The past four decades have seen an explosion in research regarding seventeenth-century opera. In addition to investigations of extant scores and librettos, scholars have dealt with the associated areas of dance and scenery, as well as newer disciplines such as studies of patronage, gender, and semiotics. While most of the essays in the volume pertain to Italian opera, others concern opera production in France, England, Spain and the Germanic countries.

This volume covers opera in Italy, France, England, and the Americas during the long nineteenth century (1789-1914). The book is divided into four sections that are thematically, rather than geographically, conceived: places - essays centering on contexts for operatic culture; genres and styles - studies dealing with the question of how operas in this period were put together; critical studies of individual works, exemplifying particular critical trends; and, performance.

This volume offers a cross-section of English-language scholarship on German and Slavonic operatic repertories of the 'long nineteenth century', giving particular emphasis to four areas: German opera in the first half of the nineteenth century; the works of Richard Wagner after 1848; Russian opera between Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov; and, the operas of Richard Strauss and Janacek. The essays reflect diverse methods, ranging from stylistic, philological, and historical approaches to those rooted in hermeneutics, critical theory, and post-modernist inquiry.

Opera in the first half of the eighteenth century saw the rise of the memorable composer and the memorable work. Recent research on this period has been especially fruitful, showing renewed interest in how opera operated within its local cultures, what audience members felt was at stake in opera performances, who the people - composers and performers - were who made opera possible. The essays for this volume capture the principal themes of current research: the 'idea' of opera, opera criticism, the people of opera, and the emerging technologies of opera.

Hailed at its premiere at the London Coliseum in 1986 as the most important musical and theatrical event of the decade, The Mask of Orpheus is undoubtedly a key work in Harrison Birtwistle's output. His subsequent stage and concert pieces demand to be evaluated in its light. Increasingly, it is also viewed as a key work in the development of opera since the Second World War, a work that pushed at the boundaries of what was possible in lyrical theatre. In its imaginative fusion of music, song, drama, myth, mime and electronics, it has become a beacon for many younger composers, and the object of wide critical attention. Jonathan Cross begins his detailed study of this 'lyric tragedy' by placing it in the wider context of the reception of the Orpheus myth. In particular, the significance of Orpheus for the twentieth century is discussed, and this provides the backdrop for an examination of Birtwistle's preoccupation with the story in a variety of works across his creative life. The sources and genesis of The Mask of Orpheus are explored. This is followed by a close reading of the work's three acts, analysing their structure and meaning, investigating the relationship between music, text and drama, drawing on Zinovieff's textual drafts and Birtwistle's compositional sketches. The book concludes by suggesting a range of contexts within which The Mask of Orpheus might be understood. Its central themes of time, memory and identity, loss, mourning and melancholy, touch a deep sensibility in late-modern society and culture. Interviews with the librettist and composer round off this important study.

Jazz, the Charleston, nightclubs, cocktails, cinema, and musical theatre: 1920s British nightlife was vibrant and exhilarating. But where did opera fit into this fashionable new entertainment world? Opera in the Jazz Age: Cultural Politics in 1920s Britain explores the interaction between opera and popular culture at a key historical moment when there was a growing imperative to categorize art forms as "highbrow," "middlebrow," or "lowbrow." Literary studies of the so-called "battle of the brows" have been numerous, but this is the first book to consider the place of opera in interwar debates about high and low culture. This study by Alexandra Wilson argues that opera was extremely difficult to pigeonhole: although some contemporary commentators believed it to be too highbrow, others thought it not highbrow enough. Opera in the Jazz Age paints a lively and engaging picture of 1920s operatic culture, and introduces a charismatic cast of early twentieth-century critics, conductors, and celebrity singers. Opera was performed during this period to socially mixed audiences in a variety of spaces beyond the conventional opera house: music halls, cinemas, cafes and schools. Performance and production standards were not always high - often quite the reverse - but opera-going was evidently great fun. Office boys whistled operatic tunes they had heard on the gramophone and there was a genuine sense that opera was for everyone. In this provocative and timely study, Wilson considers how the opera debate of the 1920s continues to shape the ways in which we discuss the art form, and draws connections between the battle of the brows and present-day discussions about elitism. The book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the cultural politics of twentieth-century Britain and is essential reading for anybody interested in the history of opera, the battle of the brows, or simply the perennially fascinating decade that was the 1920s.

The complete dramatic toolbox for the opera singer - a step-by-step guide detailing how to create character, from auditions through to rehearsal and performance and formulate a successful career. Drawing upon the innovative approach to the training of young opera singers developed by Martin Constantine, Co-Director of ENO Opera Works, The Opera Singer's Acting Toolkit leads the singer through the process of bringing the libretto and score to life in order to create character. It draws on the work of practitioners such as Stanislavski, Lecoq, Laban and Cicely Berry to introduce the singer to the tools needed to create an interior and physical life for character. The book draws on operatic repertoire from Handel through Mozart to Britten to present practical techniques and exercises to help the singer develop their own individual dramatic toolbox. The Opera Singer's Acting Toolkit features interviews with leading conductors, directors, singers and casting agents to offer invaluable insights into the professional operatic world, and advice on how to remain focused on the importance of the work itself.

While European powers were at war with the Ottoman Empire for much of the eighteenth century, European opera houses were staging operas featuring singing sultans and pashas surrounded by their musical courts and harems. Mozart wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio. Rossini created a series of works, including The Italian Girl in Algiers. And these are only the best known of a vast repertory. This book explores how these representations of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the great nemesis of Christian Europe, became so popular in the opera house and what they illustrate about European-Ottoman international relations. After Christian armies defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683, the Turks no longer seemed as threatening. Europeans increasingly understood that Turkish issues were also European issues, and the political absolutism of the sultan in Istanbul was relevant for thinking about politics in Europe, from the reign of Louis XIV to the age of Napoleon. While Christian European composers and publics recognized that Muslim Turks were, to some degree, different from themselves, this difference was sometimes seen as a matter of exotic costume and setting. The singing Turks of the stage expressed strong political perspectives and human emotions that European audiences could recognize as their own.

This book is the first to examine in depth the contributions of major British authors such as W. H. Auden and E. M. Forster, as critics and librettists, to the rise of British opera in the twentieth century. The perceived literary values of British authors, as much as the musical innovations of British composers, informed the aesthetic development of British opera. Indeed, British opera emerged as a simultaneously literary and musical project. Too often, operatic adaptations are compared superficially to their original sources. This is a particular problem for British opera, which has become increasingly defined artistically by the literary sophistication of its narrative sources. The resulting collaborations between literary figures and composers have crucial implications for the development of both opera and literature. Twentieth-Century British Authors and the Rise of Opera in Britain reveals the importance of this literary involvement in operatic adaptation to literature and literary studies, to music and musicology, and to cultural and theoretical studies.

When Joseph II placed his opera buffa troupe in competition with the re-formed Singspiel, he provoked an intense struggle between supporters of the rival national genres, who organized claques to cheer or hiss at performances, and encouraged press correspondents to write slanted notices. It was in this fraught atmosphere that Mozart collaborated with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte on his three mature Italian comedies-Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte. In Cabals and Satires: Mozart's Comic Operas in Vienna, Ian Woodfield brings the fascinating dynamics of this inter-troupe contest into focus. He reveals how Mozart, while not immune from the infighting, was able to weather satirical attacks, successfully negotiate the unpredictable twists and turns of theatre politics during the lean years of the Austro-Turkish War, and seal his reputation with a revival of Figaro in 1789 as a Habsburg festive work. Mozart's deft navigation of the turbulent political waters of this period left him well placed to benefit from the revival of the commercial stage in Vienna-the most enduring musical consequence of the war years.

This volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying a wide range of subjects associated with the creation, performance and reception of 'opera' in varying social and historical contexts from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Each essay addresses migrations between genres, cultures, literary and musical works, modes of expression, media of presentation and aesthetics. Although the directions the contributions take are diverse, they converge in significant ways, particularly with the rebuttal of the notion of the singular nature of the operatic work. The volume strongly asserts that works are meaningfully transformed by the manifold circumstances of their creation and reception, and that these circumstances have an impact on the life of those works in their many transformations and on a given audience's experience of them. Topics covered include transformations of literary sources and their migration into the operatic genre; works that move across geographical and social boundaries into different cultural contexts; movements between media and/or genre as well as alterations through interpretation and performance of the composer's creation; the translation of spoken theatre to lyric theatre; the theoretical issues contingent on the rendering of 'speech' into 'song'; and the transforming effects of aesthetic considerations as they bear on opera. Crossing over disciplinary boundaries between music, literary studies, history, cultural studies and art history, the volume enriches our knowledge and understanding of the operatic experience and the works. The book will therefore appeal to those working in the field of music, literary and cultural studies, and to those with a particular interest in opera and musical theatre.

Puccini's famous but controversial Madama Butterfly reflects a practice of 'temporary marriage' between Western men and Japanese women in nineteenth-century treaty ports. Groos' book identifies the plot's origin in an eye-witness account and traces its transmission via John Luther Long's short story and David Belasco's play. Archival sources, many unpublished, reveal how Puccini and his librettists imbued the opera with differing constructions of the action and its heroine. Groos's analysis suggests how they constructed a 'contemporary' music-drama with multiple possibilities for interpreting the misalliance between a callous American naval officer and an impoverished fifteen-year-old geisha, providing a more complex understanding of the heroine's presumed 'marriage'. As an orientalizing tragedy with a racially inflected representation of Cio-Cio-San, the opera became a lightning rod for identity politics in Japan, while also stimulating decolonizing transpositions into indigenous theatre traditions such as Bunraku puppet theatre and Takarazuka musicals.

This is the first book-length study of the genre of 'artist-opera', in which the work's central character is an artist who is uncomfortable with his place in the world. It investigates how three such operas (Pfitzner's Palestrina (1915), Krenek's Jonny spielt auf (1926) and Hindemith's Mathis der Maler (1935)) contributed to the debate in early twentieth-century Germany about the place of art and the artist in modern society, and examines how far the artist-character may be taken as functioning as a persona for the real composer of the work. Because of their concern with the place of art within society, the works are also engaged with inherently political questions, and each opera is read in the light of the political context of its time: conservatism circa World War I, Americanism and democracy, and the rise of National Socialism.

Without doubt, Michael William Balfe (1808-1870) was the most successful composer of English opera in the mid nineteenth century. During his lifetime he enjoyed an international reputation and worked with some of the leading singers of the time, including Jenny Lind, Malibran and Grisi. Drawing on previously unused source materials such as letters, legal documents and playbills, this biography of Balfe and in-depth study of his English operas overturns many of the previously accepted 'facts' of the composer's lifestyle. Using London as his base, Dublin-born Balfe spent long periods in Paris and travelled widely in Europe. William Tyldesley discusses the continental influences evident in Balfe's operas and offers new suggestions as to the draw that Paris held for the composer. Far from leading a fairly prosperous and unexceptional life, Balfe is shown to have found himself in financial straits on more than one occasion, and to have employed possibly unethical means of extracting himself from them. Those wishing to perform Balfe's works or to do further research into them, will find Tyldesley's re-examination of the composer a necessary first port of call.

Richard Strauss in Context offers a distinctive approach to the study of a composer in that it places the emphasis on contextualizing topics rather than on biography and artistic output. One might say that it inverts the relationship between composer and context. Rather than studies of Strauss's librettists that discuss the texts themselves and his musical settings, for instance, this book offers essays on the writers themselves: their biographical circumstances, styles, landmark works, and broader positions in literary history. Likewise, Strauss's contributions to the concert hall are positioned within the broader development of the orchestra and trends in programmatic music. In short, readers will benefit from an elaboration of material that is either absent from or treated only briefly in existing publications. Through this supplemental and broader contextual approach, this book serves as a valuable and unique resource for students, scholars, and a general readership.

Written to meet the needs of thousands of students and pre-professional singers participating in production workshops and classes in opera and musical theater, Acting for Singers leads singing performers step by step from the studio or classroom through audition and rehearsals to a successful performance. Using a clear, systematic, positive approach, this practical guide explains how to analyze a script or libretto, shows how to develop a character building on material in the score, and gives the singing performer the tools to act believably. More than just a "how-to" acting book, however, Acting for Singers also addresses the problems of concentration, trust, projection, communication, and the self-doubt that often afflicts performers pursuing the goal of believable performance. Part I establishes the basic principles of acting and singing together, and teaches the reader how to improvise as a key tool to explore and develop characters. Part II teaches the singer how to analyze theatrical work for rehearsing, and performing. Using concrete examples from Carmen and West Side Story, and imaginative exercises following each chapter, this text teaches all singers how to be effective singing actors.

This collection of reprinted essays takes the trends of the author's Music, Patronage and Printing in Late Renaissance Florence (also in the 'Variorum' series) in a somewhat different direction. If the focus there was primarily on archival documents, here it is on the actual music. The starting-point is similar - the rise of the 'new music' for solo voice and basso continuo in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Florence, in particular the songs of Giulio Caccini. But it moves on to broader aesthetic issues crystallized in contemporary theoretical debate and musical practice - not least the rise of aria-based styles - and concludes with a series of studies of Claudio Monteverdi's works for the theatre, including the operas Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and the ever-problematic L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643).

The majority of these collected essays date from 1992 onwards, three of them having been specially expanded for this volume. Drawing on recent archival research and new musicological theory, they investigate distinctive qualities in French opera from early opera comique to early grand opera. 'Media' is interpreted in terms of both narrative systems and practical theatre resources. One group of essays identifies narrative systems in 'minuet-scenes', in the diegetic romance, and in special uses of musical motives. Another group concerns the theory and A|sthetics of opera, in which uses of metaphor help us interpret audience reception. A third group focuses on orchestral and staging practices, brought together in a new theory of the 'melodrama model' linking various genres from the 1780s with the world of the 1820s. French opera's relation with literature and politics is a continuing theme, explored in writings on prison scenes, Ossian, and public-private dramaturgy in grand opera. David Charlton has written widely on French music and opera topics for over 25 years. The selection of his articles presented here focuses on the period 1730-1830 when Paris was a hotbed of influential ideas in music and music theatre, with many of these ideas taken up by foreign composers. This volume assesses the French contribution to the development of Classical and Romantic styles and genres which has hitherto not received the attention it deserves.

Academic attention has focused on America's influence on European stage works, and yet dozens of operettas from Austria and Germany were produced on Broadway and in the West End, and their impact on the musical life of the early twentieth century is undeniable. In this ground breaking book, Derek B. Scott examines the cultural transfer of operetta from the German stage to Britain and the USA and offers a historical and critical survey of these operettas and their music. In the period 1900-1940, over sixty operettas were produced in the West End, and over seventy on Broadway. A study of these stage works is important for the light they shine on a variety of social topics of the period - from modernity and gender relations to new technology and new media - and these are investigated in the individual chapters. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

In the early eighteenth century, the benefit performance became an essential component of commercial music-making in Britain. Benefits, adapted from the spoken theatre, provided a new model from which instrumentalists, singers, and composers could reap financial and professional rewards. Benefits could be given as theatre pieces, concerts, or opera performances for the benefit of individual performers; or in aid of specific organizations. The benefit changed Britain's musico-theatrical landscape during this time and these special performances became a prototype for similar types of events in other European and American cities. Indeed, the charity benefit became a musical phenomenon in its own right, leading, for example, to the lasting success of Handel's Messiah. By examining benefits from a musical perspective - including performers, audiences, and institutions - the twelve chapters in this collection present the first study of the various ways in which music became associated with the benefit system in eighteenth-century Britain.

As a legacy of the Habsburg Empire, performances of Jacques Offenbach's musical stage works played an important role in Budapest musico-theatrical life in the twentieth century. However, between the collapse of the Empire and the 1956 anti-Soviet revolution, political ideologies strongly influenced the character of these productions, when they took place. Public performances of Offenbach's works were prohibited between 1938 and 1945 and they became the bases for propagandadistic adaptations in the 1950s. This element explores how the local operetta tradition and the vogue of operettas featuring composers as characters during the interwar period were also important factors in how Offenbach's stage works were performed in mid-twentieth century Budapest in versions that sometimes bore little resemblance to the originals.

Opera: The Basics offers an excellent introduction to four centuries of opera. Its easy to follow sections explore topics including:

the origins of opera

basic terminology

the history of major opera genres including: serious opera, comic opera, semi-serious opera and vernacular opera.

With key notes, discography and videography, this is the ideal book for students and interested listeners who want to learn more about this important musical genre.

Table of Contents

IntroductionPart I Terms and Topics 1. Origins of OperaThe ultimate Baroque expression Baroque CharacteristicsThe Florentine Camerata: Opera's First TheoristsFrom Polyphony to Monody: Solo SongMonody as Recitative Opera's forerunnersThe IntermedioLearned Comedy (Commedia erudite) Italian Folk Comedy (Commedia dell'arte)Pastoral DramaChurch pageants (Sacre Rappresentazioni)Sidebar: Claudio MonteverdiSummaryTerminologyAria StrophicThrough-composedDa capoDal segnoCavatina CantabileCabalettaRecitativeThe rhythm of languageDry (secco)Accompanied (accompagnato)SimpleMesuréeEnsemblesDuets and triosQuartets and larger ensemblesScenaMultipartite finalesVocal ranges (with sample roles)Musical Scores and EditionsAutographs/holographsFull orchestralPiano-vocalIndividual selectionsScholarly editionsPerforming editionsSummary2. Music and Text RelationshipsThe librettoPoetry and musical structuresCompositional strategiesSubjects, themes, and musical expressionSummary3. Opera in TheatersPatronagePublic TheatersEconomics of operaHistoric HousesSummary4. History of Opera on Media RecordingsOpera on musical boxesThe earliest recordingsOpera on LPs and CDsOperas on video and DVDFilm versionsSummary5. ProfessionsComposersLibrettistsSingersThe ImpresarioConductors and DirectorsMusicians and DancersCriticsSummary6. Opera as a Mirror of Culture and SocietyCultural ExpressionOpera as class symbolOperatic seasons and societyCensorshipOpera and religionGender politics NationalismThe Role of the AudienceSummaryPART IIGenres and Styles7. Serious OperaOpera seriaTragedie lyriqueOpéra comiqueMusic drama and GesamptkunstwerkSummary8. Comic OperaOpera buffaFarsaIntermezzoDramma giocosoOpéra comiqueOpéra bouffeSummary9. Semi-serious OperaOpera semiseriaOperettaSummary10. Vernacular OperaSingspielZarzuelaSemi-operaBallad operaSummary

This volume of essays discusses the European and global expansion of Italian opera and the significance of this process for debates on opera at home in Italy. Covering different parts of Europe, the Americas, Southeast and East Asia, it investigates the impact of transnational musical exchanges on notions of national identity associated with the production and reception of Italian opera across the world. As a consequence of these exchanges between composers, impresarios, musicians and audiences, ideas of operatic Italianness (italianita) constantly changed and had to be reconfigured, reflecting the radically transformative experience of time and space that throughout the nineteenth century turned opera into a global aesthetic commodity. The book opens with a substantial introduction discussing key concepts in cross-disciplinary perspective and concludes with an epilogue relating its findings to different historiographical trends in transnational opera studies.

In 1759 the court of the Italian Duchy of Parma adopted the inspiration of cultural creators who recommended a reform of Italian opera along French lines. These writers favored combining Italian-style music with the wider range of musical genres and scenic variety of French opera. As the prize-winning music critic and commentator George W. Loomis shows in this groundbreaking volume, the young composer Tommaso Traetta was engaged to create new operas responding to these demands. As Loomis deftly demonstrates, Traetta's operas were largely oriented toward the formal aria, a byproduct of making Italian music an essential component of this cross-cultural fusion. Nevertheless, they were strikingly innovative in their use of chorus, integrated dance, and accompanied recitative. Structurally, the operas reflect the French distinction between scenes of action and divertissements. After a brief flowering in the 1760s, the project was abandoned, primarily for lack of interest, but Traetta's Parma operas deserve a previously unrecognized place in the history of Western music for their stimulation of opera seria in Italy and beyond. This included the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose genre-defining Idomeneo (1781) proved a turning point in the development of opera.