Vocal Victories is the first musicological comparison of all of Richard Wagner's great female characters, from Senta in The Flying Dutchman to Kundry in Parsifal. It has long been customary to view these and other opera heroines as victims, because these women, as a rule, perish during the plot of the opera. A closer study of the music of the women - their singing and the orchestral voices that surround them - reveals, however, that it is in the female characters that the new and groundbreaking musical material comes into being, and that the women are far more in command of the development of the works. Vocal Victories claims that Wagner was far ahead of his time in terms of equality between the sexes, and the musicological analyses are supported by quotations from the composer's own writings, so that a picture of Wagner as a radical critic of the oppressive patriarchal society emerges clearly and unmistakably. The feminist approach to the material also provides an opportunity for new

The inspirational story of Kathleen Ferrier, whose reputation as the greatest lyric contralto of the 20th century is something rarely disputed, is told here with compelling insight and perception. Drawing on a variety of sources--from photographs, diaries, and private letters, to the memoirs and recollections of those who knew her best--this study charts her life from her humble beginnings as a telephone operator in Blackburn to the height of international fame as one of the world's leading concert artists. Despite having no formal musical training, Kathleen worked with all the celebrated conductors of the time, and is remembered for her performances of Brahms, Schubert, and Mahler, as well as a handful of operatic roles before her untimely death at the age of 41. Enlarging considerably on many alternative biographies, this excellent account captures the warmth, humor, and charm of a figure whose astonishing life and career proved to be all too brief.

In this colorful and detailed history, Joshua Goldstein describes the formation of the Peking opera in late Qing and its subsequent rise and re-creation as the epitome of the Chinese national culture in Republican era China. Providing a fascinating look into the lives of some of the opera's key actors, he explores their methods for earning a living; their status in an ever-changing society; the methods by which theaters functioned; the nature and content of performances; audience make-up; and the larger relationship between Peking opera and Chinese nationalism. Propelled by a synergy of the commercial and the political patronage from the Qing court in Beijing to modern theaters in Shanghai and Tianjin, Peking opera rose to national prominence. The genre's star actors, particularly male cross-dressing performers led by the exquisite Mei Lanfang and the 'Four Great Female Impersonators' became media celebrities, models of modern fashion and world travel. Ironically, as it became increasingly entrenched in modern commercial networks, Peking opera was increasingly framed in post-May fourth discourses as profoundly traditional. "Drama Kings" demonstrates that the process of reforming and marketing Peking opera as a national genre was integrally involved with process of colonial modernity, shifting gender roles, the rise of capitalist visual culture, and new technologies of public discipline that became increasingly prevalent in urban China in the Republican era.

Parisian theatrical, artistic, social, and political life comes alive in Mark Everist's impressive institutional history of the Paris Odeon, an opera house that flourished during the Bourbon Restoration. Everist traces the complete arc of the Odeon's short but highly successful life from ascent to triumph, decline, and closure. He outlines the role it played in expanding operatic repertoire and in changing the face of musical life in Paris.
Everist reconstructs the political power structures that controlled the world of Parisian music drama, the internal administration of the theater, and its relationship with composers and librettists, and with the city of Paris itself. His rich depiction of French cultural life and the artistic contexts that allowed the Odeon to flourish highlights the benefit of close and innovative examination of society's institutions.

(Amadeus). More than 40 years after his premature death, the mystique of Mario Lanza continues. He remains a legendary figure, a crossover icon embraced and remembered by an entire generation for bridging the gap between popular and classical music, the acknowledged inspiration of today's Three Tenors. Bessette tells his story with a novelist's eye for the inherent tragedy of Lanza's brief life, the contradictory facets of his personality, his passion for life, and his self-destructiveness. HARDCOVER.

In this enlightening and entertaining book, one of the most original and sophisticated musicologists writing today turns his attention to music's most dramatic genre. Extending his ongoing project of clarifying music's various roles in Western society, Kramer brings to opera his distinctive and pioneering blend of historical concreteness and theoretical awareness. Opera is legendary for going to extremes, a tendency that has earned it a reputation for unreality. Opera and Modern Culture shows the reverse to be true. Kramer argues that for the past two centuries the preoccupation of a group of famous operas with the limits of supremacy and debasement helped to define a normality that seems the very opposite of the operatic. Exemplified in a series of beloved examples, a certain idea of opera--a fiction of opera--has contributed in key ways to the modern era's characterizations of desire, identity, and social order. Opera and Modern Culture exposes this process at work in operas by Richard Wagner, who put modernity on the agenda in ways no one after him could ignore, and by the young Richard Strauss. The book continues the initiative of much recent writing in treating opera as a multimedia rather than a primarily musical form. From Lohengrin and The Ring of the Niebelung to Salome and Elektra, it traces the rich interplay of operatic visions and voices and their contexts in the birth pangs of modern life.

Of their adaptation of Henry James' allusive short story, librettist Myfanwy Piper wrote that she and Britten intended to 'recreate it for a different medium.' This concept is developed further in Jane Mackay's 33 paintings: a visual reaction to the music rather than illustrations to particular scenes, occupying a unique position between abstract and figurative art. Musicologist Andrew Plant, formerly of the Britten-Pears Library, provides an introduction and commentary and there is a preface by the distinguished countertenor James Bowman. Bringing together the entire series exhibited during the 2004 Aldeburgh Festival, these paintings are occasionally John Piper-esque in their figurative elements and hints of an unseen world. Now available from Boydell & Brewer, this imaginative interpretation of Britten's The Turn of the Screw will be an essential addition to the library of all opera lovers. Limited to 300 signed and numbered copies. JANE MACKAY has broadcast widely on radio and television and has held numerous solo exhibitions, including shows at the Florence Biennale and London's Wigmore Hall. She is also a choral singer and oboist. ANDREW PLANT has contributed to a number of scholarly publications and was formerly Curator of Exhibitions at the Britten-Pears Library. He now teaches in Windsor and appears regularly as a recital accompanist.

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.

Do you cringe when your opera-loving friends start raving about the latest production of Tristan? Do you feel faint just thinking about the six-hour performance of Parsifal you were given tickets to? Does your mate accuse you of having a Tannhäuser complex? If you're baffled by the behavior of Wagner worshipers, if you've longed to fathom the mysteries of Wagner's ever-increasing popularity, or if you just want to better understand and enjoy the performances you're attending, you'll find this delightful book indispensable.

William Berger is the most helpful guide one could hope to find for navigating the strange and beautiful world of the most controversial artist who ever lived. He tells you all you need to know to become a true Wagnerite--from story lines to historical background; from when to visit the rest room to how to sound smart during intermission; from the Jewish legend that possibly inspired Lohengrin to the tragic death of the first Tristan. Funny, informative, and always a pleasure to read, Wagner Without Fear proves that the art of Wagner can be accessible to everyone.

Includes:
- The strange life of Richard Wagner--German patriot (and exile), friend (and enemy) of Liszt and Nietzsche
- Essential opera lore and "lobby talk"
- A scene-by-scene analysis of each opera
- What to listen for to get the most from the music
- Recommended recordings, films, and sound tracks

In this original study, Christopher Alan Reynolds examines the influence of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on two major nineteenth-century composers, Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann. During 1845 46 the compositional styles of Schumann and Wagner changed in a common direction, toward a style that was more contrapuntal, more densely motivic, and engaged in processes of thematic transformation. Reynolds shows that the stylistic advances that both composers made in Dresden in 1845 46 stemmed from a deepened understanding of Beethoven's techniques and strategies in the Ninth Symphony. The evidence provided by their compositions from this pivotal year and the surrounding years suggests that they discussed Beethoven's Ninth with each other in the months leading up to the performance of this work, which Wagner conducted on Palm Sunday in 1846. Two primary aspects that appear to have interested them both are Beethoven's use of counterpoint involving contrary motion and his gradual development of the Ode to Joy" melody through the preceding movements. Combining a novel examination of the historical record with careful readings of the music, Reynolds adds further layers to this argument, speculating that Wagner and Schumann may not have come to these discoveries entirely independently of each other. The trail of influences that Reynolds explores extends back to the music of Bach and ahead to Tristan and Isolde, as well as to Brahms's First Symphony.

Ellen Rosand shows how opera, born of courtly entertainment, took root in the special social and economic environment of seventeenth-century Venice and there developed the stylistic and aesthetic characteristics we recognize as opera today. With ninety-one music examples, most of them complete pieces nowhere else in print, and enlivened by twenty-eight illustrations, this landmark study will be essential for all students of opera, amateur and professional, and for students of European cultural history in general. Because opera was new in the seventeenth century, the composers (most notably Monteverdi and Cavalli), librettists, impresarios, singers, and designers were especially aware of dealing with aesthetic issues as they worked. Rosand examines critically for the first time the voluminous literary and musical documentation left by the Venetian makers of opera. She determines how these pioneers viewed their art and explains the mechanics of the proliferation of opera, within only four decades, to stages across Europe. Rosand isolates two features of particular importance to this proliferation: the emergence of conventions - musical, dramatic, practical - that facilitated replication; and the acute self-consciousness of the creators who, in their scores, librettos, letters, and other documents, have left us a running commentary on the origins of a genre.

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.

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.

The "keys" provided by Herve Lacombe in this richly informed book open the door to understanding the essence of nineteenth-century French lyric theater. Lacombe illuminates the diverse elements that constitute opera by focusing his investigation around three main categories: composition and production; words, music, and drama; and the interaction of society, genre, and aesthetics.
Lacombe chooses Bizet's "Pearl Fishers" (1863) as the exemplar of French opera that combines tradition and innovation. He uses "Pearl Fishers" as a paradigmatic point of reference for exploring questions of genesis, style, and aesthetic in other nineteenth-century French operatic works. French opera was a social art, he writes, and looping between past and future, between tradition and innovation, it achieved the seemingly impossible union of two antithetical aspects of Romanticism: the taste for theatricality and the desire for intimacy.
The voices of contemporary witnesses are heard throughout Lacombe's book. He makes abundant use of the writings of such musician-critics as Berlioz, Reyer, and Saint-Saens and also draws on the works of many French writers, including Stendhal, Balzac, Baudelaire, and Zola. Illustrations showing costume sketches, scenery, posters, paintings, photographs, and magazine articles are attractive complements to discussions of particular operas. Together with Edward Schneider's accessible translation, the illustrations make this well-rounded and original study a trove of information for both music scholars and French historians.

"The first volume of Perle's magnificent study focused on Wozuck ...Its successor, equally painstaking and perceptive, is if anything more invaluable, for the clouds of mystery around Berg's second opera are only now beginning to disperse, and the work is coming to be regarded properly as the climax of the composer's achievement." (Andrew Clements, Opera). "Perle's books have laid the groundwork for a thorough exploration of the remarkably successful ways in which Berg was able to marry a powerful intellectual grasp of a richly developing language to an instinctive feel for dramatic shape, a process that marks him out as one of the few genuine opera composers this century." (Michael Taylor, Music and Letters). "The first volume, Wozzeck ...was universally recognized as being a work of outstanding scholarship. The Lulu volume is an even more impressive achievement. In its analytical sophistication, its critical insights and in the implications which it has for our understanding not only of Berg but of a whole body of post-diatonic music, Perle's Lulu is one of the most exciting and important books on music to appear for many years." (Douglas Jarman, Times Literary Supplement). "With the second of his books on The Operas of Alban Berg, this American musicologist and composer has now taken advantage of all this new material to consolidate his own research and present us with the most sophisticated musical analysis yet made of the composer ...As Perle shows, Lulu represents the highest point of development in Berg's music from the point of view of ambiguity of fabrication." (Stephen Reeve, Classical Music). "Nothing I've read in the past year makes as important a contribution to this literature as The Operas of Alban Berg: Volume Two: Lulu ...Perle's saga of the opera's release from partial captivity reads like one of the great intellectual detective stories of our era ...What emerges most flavorfully is Perle's portrait of a haunted artist who imbued his later works with concealed autobiographical gestures, including his longtime love affair with a Prague matron." (Ailan Ulrich, San Francisco Focus). "The goal of the two-volume work is not merely to dwell in detail on the operas themselves, but to give some account of Berg's other music, in order to set the operas in the context of his complete output. With a composer like Berg, whose music is intimately bound up with his own personal life, such an approach is particularly appropriate ...George Perle has given the world two volumes which will remain at the top of their field for many years to come." (Douglass M. Green, Journal of the American Musicological Society).

Igor Stravinsky is one of a small number of early modernist composers whose music epitomises the stylistic crisis of twentieth-century music, from the Russian nationalist heritage of the early works, the neo-classical works which anticipate the stylistic diversity of the contemporary musical scene in the early twenty-first century and the integration of serial techniques during his final period. With entries written by more than fifty international contributors from Russian, European and American traditions, The Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopedia presents multiple perspectives on the life, works, writings and aesthetic relationships of this multi-faceted creative artist. This important resource explores Stravinsky's relationships with virtually all the major artistic figures of his time, painters, dramatists, choreographers and producers as well musicians and brings together fresh insights into to the life and work of one of the twentieth century's greatest composers.