In this first detailed study of seventeenth-century sepolcri-sacred operas written for court performance on Holy Thursday and Good Friday-Robert L. Kendrick delves into the political and artistic world of Habsburg Vienna, in which music and ritual combined on the stage to produce a thoroughly original art form based on devotion to Christ's Tomb. Through the use of allegorical characters, the musical dramas ranged from the devotionally intense, to the theologically complex, to the ugly anti-Jewish, but played a unique role in making Passion piety relevant to wider cultural concerns. Fruits of the Cross suggests that understanding the sepolcri has implications for the theatricalization of devotion, the power of allegory, the role of queenship in court ideology, the interplay between visuality and music, and not least the intellectual centrality of music theater to court self-understanding.

In America today, opera has never been more popular, and one reason for this is, no doubt, that American opera singers are fixtures on every leading opera stage throughout the world.  In this lively and engrossing account, Peter G. Davis, music critic for New York magazine and a leading opera authority, tells the story of how these plucky, resilient and supremely talented American singers have transformed this venerable European-born art form and made it their own.

Starting with opera's arrival in America in the early nineteenth century, Davis shows how American singers grew in sophistication and stature along with the country.  From the nineteenth-century pioneers who crashed the gates of Europe's elite opera circles, to the glamorous singers of the early twentieth century who were also Hollywood stars and publicity magnets, to the highly professional singers since World War II who not only have gained European acceptance but now dominate the industry, this lively and highly readable account chronicles the extraordinary lives and adventures of these larger-than-life personalities.  Included are Maria Callas, Beverly Sills, Richard Tucker, Leontyne Price, Marilyn Horne, Lawrence Tibbett, and a galaxy of others whose stories are as dramatic and compelling as the roles they sang on stage.

Full of prima-donna antics, hilarious backstage anecdotes, and performance lore, The American Opera Singer will delight anyone who has felt the magic of opera, and will provide a new canon of American singing sure to provoke spirited debate among aficionados.

Trained as a musician and composer, Peter G. Davis has been writing about music for over thirty years in such publications as the New York Times, The Times of London, High Fidelity, and Opera News.  He is currently music critic for New York magazine and lives in New York City.

Experience the artistry of America's supremely talented singers on RCA Victor Red Seal's The American Opera Singer, a companion 2-CD set to this book, now available in record stores.


From the Hardcover edition.

A wickedly funny look at opera today--the feuds and deals, maestros and managers, divine voices and outsized egos--and a portrait of the opera world's newest superstar at a formative point in her life and career.
        In Cinderella & Company, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Manuela Hoelterhoff takes us on a two-year trip on the circuit with Cecilia Bartoli, the young mezzo-soprano who has captured an adoring public around the world.
        Rossini's Cenerentola is Bartoli's signature role, and Cinderella & Company tells the fairy-tale story of her life, which started on a modest street in Rome where the Fiat was the coach of choice. The lucky break, the meteoric rise, the starlit nights and nail-chewing days are all part of a narrative that shows Bartoli rehearsing, playing, traveling, eating, and charming us with her vivacity and dazzling virtuosity.  
        Along the way, Hoelterhoff gives us an unusually vivid, behind-the-scenes look at the opera world. The first stop is Houston, where Bartoli brightens a droopy Cenerentola production; later scenes follow her to Disney World and to the Metropolitan Opera, where a fidgety cast awaits the flight-phobic mezzo's arrival for Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. Traveling to Santa Fe, Paris, Rome, Venice, and London, Hoelterhoff drops in on opening nights and boardroom meetings, talks to managers and agents, describes where the money comes from, and survives one of the longest galas in history.  
        Here too are tantalizing glimpses of divinities large and small: Kathleen Battle's famously chilly limousine ride; Plácido Domingo flying through three time zones to step into the boots of an ailing Otello; Luciano Pavarotti aiming for high C in his twilight years. And we meet the present players in Bartoli's world: Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu, a.k.a. the Love Couple; Jane Eaglen, the Wagnerian web potato monitoring her cyberspace fan mail; the appealing soprano Renée Fleming, finally on the brink of stardom.  
        At once informed and accessible, Cinderella & Company brings the world of grand opera into sharp focus--right up to the last glimpse of Cecilia Bartoli waving triumphantly from Cinderella's wedding cake.

Contents: Faust; Parsifal; Ring of the Niebelung; Tannhauser; Lohengrin.

While Philip Glass's operas, film scores, symphonies, and popular works have made him America's best-known classical composer, almost no analysis of his compositional techniques grounded in current cultural theory has yet been published. John Richardson's in-depth examination shows how the third opera of Glass's famous trilogy, the story of an adrogynous monarch who authored radical social and religious reforms, encapsulates Glass's ideational orientation at the time, both in terms of his unique conception of music theater and with regard to broader social questions. Glass's nontraditional musical syntax, his experimental, minimalist approach, and his highly ambiguous tonality have resisted interpretation, but Richardson overcomes those difficulties by developing new theoretical models through which to analyze both the work and its genesis.
In Akhnaten, Richardson says, the composer's concepts of sound and dramatic context, cultural theory, and gender construction intersect, providing perhaps the best demonstration of "the very nature of Glass's aesthetic, which places a strong emphasis on implicit levels of signification and steers clear of conventional 'story telling' narrative strategies." Careful explanations of theory and compositional strategies, close readings of the work itself, consideration of the collaborative aspects of the opera's evolution, and incorporation of previously unpublished interviews with Glass himself combine to illuminate both a landmark work of contemporary musical theater and a dominant figure on the American musical landscape.

In his new concluding chapter, Peter Kivy advances his argument on behalf of a distinctive intellectual and musical character of opera before Mozart. He proposes that happy endings were a musical -- as opposed to a dramatic -- necessity for opera during this period and that Mozart's Idomeneo is properly enjoyed and judged only when listeners axe attuned to its seventeenth and eighteenth-century forebears.

Patrick Barbier's entertaining and authoritative book is the first full study of the subject in the context of the baroque period. Covering the lives of more than sixty singers from the end of the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, he blends history and anecdote as he examines their social origins and backgrounds, their training and debuts, their brilliant careers their relationship with society and the Church, and their decline and death. The castrati became a legend that still fascinates us today. Thousands flocked to hear and see these singing hybrids - part man, part woman, part child - who portrayed virile heroes on the operatic stage, their soprano or contralto voices weirdly at variance with their clothes and bearing. The sole surviving scratchy recording tells us little of the extraordinary effect of those voices on their audiences - thrilling, unlike any sound produced by the normal human voice. Illustrated with photographs and engravings, the book ranges from the glories of patronage and adulation to the darker side of a fashion that exploited the sons of poor families, denied them their manhood and left them, when they were old, to decline into poverty and loneliness. It is a story that will intrigue opera-lovers and general readers alike, superbly told by a writer who has researched his subject with the thoroughness of a true enthusiast.

Since its origin, opera has been identified with the performance and negotiation of power. Once theaters specifically for opera were established, that connection was expressed in the design and situation of the buildings themselves, as much as through the content of operatic works. Yet the importance of the opera house's physical situation, and the ways in which opera and the opera house have shaped each other, have seldom been treated as topics worthy of examination. Operatic Geographies invites us to reconsider the opera house's spatial production. Looking at opera through the lens of cultural geography, this anthology rethinks the opera house's landscape, not as a static backdrop, but as an expression of territoriality. The essays in this anthology consider moments across the history of the genre, and across a range of geographical contexts--from the urban to the suburban to the rural, and from the "Old" world to the "New." One of the book's most novel approaches is to consider interactions between opera and its environments--that is, both in the domain of the traditional opera house and in less visible, more peripheral spaces, from girls' schools in late seventeenth-century England, to the temporary arrangements of touring operatic troupes in nineteenth-century Calcutta, to rural, open-air theaters in early twentieth-century France. The essays throughout Operatic Geographies powerfully illustrate how opera's spatial production informs the historical development of its social, cultural, and political functions.

Parzival, an Arthurian romance completed by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the first years of the thirteenth century, is one of the foremost works of German literature and a classic that can stand with the great masterpieces of the world. The most important aspects of human existence, worldly and spiritual, are presented in strikingly modern terms against the panorama of battles and tournaments and Parzival's long search for the Grail. The world of knighthood, of love and loyalty and human endeavor despite the cruelty and suffering of life, is constantly mingling with the world of the Grail, affirming the inherent unity between man's temporal condition and his quest for something beyond human existence.>

The question whether the text, music, singers, or setting is the most important feature of an opera has long been debated. At one time, the courts of Vienna and Munich imported Italian opera before the German language gained acceptance. Once established, German opera, from Mozart to Schoenberg, reached the highest peak--as seen in the libretti of this volume.

In this ambitious and wide-ranging book, Anthony Arblaster shows that attempts by many music critics to disregard or disparage opera's politics are at best delusory, at worst a political ploy. Writing with passionate enthusiasm, both for opera and for th ideals of freedom it has so often represented, he uncovers the political dimensions of a vast range of works, from The Marriage of Figaro to Nixon in China. Beginning with an investigation of opera in revolutionary France, Anthony Arblaster goes on to analyse Mozart's enigmatic politics, and to explore the work of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and, above all, Verdi, in the context of the Risorgimento. Further chapters examine Wagner's early radicalism and notorious anti-semitism, nationalism in Russian, Czech and English opera, and the weaknesses of Puccini and Strauss. He also discusses the place of women in opera, and concludes with a fascinating survey of the treatment of everyday life in opera and musicals, from Dallapiccola to Sondheim.

John Hunt was born in Windsor and Graduated from University College London, in German language and literature. He has worked in personnel administration, record retailing and bibliographic research for a government agency and is on the lecture panel of the National Federation of Music Societies. In his capacity as Chairman of the Furtwangler Society UK, John Hunt has attended conventions in Rome, Paris and Zurich and has contributed to important reference works about Furtwangler by John Ardoin and Joachim Matzner. He has also translated from the German Jurgen Kesting's important monograph on Maria Callas. John Hunt has published discographies of over 80 performing artists, several of which have run into two or more editions.

For anyone who has been intimidated, overwhelmed, or just plain confused by what they think opera is, Who's Afraid of Opera? offers a lively, readable, and frankly biased guide to what author Michael Walsh describes as "the greatest art form yet invented by humankind". From opera's origins in Renaissance Italy to the Who's Tommy and Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods, Walsh explores what opera is - and what it's not; which is more important - the words or the music?; why does it take Tristan so long to die?; a (Not Quite) Totally Arbitrary Basic Repertoire; and what makes a great singer. So curtain up! It's time to settle into your seat, close up your program, and watch the house lights go down. And get ready for the musical ride of your lives.

Antonio Carluccio believes that food and music go well together, especially Italian food and grand opera, for which he has a lifelong passion. Accordingly, he has created fifteen delicious menus to accompany a selection of his favourite arias in this unique book/CD presentation. Featuring selected highlights from his own repertoire, including classic regional dishes, the menus combine to provide an irresistible celebration of Italy's finest food. Ossobuco Milanese, prawns in garlic, oil and chilli sauce, or baked peaches are just some of the flavours to delight the senses. Antonio has tried to suit the food to the character of the opera and having entertained some of opera's greatest personalities, including Luciano Pavarotti, Kiri Te Kanawa and Placido Domingo, he is perfectly placed to create the perfect accompaniment. Why not share the Antonio experience by entertaining to the sounds of Donizetti's Che mi Frena? Or some quintessential Verdi? The combination of inspiring music and deletable food is confirmation that life is too short not to be Italian.

Christoph Willibald Gluck took the most hidebound musical conventions and shook opera free of them. Celebrated today for his historical significance, as the one composer who did most to effect the transition between baroque and classical opera, Gluck in his lifetime was both a controversial figure and a colourful one: the sources portray a man of enormous energy, relish for good food and good company, and passion for his art. This book brings together a variety of eighteenth century sources in an attempt to construct a portrait of Gluck - the eccentric genius with a larger-than-life character. Based primarily on Gluck's vast body of letters to and from his friends and colleagues, the book also includes a wealth of factual documents and informal anecdotes, not easily accessible in the original German, French and Italian , almost none of which has ever been translated.

Virginia Woolf famously claimed that, around December 1910, human character changed. Aesthetic Technologies addresses how music (especially opera), the phonograph, and film served as cultural agents facilitating the many extraordinary social, artistic, and cultural shifts that characterized the new century and much of what followed long thereafter, even to the present. Three tropes are central: the tensions and traumas cultural, social, and personal associated with modernity; changes in human subjectivity and its engagement and representation in music and film; and the more general societal impact of modern media, sound recording (the development of the phonograph in particular), and the critical role played by early-century opera recording. A principal focus of the book is the conflicted relationship in Western modernity to nature, particularly as nature is perceived in opposition to culture and articulated through music, film, and sound as agents of fundamental, sometimes shocking transformation. The book considers the sound/vision world of modernity filtered through the lens of aesthetic modernism and rapid technological change, and the impact of both, experienced with the prescient sense that there could be no turning back.

This is the first collection of essays to explore the wide dimensions and influence of eighteenth-century opera. In a series of fresh articles by leading scholars in the field, new perspectives are offered on the important figures of the day, including Handel, Vivaldi, Gluck, Rameau, and Mozart, and on the fundamental problems of creation, revision, borrowing, influence, and intertextuality. Other essays reinterpret librettos of serious opera in the French and Italian theater during the later eighteenth century. Sister arts, notably painting, the novel, ballet, and the spoken stage are also examined in their relationship to the development of opera. Bracketing the collection are studies of the early pastoral opera and of Prokofief, which expand our historical view of operatic life during the Age of Reason. The book contains numerous rare illustrations, and will be of interest to scholars and students of opera and theater history.

In this guide, a distinguished corps of musicians, critics and discophiles, supported by the world-renowned Metropolitan Opera, New York, evaluate all the complete recordings of the most important and best loved operas in the repertoire. This information source gives the music lover authoritative advice on fine recordings. Employing the combined labours of some of the world's leading musicologists, "The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera" assesses every complete recording ever made of 150 operas fron "The Abduction from the Seraglio" to "Die Zauberflote" - by 72 composers - from Richard Wagner to Scott Joplin.;The operas are arranged alphabetically by composer, and chronologically under each composer heading. An introduction to each opera entry details important issues such as textual differences between performances and cuts. The comparative reviews provide comments on sound quality, fidelity to the composer's intentions, and other fundamental points, and each entry ends by recommending one definitive rendition. As an added feature, directors of opera houses and celebrities have contributed their lists of "Ten Favourite Opera Recordings".;Paul Gruber is Executive Director of Program Development for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, New York. He was Executive Editor of "The Metropolitan Opera Encyclopaedia" (with David Hamilton, 1987), also published by Thames and Hudson.

A tale of forbidden love and inevitable death, the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde recounts the story of two lovers unknowingly drinking a magic potion and ultimately dying in one another's arms. While critics have lauded Wagner's Tristan and Isolde for the originality and subtlety of the music, they have denounced the drama as a "mere trifle"-a rendering of Wagner's forbidden love for Matilde Wesendonck, the wife of a banker who supported him during his exile in Switzerland. Death-Devoted Heart explodes this established interpretation, proving the drama to be more than just a sublimation of the composer's love for Wesendonck or a wistful romantic dream. Scruton boldly attests that Tristan and Isolde has profound religious meaning and remains as relevant today as it was to Wagner's contemporaries. He also offers keen insight into the nature of erotic love, the sacred qualities of human passion, and the peculiar place of the erotic in our culture. His argument touches on the nature of tragedy, the significance of ritual sacrifice, and the meaning of redemption, providing a fresh interpretation of Wagner's masterpiece. Roger Scruton has written an original and provocative account of Wagner's music drama, which blends philosophy, criticism, and musicology in order to show the work's importance in the twenty-first century.

"Walsh's book should be a "vade mecum" for anyone who would teach the "Carmina Burana" on any level and be of considerable value in general to medievalists, comparatists, and those in related disciplines."--"New England Classical Newsletter and Journal"
"Teachers, students, and any reader interested in medieval lyric will find this volume a clear and useful approach to intrinsically interesting texts."--"Renaissance Quarterly"
"The most scholarly and most helpful presentation of a group of these captivating lyrics that has yet appeared in English."--Peter Dronke, University of Cambridge
"A superb volume, fully worthy of these famous but often misunderstood poems. P. G. Walsh's unmatched erudition in Latin literature furnishes lucid grammatical explanations, incisive analysis of goliardic literary values and technique, and illuminating references to ancient and medieval parallels. His prose translations make the poems accessible also to those with little or no Latin."--Janet M. Martin, Princeton University

Robert Donington, the noted musicologist, performer, and writer, is famous for his influential and provocative book Wagner's "Ring" and Its Symbols, and for his indispensable reference work The Interpretation of Early Music. In this book he discusses the workings of symbolism in opera and the importance of staging opera in keeping with the composer's intentions. Only in this way, says Donington, can we be faithful to the conscious or unconscious symbolism invested in the work by the composer and librettist. Starting form Carlyle's premise that "it is through symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works and has his being," Donington interprets scenes and characters from operas by Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Bizet, Puccini, Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, Berg, Britten, Tippett, and other composers. Time and again Donington sheds new light on operatic situations that are problematic or have become over-familiar. His lively and wide-ranging work reveals a deep knowledge and love of opera, combined with a rare insight into hidden meanings to be found in music, words, and action.

Introduces the uninitiated to the mysteries of opera and helps more experienced buffs expand their understanding and deepen their appreciation of the art form.