This book explains how and why Gluck’s historically important and best-loved opera Orfeo came into existence, and shows why it has retained its popularity. The work is placed in its context of Gluck’s ‘reform of opera’, an artistic movement involving actors, dancers, designers, writers and philosophers, as well as musicians and librettists. Patricia Howard and her fellow contributors describe how the opera has been reinterpreted during the two hundred years between its first performance and the present day. Differing twentieth-century views based on practical experience of the work are put forward by the conductors John Eliot Gardiner and Sir Charles Mackerras, the singer Kevin Smith and the English National Opera music consultant Tom Hammond.

Abitare la battaglia, Gabriele Baldini's study of the operas of Verdi from Oberto to Un ballo in maschera, has, since its posthumous publication in 1970, received much critical acclaim both in Italy and elsewhere. Its lack of technical language makes it easily accessible to the general music lover, but its original and sometimes controversial ideas have stimulated a great deal of discussion among Verdi specialists. The book's central concern is to present an analysis of Verdi the musical dramatist, and its conclusions constitute a radical reassessment of the vexed relationship between opera and literary form, between words and music. As Julian Budden says in his foreword: 'It blows a breath of fresh air into the weary platitudes of traditional Verdian criticism.' This English translation, The Story of Giuseppe Verdi, includes some new editorial additions, bringing various factual matters into line with recent Verdi scholarship. But the book's discussion of the music is always left to speak for itself. While many of the comments may offend the purist, they are always based on a profound knowledge and love of Verdi's operatic masterpieces as seen on the stage. They rarely fail to stimulate the reader into thinking more deeply about this immensely rich repertoire.

Volume 2 covers those works written during the decadence of the post-Rossini period. During this time, Verdi, having exhausted the vein of simple lyricism to be found in Il Trovatore and La Traviata, achieved self-renewal in direct confrontation with the masters of the Paris Opera with his Les Vêpres Siciliennes. A new scale and variety of musical thought can be sensed in the Italian operas that follow, culminating in La Forza del Destino.

This is the third volume of Julian Budden's monumental three-volume survey of the operas of Verdi. Hailed on publication for its extraordinary comprehensibility, the set has become the classic reference work on its subject. For this new edition the author has made a host of corrections throughout, and updated the text in the light of recent scholarship. Volume 3 covers roughly a quarter of a century, a period which saw grand opera on the Parisian model established throughout Italy, the reform of the Conservatories, and the spread of cosmopolitan influences to an extent that convinced many that Italian music was losing its identity. Verdi produced his four last and greatest operas - Don Carlos, Aida, Otello, and Falstaff - in this period, which ended with the advent of `verisimo', in which a new, recognizably Italian idiom was inaugurated. This volume also includes a new and substantial bibliography by Roger Parker.

This is a revised and updated edition of Julian Budden's monumental survey of the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. Hailed on publication for its extraordinary comprehensibility, it examines each of the operas in detail, giving a full account of its dramatic and historical origins and a critical evaluation. The text is supported by a wealth of musical illustrations.

'..the news that Baritone Richard Suart has produced an account of Ko-Ko's Little Lists will be music to your ears. Beginning with a brief history of The Mikado, this hearty collaboration focuses on the way contemporary politics and society are freshly lampooned in each season's book' - Sunday Telegraph Richard Suart, heir to the great Gilbert and Sullivan singers of the past, has made the role of KoKo, Lord High Executioner, his own. Over the last 20 years his topical version of the Little List song has become a focus of audience expectation and hilarity. In this book, he looks back over the Lists that have raised such laughter at the Coliseum and at the history of this immensely malleable song, taking in previous performers such as George Grossmith, Martyn Green, Groucho Marx, Frankie Howerd and Eric Idle -not to mention poets as varied as John Hollander and Tim Rice. Illustrated with 56 colour and 45 b/w illustrations, many never previously reproduced, this is a delightful biography of one of the most entertaining songs in the English language.

Opera Coaching: Professional Techniques for the Repetiteur, Second Edition, is an update to the first practical guide for opera coaches when working with opera singers to help them meet the physical and vocal demands of a score in order to shape a performance. Opera coaching remains a mystery to many musicians. While an opera coach (or repetiteur) is principally tasked with ensuring singers sing the right notes and words, the coach's purview extends well beyond pitches and pronunciation. The opera coach must have a full understanding of human physiognomy and the human voice, as well as a knowledge of the many languages used in Western vocal music and over four centuries of opera repertoire - all to recognize what must happen for success when a singer steps on stage. NEW to this second edition: New and updated chapters throughout, featuring new discussions on large ensembles, twenty-first-century demands, and more. Deeper investigation of the styles of and problems posed by particular operas. Revised chapter structure that allows for an expanded and progressive emphasis on technical work. Modern singers have bemoaned the scarcity of good vocal coaches and conductors - those who understand voices and repertoire alike. Opera Coaching: Professional Techniques for the Repetiteur, Second Edition, demystifies the role of the opera coach, outlining the obstacles facing both the opera singer and the coach who seeks to realize the performer's full potential.

This investigation offers new perspectives on Giuseppe Verdi's attitudes to women and the functions which they fulfilled for him. The book explores Verdi's professional and personal relationship with women who were exceptional within the traditional socio-sexual structure of patria potesta, in the context of women's changing status in nineteenth-century Italian society. It focusses on two women; the singers Giuseppina Strepponi, who supported and enhanced Verdi's creativity at the beginning of his professional life and Teresa Stolz, who sustained his sense of self-worth at its end. Each was an essential emotional benefactor without whom Verdi's career would not have been the same. The subject of the Strepponi-Verdi marriage and the impact of Strepponi's past deserve further detailed and nuanced discussion. This book demonstrates Verdi's shifting power-balance with Strepponi as she sought to retain intellectual self-respect while his success and control increased. The negative stereotypes concerning operatic 'divas' do not withstand scrutiny when applied either to Strepponi or to Stolz. This book presents a revisionist appraisal of Stolz through close examination of her letters. Revealing Stolz's value to Verdi, they also provide contemporary operatic criticism and behind-the-scenes comment, some excerpts of which are published here in English for the first time.

Opera Coaching: Professional Techniques for the Repetiteur, Second Edition, is an update to the first practical guide for opera coaches when working with opera singers to help them meet the physical and vocal demands of a score in order to shape a performance. Opera coaching remains a mystery to many musicians. While an opera coach (or repetiteur) is principally tasked with ensuring singers sing the right notes and words, the coach's purview extends well beyond pitches and pronunciation. The opera coach must have a full understanding of human physiognomy and the human voice, as well as a knowledge of the many languages used in Western vocal music and over four centuries of opera repertoire - all to recognize what must happen for success when a singer steps on stage. NEW to this second edition: New and updated chapters throughout, featuring new discussions on large ensembles, twenty-first-century demands, and more. Deeper investigation of the styles of and problems posed by particular operas. Revised chapter structure that allows for an expanded and progressive emphasis on technical work. Modern singers have bemoaned the scarcity of good vocal coaches and conductors - those who understand voices and repertoire alike. Opera Coaching: Professional Techniques for the Repetiteur, Second Edition, demystifies the role of the opera coach, outlining the obstacles facing both the opera singer and the coach who seeks to realize the performer's full potential.

Would you take Verdi's advice on how to write an opera? What happened to Caruso in the San Francisco earthquake? There are tales both funny and informative in this delightful collection - a `must' for all opera fans.

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."

Throughout his life, German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill was fascinated by the idea of America. His European works depict America as a Capitalist dystopia. But in 1935, it became clear that Europe was no longer safe for Weill, and he set sail for New World, and his engagement with American culture shifted. From that point forward, most of his works concerned the idea of "America," whether celebrating her successes, or critiquing her shortcomings. As an outsider-turned-insider, Weill's insights into American culture were unique. He was keenly attuned to the difficult relationship America had with her immigrants, but was slower to grasp the subtleties of others, particularly those surrounding race relations, even though his works reveal that he was devoted to the idea of racial equality. The book treats Weill as a node in a transnational network of musicians, writers, artists, and other stage professionals, all of whom influenced each other. Weill sought out partners from a range of different sectors, including the Popular Front, spoken drama, and the commercial Broadway stage. His personal papers reveal his attempts to navigate not only the shifting tides of American culture, but the specific demands of his institutional and individual collaborators. In reframing Weill's relationship with immigration and nationality, the book also puts nuance contemporary ideas about the relationships of immigrants to their new homes, moving beyond ideas that such figures must either assimilate and abandon their previous identities, or resist the pull of their new home and stay true to their original culture.

What should we consider when thinking about the relationship between an onstage performance and the story the performance tells? A Poetics of Handel's Operas explores this question by analyzing the narratives of Handel's operas in relation to the rich representational fabric of performance used to convey them. Nathan Link notes that in most storytelling genres, the audience can naturally discern between a story and the way that story is represented: with film, for example, the viewer would recognize that a character hears neither her own voiceover nor the ambient music that accompanies it, whereas in discussions of opera, some audiences may be distracted by the seemingly artificial nature of such conventions as characters singing their dialogue. Link proposes that when engaging with opera, distinguishing between the performance we see and hear on the stage and the story represented offers a meaningful approach to engaging with and interpreting the work. Handel's operas are today the most-performed works in the Baroque opera seria tradition. This genre, with its intricate dramaturgy and esoteric conventions, stands to gain much from an investigation into the relationships between the onstage performance and the story to which that performance directs us. In his analysis, Link offers theoretical studies on opera and narratological theories of literature, drama, and film, providing rich engagement with Handel's work and what it conveys about the relationship between text, story, and performance.

This is the first literal, word-for-word translation of Wagner's epic masterwork with the full German text. Stewart Spencer's version is at once reliable and readable, adhering closely to the original verse form and to Wagner's poetic intentions. The German text is given in parallel, and Spencer also contributes illuminating footnote and an introductory essay. Other specially commissioned essays discuss the Cycle's musical structure, its philosophical implications, its medieval sources and Wagner's own changing attitude to its meaning. An appendix of Wagner's rejected versions, copious notes on the translation, a glossary of the names of characters in the Ring, an extensive bibliography and reviews of CD- and video-recordings conclude the volume.

Leading scholars of opera and film explore the many ways these two seemingly unrelated genres have come together from the silent-film era to today.

The popularity of Carmen endures across generations and continents, with one of the most frequently performed and instantly recognizable operatic scores of all time and a libretto derived from Prosper Merimee's novella of the same name, written 30 years prior to the opera's 1875 debut. In Georges Bizet's Carmen-the latest volume in the Oxford Keynotes series-author Nelly Furman explores the evolution of Carmen's story and its meaning, illuminating how the titular heroine has maintained her status as a universally recognizable cultural icon. Grounded in Ludovic Halevy's and Henri Meilhac's libretto-and drawing on a wealth of mostly French critical theory-this book traces the textual, operatic, and cinematic tellings and retellings of the story, from its success as a novella in the industrial age through to its iconic position in our own cinematic era. As Furman delicately navigates the fraught terrain of racial and gendered discourse and ideology that Bizet's setting of Merimee's work traverses, she uncovers the elements of the story that give it cultural salience and resonance, both in its own right and in support of Bizet's acclaimed musical score. In doing so, Furman reveals how past and present renderings of the Carmen tale mirror the changing concerns and shifting values of individual authors and their societies-and how each new rendering has helped to embed Carmen into the global conscience.

The pathbreaking revival in Paris ca. 1900 of long-neglected operas by Mozart, Gluck, and Rameau -- and what this meant to French audiences, critics, and composers. Focusing on the operas of Mozart, Gluck, and Rameau, Building the Operatic Museum examines the role that eighteenth-century works played in the opera houses of Paris around the turn of the twentieth century. These works, mostly neglected during the nineteenth century, became the main exhibits in what William Gibbons calls the Operatic Museum -- a physical and conceptual space in which great masterworks from the past and present could, like works ofvisual art in the Louvre, entertain audiences while educating them in their own history and national identity. Drawing on the fields of musicology, museum studies, art history, and literature, Gibbons explores how this "museum" transformed Parisian musical theater into a place of cultural memory, dedicated to the display of French musical greatness. William Gibbons is Associate Professor of Musicology at Texas Christian University.

Die Studie widmet sich dem Musiktheater, welches mit seiner Formenvielfalt das Theater im deutschen Sprachraum zwischen 1680 und 1740 beherrschte. Den Schwerpunkt der Untersuchung bilden dabei die Buhnen in Hamburg, Braunschweig, Weissenfels und Leipzig, die in den europaischen Kontext des Musiktheaters gestellt werden. Zunachst wird am Beispiel fruher Rezensionen und musiktheoretischer Schriften sowie der pietistischen und der rationalistischen Opernkritik die Art des Sprechens uber das Musiktheater dargestellt. In den zeitgenoessischen Diskursen ergaben sich im Zusammenhang mit der auf die Sinne ausgerichteten Wirkungsabsicht des Musiktheaters Probleme, die im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung stehen. Das Zusammen- und Gegeneinanderwirken der Kunste und der durch sie angesprochenen Sinne wird vor allem an Prologen untersucht, die den Wettstreit der Kunste thematisieren, sowie an "Antiochus und Stratonica"-Opern, die die Differenzen verbaler und nonverbaler Zeichensysteme einsetzen. Der Funktionswandel des Geschmackssinns wird anhand der Essensthematik verfolgt, die Wandlungen des Tastsinnes an den verschiedenen Liebeskonzeptionen in den Opern. Die politische Dimension von Sinnlichkeit zeigt sich in der Verbindung zwischen Oper und Zeremoniell, wobei das Musiktheater, wie am Beispiel Weissenfels' erkennbar, als Zeremoniellsimulator fungiert.

John Adams's opera, Nixon in China, is one of the most frequently performed operas in the contemporary literature. Timothy A. Johnson illuminates the opera and enhances listeners' and scholars' appreciation for this landmark work. This music-analytical guide presents a detailed, in-depth analysis of the music tied to historical and political contexts. The opera captures an important moment in history and in international relations, and a close study of it from an interdisciplinary perspective provides fresh, compelling insights about the opera. The music analysis takes a neo-Riemannian approach to harmony and to large-scale harmonic connections. Musical metaphors drawn between harmonies and their dramatic contexts enrich this approach. Motivic analysis reveals interweaving associations between the characters, based on melodic content. Analysis of rhythm and meter focuses on Adams's frequent use of grouping and displacement dissonances to propel the music forward or to illustrate the libretto. The book shows how the historical depiction in the opera is accurate, yet enriched by this operatic adaptation. The language of the opera is true to its source, but more evocative than the words spoken in 1972-due to Alice Goodman's marvelous, poetic libretto. And the music transcends its repetitive shell to become a hierarchically-rich and musically-compelling achievement.

The representation of non-Western cultures in opera has long been a focus of critical inquiry. Within this field, the diverse relationships between opera and First Nations and Indigenous cultures, however, have received far less attention. Opera Indigene takes this subject as its focus, addressing the changing historical depictions of Indigenous cultures in opera and the more contemporary practices of Indigenous and First Nations artists. The use of 're/presenting' in the title signals an important distinction between how representations of Indigenous identity have been constructed in operatic history and how Indigenous artists have more recently utilized opera as an interface to present and develop their cultural practices. This volume explores how operas on Indigenous subjects reflect the evolving relationships between Indigenous peoples, the colonizing forces of imperial power, and forms of internal colonization in developing nation-states. Drawing upon postcolonial theory, ethnomusicology, cultural geography and critical discourses on nationalism and multiculturalism, the collection brings together experts on opera and music in Canada, the Americas and Australia in a stimulating comparative study of operatic re/presentation.

Masque and Opera in England, 1656-1688 presents a comprehensive study of the development of court masque and through-composed opera in England from the mid-1650s to the Revolution of 1688-89. In seeking to address the problem of generic categorization within a highly fragmentary corpus for which a limited amount of documentation survives, Walkling argues that our understanding of the distinctions between masque and opera must be premised upon a thorough knowledge of theatrical context and performance circumstances. Using extensive archival and literary evidence, detailed textual readings, rigorous tabular analysis, and meticulous collation of bibliographical and musical sources, this interdisciplinary study offers a host of new insights into a body of work that has long been of interest to musicologists, theatre historians, literary scholars and historians of Restoration court and political culture, but which has hitherto been imperfectly understood. A companion volume will explore the phenomenon of "dramatick opera" and its precursors on London's public stages between the early 1660s and the first decade of the eighteenth century.

Gyoergy Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre (1974-77, revised 1996) has consolidated its position as one of the major operatic works of the twentieth century. Few operas composed since the 1970s have received such numerous productions, bringing the eclectic score to a global audience. Famously dubbed by Ligeti as an 'anti-anti-opera', the piece is a highly ambiguous, apocalyptic fable about the human condition, fear of death and the final judgement. As the first book in English solely dedicated to discussion of this work, Gyoergy Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre: Postmodernism, Musico-Dramatic Form and the Grotesque offers new perspectives on the opera's musico-dramatic identity in the context of musical postmodernism. Peter Edwards draws on a range of modernist and postmodernist theories to explore the collision of past styles and genre models in the opera, its expressive states and its engagement with the grotesque. This is ably supported by musical analysis and extensive study of Ligeti's sketch materials held at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. Edwards's analyses culminate in a new approach to examining the opera's rich multiplicities, the composition of the musical material and the nature of Ligeti's relationship with the musical past. This is a key reference work in the fields of musical modernism and postmodernism, opera studies and the music of Ligeti.

Beijing Opera Costumes: The Visual Communication of Character and Culture illuminates the links between theatrical attire and social customs and aesthetics of China, covering both the theory and practice of stage dress. Distinguishing attributes include an introduction to the performance style, the delineation of the costume conventions, an analysis of the costumes through their historical precedents and theatrical modifications, and the use of garment shape, color, and embroidery for symbolic effect. Practical information covers dressing the performers and a costume plot, the design and creation of the make-up and hairstyles, and pattern drafts of the major garments. Photographs from live performances, as well as details of embroidery, and close-up photographs of the headdresses thoroughly portray the stunning beauty of this incomparable performance style. Presenting the brilliant colors of the elaborately embroidered silk costumes together with the intricate makeup and glittering headdresses, this volume embodies the elegance of the Beijing opera.