First published in 1994. This study sets out to investigate English opera from 1834 to 1864. The author attempts to understand the circumstances influencing the development of English nineteenth-century opera, its characteristic features, and the reasons why these traits held sway. This title will be of great interest to students of art and cultural history.

First published in 1991. At once poet, dramatist, adaptor and translator, the operatic librettist in turn expresses and mocks social convention. Deirdre O'Grady's study of the Italian operatic librettist identifies opera as a mirror of literary climates, popular taste and political aspirations. The Last Troubadours traces the history of the Italian libretto from its courtly origin in the 16th century, through the crisis of the aristocracy and the 19th-century struggle for national unity, to the birth of social realism. Fundamental elements of Italian opera - heroic valour, cunning servants, revolutionary ardour and romantic tenderness - are considered in their historical and cultural context. Also discussed are famous lyrical and musical collaborations - of Da Ponte and Mozart, Solera and Verdi, Romani and Bellini, and Boito and Verdi.

First published in 1989. This study explores Italian attitudes to opera while Vincenzo Bellini was studying and composing. It draws mainly on Italian critical and aesthetic writing dating from the end of an era that was still dominated by the Italian bel canto. Many of the writers considered are unfamiliar today, but they express the accepted views on music, opera, and singing that dominated a particularly insular tradition. This title will be of interest to students of Italian and Music History.

A powerful and thought provoking memoir from one of the world's most successful orchestral conductors, whose life story, talent and dedication to music is an inspiration to read. A tragic car accident when Welser-Moest was a student shaped both his career and approach to music in the most profound and unexpected way, while the book documents an insider's view of the complex relationships between an opera house, its orchestra, the conductor and singers, and the creative struggle by all these parts to achieve perfection in every performance. Welser-Moest's book was published in Austria in July 2020 and rapidly became a no 1 bestseller. It remains a bestseller in the German language today. This edition will satisfy all lovers of opera and classical music who are English language readers.

"Opera is community, comfort, art, voice, breath, life. It's hope." All art exists to make life more bearable. For Alison Kinney, it was the wild, fantastical world of opera that transformed her listening and her life. Whether we're listening for the first time or revisiting the arias that first stole our hearts, Avidly Reads Opera welcomes readers and listeners to a community full of friendship, passion, critique-and, always, beautiful music. In times of delirious, madcap fun and political turmoil, opera fans have expressed their passion by dispatching records into the cosmos, building fairy-tale castles, and singing together through the arduous work of social activism. Avidly Reads Opera is a love letter to the music and those who love it, complete with playlists, a crowdsourced tip sheet from ultra-fans to newbies, and stories of the turbulent, genre-busting, and often hilarious history of opera and its audiences. Across five acts-and the requisite intermission-Alison Kinney takes us everywhere opera's rich melodies are heard, from the cozy bedrooms of listeners at home, to exclusive music festivals, to protests, and even prisons. Part of the Avidly Reads series, this slim book gives us a new way of looking at culture. With the singular blend of personal reflection and cultural criticism featured in the series, Avidly Reads Opera is an homage to the marvelous, sensational world of opera for the casual viewer.

This is the first comprehensive history of seventeenth-ccntury Spanish theatrical music to be written in any language, and the first book-length study devoted to the music of the Spanish baroque in English. While particular aspects of the field have been explored before, no previous single study has succeeded in defining the place and function of music in the Spanish theatre of the Golden Age, and the nature of the extant repertory. This book explains the several musical-theatrical genres that flourished in seventeenth-century Spain, answers essential questions about their nature and development as court and public entertainments, and looks at the anomalous production of three operas in a period dominated by genres such as the semi-opera and the zarzuela. Based on a thorough study of the extant music, the plays, numerous historical documents, and descriptions from the period, the author builds a complete picture through a historical and contextual approach illustrated by musical and literary analysis. This book considerably advances our understanding of the culture of the baroque period in Spain, by making important statements about the nature of the Spanish musical baroque and its relation to European musical and theatrical developments. As such, it will be welcomed by musicologists, hispanists, students of Spanish culture, and historians of the arts and ideas.

Making use of archival resources in the United Kingdom and the United States, Regina B. Oost examines advertisements, promotional materials, and programs, as well as letters, diaries, and account books, to reconstruct the ways in which Richard D'Oyly Carte, W.S. Gilbert, and Arthur Sullivan attracted and shaped the expectations of theatergoers. Her findings place the Savoy operas in the context of other West End productions, considering similarities between Carte's promotional methods and those of managers Henry Irving, John Hollingshead, and Marie and Squire Bancroft. While all of these managers astutely understood patronage of a middle-class audience to be key to their success, the Savoy collaborators made strategic use of circumstances unique to their situation to distinguish Gilbert and Sullivan operas from contemporary theatrical fare. From Trial by Jury (1875) through The Grand Duke (1896), the Savoy operas celebrated the commodity culture beloved of the urban middle classes, validated a moral code that secured the social privileges audience members cherished, and ultimately provided a new model of British national identity that replaced the agrarian ideal espoused by earlier generations. Written in admirably accessible and jargon-free prose, Oost's book will appeal to scholars of theater history, literature, music, and popular culture, as well as general readers interested in Gilbert and Sullivan and the history of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

Nineteenth-century French grand opera was a musical and cultural phenomenon with an important and widespread transnational presence in Europe. Primary attention in the major studies of the genre has so far been on the Parisian context for which the majority of the works were originally written. In contrast, this volume takes account of a larger geographical and historical context, bringing the Europe-wide impact of the genre into focus. The book presents case studies including analyses of grand opera in small-town Germany and Switzerland; grand operas adapted for Scandinavian capitals, a cockney audience in London, and a court audience in Weimar; and Portuguese and Russian grand operas after the French model. Its overarching aim is to reveal how grand operas were used - performed, transformed, enjoyed and criticised, emulated and parodied - and how they became part of musical, cultural and political life in various European settings. The picture that emerges is complex and diversified, yet it also testifies to the interrelated processes of cultural and political change as bourgeois audiences, at varying paces and with local variations, increased their influence, and as discourses on language, nation and nationalism influenced public debates in powerful ways.

"Bringing the study of Chinese theatre into the 21st-century, Lei discusses ways in which traditional art can survive and thrive in the age of modernization and globalization. Building on her previous work, this new book focuses on various forms of Chinese "opera" in locations around the Pacific Rim, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and California"--

The Pre-history of 'The Midsummer Marriage' examines the early collaborative phase (1943 to 1946) in the making of Michael Tippett's first mature opera and charts the developments that grew out of that phase. Drawing on a fascinating group of Tippett's sketchbooks and a lengthy sequence of his letters to Douglas Newton, it helps construct a narrative of the Tippett-Newton collaboration and provides insights into the devising of the opera's plot, both in that early phase and in the phase from 1946 onwards when Tippett went on with the project alone. The book asks: who was Newton, and what kind of collaboration did he have-then cease to have- with Tippett? What were the origins of and shaping factors behind the original scenario and libretto-drafts? How far did the narrative and controlling concepts of Midsummer Marriage in its final form tally with-and how far did they move away from-those that had been set up in the years of the two men's collaboration, the 'pre-historic' years? The book will be of particular interest to scholars and researchers in opera studies and twentieth-century music.

A study of the networks of opera production and critical discourse that shaped Italian cultural identity during and after Unification. Opera's role in shaping Italian identity has long fascinated both critics and scholars. Whereas the romance of the Risorgimento once spurred analyses of how individual works and styles grew out of and fostered specifically "Italian" sensibilities and modes of address, more recently scholars have discovered the ways in which opera has animated Italians' social and cultural life in myriad different local contexts. In Networking Operatic Italy, Francesca Vella reexamines this much-debated topic by exploring how, where, and why opera traveled on the mid-nineteenth-century peninsula, and what this mobility meant for opera, Italian cities, and Italy alike. Focusing on the 1850s to the 1870s, Vella attends to opera's encounters with new technologies of transportation and communication, as well as its continued dissemination through newspapers, wind bands, and singing human bodies. Ultimately, this book sheds light on the vibrancy and complexity of nineteenth-century Italian operatic cultures, challenging many of our assumptions about an often exoticized country.

Early in his long career, the self-taught English music critic Ernest Newman (1868 1959) wrote this influential account of Gluck's life and musical achievements in relation to the intellectual life of the eighteenth century. First published in 1895, Gluck and the Opera traces the composer's ideas and his efforts to move opera forward after a period of stagnation. Musicians, thinkers and satirists had been writing for generations about the need to reform the opera, but it was Gluck who brought about far-reaching changes that paved the way for Mozart, Weber and Wagner. His most notable innovation was the fusing of the Italian and French operatic traditions. The first part of the book is a chronological account of Gluck's eventful career, which took him all over Europe but was centred on Paris and Vienna. The second part deals with Gluck in his broader cultural and intellectual context, and lists his works.

This interdisciplinary study of opera and ballet at the King's Theatre in London attempts to make artistic and financial sense of a distinguished company that went spectacularly bankrupt, leaving debts that were to haunt opera in London for more than 70 years. The theatre burned in 1789; it was rebuilt in defiance of the Lord Chamberlain and hired Haydn as house composer, but was not allowed to stage his last opera. This is the first serious study of the company's repertory, personnel, management, and finances.

Presenting a fresh approach to Mozart's achievements as a composer for the stage, John A. Rice outlines the composer's place in the operatic culture of his time. The book tells the story of how Mozart's operas came into existence, following the processes that Mozart went through as he brought his operas from commission to performance. Chapters trace the fascinating series of interactions that took place between Mozart and librettists, singers, stage designers, orchestras, and audiences. In linking the operas by topic, Rice emphasizes what Mozart's operas have in common, regardless of when he wrote them and the genres to which they belong. Overall, the book demonstrates how Mozart's entire operatic oeuvre is the product of a single extraordinary mind and a single pan-European operatic culture.

Praise for "Along the Roaring River"

"I was so completely taken with Hao Jiang Tian's memoir that I carried it halfway around world to finish reading it. Tian let me into his world, one filled with astonishing events and candid details. He has a natural storytelling voice in finding the strange and humorous ironies that link past and present. "Along the Roaring River" is as riveting as a well-told novel."
--Amy Tan

"I have sung eight operas with Tian since his Met debut, and now I understand how the passion and strength in that beautiful voice were created in desperate and dangerous times. Tian has had a life worthy of an opera!"
--Placido Domingo

"I was deeply moved by Tian's story, how he struggled to survive in the maelstrom of Mao's China and then how he toiled to succeed as an artist in America. . . . It is no surprise that music--like it did for me--took him to a higher place, and it was thrilling to read how music fueled this young man's wild imagination and provided a passion for living."
--Quincy Jones

""Along the Roaring River" is a gripping and inspiring account of how an artist transcended the savagery of the Cultural Revolution to take his place on the world's greatest opera stages. This book reads like a suspense novel."
--Allan Miller, filmmaker, "From Mao to Mozart and Isaac Stern in China"

""Along the Roaring River" takes us through an extraordinary life filled with humor, suspense, and an operatic-sized heart. From the deprivations and chaos of China's Cultural Revolution to the excitement and glamour of opera's great stages, Tian's gripping and moving memoir spans many different worlds, discovering in each the common humanity whichbinds them together. This is a book which makes us want to sing!"
--David Henry Hwang, playwright, Tony Award winner, "M. Butterfly"

Richard Wagner is remembered as one of the most influential figures in music and theatre, but his place in history has been marked by a considerable amount of controversy. His attitudes towards the Jews and the appropriation of his operas by the Nazis, for example, have helped to construct a historical persona that sits uncomfortably with modern sensibilities. Yet Wagner's absolutely central position in the operatic canon continues. This volume serves as a timely reminder of his ongoing musical, cultural, and political impact. Contributions by specialists from such varied fields as musical history, German literature and cultural studies, opera production, and political science consider a range of topics, from trends and problems in the history of stage production to the representations of gender and sexuality. With the inclusion of invaluable and reliably up-to-date biographical data, this collection will be of great interest to scholars, students, and enthusiasts.

The diary of Anton Reiff Jr. (c. 1830-1916) is one of only a handful of primary sources to offer a firsthand account of antebellum riverboat travel in the American South. The Pyne and Harrison Opera Troupe, a company run by English sisters Susan and Louisa Pyne and their business partner, tenor William Harrison, hired Reiff, then freelancing in New York, to serve as musical director and conductor for the company's American itinerary. The grueling tour began in November 1855 in Boston and then proceeded to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, where, after a three-week engagement, the company boarded a paddle steamer bound for New Orleans. It was at that point that Reiff started to keep his diary. Diligently transcribed and annotated by Michael Burden, Reiff's diary presents an extraordinarily rare view of life with a foreign opera company as it traveled the country by river and rail. Surprisingly, Reiff comments little on the Pyne-Harrison performances themselves, although he does visit the theaters in the river towns, including New Orleans, where he spends evenings both at the French Opera and at the Gaiety. Instead, Reiff focuses his attention on other passengers, on the mechanics of the journey, on the landscape, and on events he encounters, including the 1856 Mardi Gras and the unveiling of the statue of Andrew Jackson in New Orleans's Jackson Square. Reiff is clearly captivated by the river towns and their residents, including the enslaved, whom he encountered whenever the boat tied up. Running throughout the journal is a thread of anxiety, for, apart from the typical dangers of a river trip, the winter of 1855-1856 was one of the coldest of the century, and the steamer had difficulties with river ice. Historians have used Reiff's journal as source material, but until now the entire text, which is archived in Louisiana State University's Special Collections in Hill Memorial Library, has only been available in its original state. As a primary source, the published journal will have broad appeal to historians and other readers interested in antebellum riverboat travel, highbrow entertainment, and the people and places of the South.

This book explores the fascinating phenomenon of cross-casting and related gender issues in different theatrical genres and different performance contexts during the heyday of French theatre. Although professional acting troupes under Louis XIV were mixed, cross-casting remained an important feature of French court ballet (in which the King himself performed a number of women's roles) and an occasional feature of spoken comedy and tragic opera. Cross-casting also persisted out of necessity in the school drama of the period. This book fills an important gap in the history of French theatre and provides new insight into wider theoretical questions of gender and theatricality. The inclusion of chapters on ballet and opera (as well as spoken drama) opens up the richness of French theatre under Louis XIV in a way that has not been achieved before.

A curated collection of Enlightenment operas, paintings, and literary works that were all marked by the "Telemacomania" scandal, a furious cultural frenzy with dangerous political stakes. Imaginatively structured as a guided tour, Opera and the Politics of Tragedy captures the tumultuous impact of the so-called Telemacomania crisis through its key artifacts: literary pamphlets, spoken dramas, paintings, engravings, and opera librettos (drammi per musica). Prominently featured in the gallery are two operas with direct ties to this aesthetic and political war: Mozart and Cigna-Santi's Mitridate (1770) and Mozart and Varesco's Idomeneo (1781). Reading and listening across the Enlightenment's cultural spaces (its new public museums, its first encyclopedias, and its ever-controversial operatic theater), this book showcases the Enlightenment's disorderly historical revisionism alongside its progressive politics to expose the fertile creativity that can emerge out of the ambiguous space between what is "ancient" and what is "modern."

"One of the great artists of our time."
––Luciano Pavarotti

"A treasure in the world of opera."
––Plácido Domingo

"We are fortunate to have this book about an artist whom it has been my great honor to have known and worked with since my youngest days. Not only will Verdi’s Lux aeterna remain imbedded in my musical memories forever as Shirley Verrett first sang it in Los Angeles, but so will our last music-making together, the recording of Il Trovatore. It seemed to round off a perfect relationship between two friends who have musically complemented each other for years."
–Zubin Mehta

"My collaboration with Shirley Verrett dates back to when I conducted Verdi’s Don Carlo at Covent Garden and she sang her first Eboli with resounding success. Another even more difficult Verdi role brought her an even greater triumph. It had taken me some years to persuade her to try Lady Macbeth, and she electrified Europe as she sang the part for the first time at La Scala di Milano. After the opening, the crowd was so enthusiastic that we thought Shirley might have to spend the night at the theater, signing autographs. These are only highlights. Shirley Verrett is a wonderful musician, a great artist, and a dear friend. It gives me great pleasure to add these few words to celebrate her autobiography."
–Claudio Abbado

If the opera world is full of “intrigue, double meanings, and devious dramatics,” then no place exemplifies this more than the world-famous Metropolitan Opera, where politics, ambition, and oversized egos have traditionally taken center stage along with some of the world’s richest music. Drawing on her fifteen years as its press representative, Johanna Fiedler explodes the traditional secrecy that surrounds the Met in this wonderfully entertaining account of its tumuluous history.

Fiedler chronicles the Met’s early days as a home for legends like Toscanini, Mahler, and Caruso, and gives a fascinating account of the middle years when haughty blue-bloods battled stubborn adminstrators for control of a company that would emerge as America’s premiere opera house. She takes us behind the grand gold-curtain stage in more recent years as well, showing how musical superstars like Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and Kathleen Battle have electrified performances and scandalized the public. But most revelatory are Fiedler’s portrayals of James Levine and Joseph Volpe and their practically parallel ascendancies—Levine rising from prodigy to artistic director, Volpe advancing from stagehand to general manager—and their once strained relationship. Weaving together the personal, economic, and artistic struggles that characterize the Met’s long and vibrant history, Molto Agitato is a must-read saga of power, wealth, and, above all, great music.

No musical partnership has enjoyed greater success during its time span, or bequeathed a more powerful and enduring legacy, than that of Gilbert and Sullivan in the later nineteenth century. Even before their first successful collaboration in 1875, both William Schwenk Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842-1900) had already forged considerable reputations for themselves. Thereafter, between 1877 and 1896, Gilbert wrote the librettos, and Sullivan the music, for no fewer than a dozen Savoy operas, among them the still regularly performed 'H.M.S. Pinafore' (1878), 'The Pirates of Penzance' (1879), 'Iolanthe' (1882), 'The Mikado' (1885), 'The Yeomen of the Guard' (1888) and 'The Gondoliers' (1889). Not only are the plots ingenious, the lyrics witty and the music compelling, the operas also present modern audiences with splendidly rich and satirical evocations of Victorian England and its society: the prime subject matter of this book!

This illustrated study is a resource for opera scholars, opera workers and opera lovers. It explores the field of opera studies in three ways: Through history: Opera North is presented through a historical lens within the UK operatic landscape. The chapter amalgamates extensive archival resources and interview material, including many illustrations from its 35 year history. Through ethnography: the day-to-day workplace behaviour of an opera company is explored in its rehearsal and performance spaces, and the production cycle from first music rehearsal to first night is traced through detailed observation and photographic records. Through production analysis: selected productions of recent years are given a dramaturgical focus, with aspects of conceptual, textual and visual analysis. Opera North was founded as English National Opera North in 1978. It became independent from English National Opera in 1981 and holds a reputation for fostering artistic talent, for adventurous programming choices and for high production values. This study explores universal issues relating to the production of opera, based on the very specific example of our National Opera Company in the North.

While no one would dispute Wagner's ranking among the most significant composers in the history of Western music, his works have been more fiercely attacked than those of any other composer. Alleged to be an unscrupulous womanizer and megalomaniac, undeniably a racist, Wagner's personal qualities and attitudes have often provoked, and continue to provoke, intense hostility that has translated into a mistrust and abhorrence of his music.

In this emphatic, lucid book, Michael Tanner discusses why people feel so passionately about Wagner, for or against, in a way that they do not about other artists who had personal traits no less lamentable than those he is thought to have possessed. Tanner lays out the various arguments made by Wagner's detractors and admirers, and challenges most of them. The author's fascination for the relationships among music, text, and plot generates an illuminating discussion of the operas, in which he persuades us to see many of Wagner's best-known works anew--"The Ring Cycle, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal." He refrains from lengthy and detailed musical examination, giving instead passionate and unconventional analyses that are accessible to all lovers of music, be they listeners or performers.

In this fiery reassessment of one of the greatest composers in the history of opera, Tanner presents one of the most intelligent and controversial portraits of Wagner to emerge for many years.

Richard Wagner remains, almost 130 years after his death, the most controversial composer in the history of music. Creator of huge and hugely ambitious operas, which have an immense immediate impact, as well as providing food for endless thought and discussion, Wagner has had an influence on many fields outside music. In this lively pocket guide, Michael Tanner gives concise accounts of all his operas - the likes of Parsifal, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde - showing how important it is to grasp the dramatic situations at every point, and indicating some of the key musical features. He also provides an outline of Wagner's astonishing life, and shows that he has often been unfairly criticised and made a scapegoat, especially for political events which took place long after his death. Key features include: - Wagner: his life year by year - Wagner: his music work by work - Things people said about Wagner - Essential Wagner: ten great moments - Wagner on CD and DVD - Wagner bibliography This indispensable Faber Pocket Guide provides a wealth of insights into Wagner and is essential reading for anyone with an interest in both and the man and his music. '[P]robably the best introduction ever written to this most complex of composers.' Simon Heffer, Telegraph