der antiken Mythologie, sind seit Jahrhunderten Gegenstand der Literatur. Jennifer Villarama untersucht erstmalig vertiefend die Rezeption und literarische Bearbeitung des Amazonen-Stoffes im deutschsprachigen Raum der Fruhen Neuzeit. Sie analysiert, aus welchen Grunden auf bestimmte Amazonen-Mythen zuruckgegriffen wurde und wie zeitgenoessische Debatten um die weibliche Regierungsfahigkeit oder die Beschreibung ferner Lander die Konzeption der Amazone in der fruhneuzeitlichen Hofkultur beeinflusst haben. Das kulturhistorisch und interdisziplinar ausgerichtete Buch zeigt am Beispiel von Romanen, Opernlibretti und Sprechdramen, wie vielschichtig die Figur der Amazone seit dem ausgehenden 17. Jahrhundert funktionalisiert wurde.

Thema des Buches ist Kundry, die weibliche Hauptfigur in Richard Wagners Spatwerk Parsifal (1882) und eine singulare Gestalt der Operngeschichte. Als Grenzgangerin und in sich Zerrissene findet sie - zwischen Schrei, Lachen und Verstummen - zu verstoerend neuen Artikulationsformen an den Randern des Sagbaren. Ziel der Autorin ist es, das Vielgestaltige, stets wieder Beunruhigende der Kundry-Figur aus verschiedenen Perspektiven zu beleuchten, ihre Vorbilder zu erhellen, die in mythische Fernen zuruckweisen, sowie ihre Fortschreibungen in der verschlungenen Rezeptions- und Inszenierungsgeschichte des Werkes zu erkunden. Dank der ihr innewohnenden Dynamik wird Kundry zum geistesgeschichtlichen Paradigma: zu einer Schlussel- und Schwellenfigur zwischen Romantik und anbrechender Moderne.

"Giovanna d'Arco" (Joan of Arc), Verdi's seventh opera, premiered at La Scala in 1845 to great public success despite sub-par production standards, and modern performances have swept away both audiences and critical reservations when the work is executed with faithfulness to his score. At the heart of this large-scale opera, with its prominent choruses, is the difficult and beautiful part of Joan--simultaneously ethereal soprano and dynamic warrior. The libretto by Temistocle Solera, based in part on Schiller's play "Die Jungfrau von Orleans," omits Joan's trial for heresy and burning at the stake, ending instead with an offstage battle in which she is mortally wounded leading the French to victory against the English.
This critical edition of "Giovanna d'Arco," the first publication in full score, is based on the composer's autograph score preserved in the archives of Verdi's publisher, Casa Ricordi. It restores the opera's original text, which had been heavily censored, and accurately reflects Verdi's colorful and elaborate musical setting. Editor Alberto Rizzuti's introduction discusses the opera's origins, sources, and performance questions, while the critical commentary details editorial problems and solutions.

Gegenstand dieser Studie sind die Auswirkungen der Franzoesischen Revolution auf die Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts. Unter Berucksichtigung der Oper der franzoesischen Revolutionszeit, der neapolitanischen Oper unter franzoesischer Herrschaft und der historischen Opern Rossinis fur Paris wird die Grand opera als Produkt eines Austauschprozesses zwischen Pariser Inszenierungstraditionen und italienischer musikalischer Formgebung interpretiert. Anhand neu aufgefundener Quellen lasst diese Studie eine zentrale Epoche der Operngeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts in einem neuen Licht erscheinen, indem die haufig aggressive Dramaturgie der Grand opera wie auch des italienischen Melodramma des Risorgimento als Konsequenz der Schreckenserfahrungen der Franzoesischen Revolution gedeutet wird.

Die Richard Wagner-Sammlung der Zentralbibliothek der Universitatsbibliothek Bern verfugt mit uber 2'500 Titeln uber einen einzigartigen und reprasentativen Querschnitt durch 160 Jahre Wagner-Rezeption. Mit der Schenkung der privaten Sammlung von Paul Richard 1982 und durch die konsequente Erganzung von Erstdrucken und Forschungsliteratur durch die Bibliothek entstand eine bemerkenswerte Wagneriana mit Musikalien, Schriften und Sekundarliteratur, uber 700 Fotografien und etwa 200 Grafiken, Theaterzetteln und Plakaten. Eine Briefsammlung von 225 meist unveroeffentlichten Autographen von Richard Wagner und seinem engsten Freundeskreis erganzt die seltene Sammlung. Die Berner Wagneriana zeichnet sich insbesondere durch seltene Erstausgaben und langst vergriffene deutsch-, franzoesisch- und englischsprachige Dokumentationen aus. Die reich illustrierten Ausgaben von Wagners Dramentexten und Schriften zeichnen die Stilgeschichte der Buchillustration des spaten 19. und fruhen 20. Jahrhunderts nach und nehmen manche Sujets heutiger Mystery- und Fantasyfilme vorweg. Die Veroeffentlichung des vorliegenden kommentierten Katalogs soll Anregung sein, in die Wagner-Rezeption mit all ihren Wucherungen, wunderlichen Philosophemen und ideologischen Vereinnahmungen einzusteigen.

Verdi bevorzugt C-Dur haufig fur die Maskierten und Demaskierten, A-Dur fur Autoritaten und B-Dur fur erotische Hochgefuhle; er portratiert die Unschuld gerne in E-Dur und die Auseinandersetzungen von Bass und Baritongestalten in f-Moll/F-Dur. Ausgehend von solchen Auffalligkeiten, fuhrt Peter Gisi die Leserschaft am roten Faden der zwoelf Tonartenpaare durch das Gesamtwerk des Komponisten und vermittelt ungewohnte Einsichten in typische Verdi-Themen wie Urangst, Wut, Heimatliebe, Aussenseitertum, Verganglichkeit, Entruckung. Bis anhin wenig Erforschtes - etwa die Symbolik von Feuer, Wasser, Kerker, Sturm - findet dabei gebuhrende Beachtung. Das 2001 bis 2012 entstandene Buch ist eine Hommage zu Verdis 200. Geburtstag. Es kann auch als Opern- und Konzertfuhrer benutzt werden und erweist sich "als wahres Fullhorn fur alle 'Kenner und Liebhaber', aber auch fur den spezialisierten Verdi-Forscher. Unser Wissen um bisher kaum erkannte Zusammenhange wird durch die vorliegende Untersuchung auf ein voellig neues Niveau gehoben." (Prof. Dr. Anselm Gerhard).