Makes available in reliable English translation Wagner's original Siegfried libretto and his early essay on the Nibelung myth. In 1848 Richard Wagner began what would become the largest stage work of his career, the Ring of the Nibelung. In preparation for the task he composed an overview of the Nibelung myth designed to lead to a drama; he then composed the verse "libretto" Siegfried's Death. Although he abandoned the idea of a single opera on Siegfried in favor of the huge project that developed out of it in the succeeding years -- the Ring cycle -- he did consider the two early documents important enough to include them in his collected works. The present volume seeks to inform the English-speaking reader in three ways: by providing modern, reliable translations of the two Wagner texts, which are otherwise not available (the German original is provided on facing pages); by furnishing an overview of German scholarship available to Wagner and others working on the Nibelung legend in the first half of the nineteenth century; and by making available a bibliography of further reading. The volume will be useful to students of musicology, to students and historians of myth and legend, and to all Wagnerians interested in the genesis of the Ring cycle. Accessible to the general reader, it maintains scholarly rigor and provides information about materials not available in English. Edward R. Haymes is Professor in the Department of Modern Languages atCleveland State University.

Originally published in 1925, the text for this edition of Semele was compiled from the 1710 edition of Congreve's works and the altered version adopted by Handel and published in 1762. The work was performed in this form at the New Theatre, Cambridge in February 1925. Lines omitted by the composer are printed in smaller type, and his interpolations are set within square brackets. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the works of Congreve and Handel.

Beginning from the unlikely vantage point of Venice in the aftermath of fascism and World War II, this book explores operatic production in the city's nascent postwar culture as a lens onto the relationship between opera and politics in the twentieth century. Both opera and Venice in the middle of the century are often talked about in strikingly similar terms: as museums locked in the past and blind to the future. These cliches are here overturned: perceptions of crisis were in fact remarkably productive for opera, and despite being physically locked in the past, Venice was undergoing a flourishing of avant-garde activity. Focusing on a local musical culture, Harriet Boyd-Bennett recasts some of the major composers, works, stylistic categories and narratives of twentieth-century music. The study provides fresh understandings of works by composers as diverse as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Verdi, Britten and Nono.

Die Richard Wagner-Sammlung der Zentralbibliothek der Universitatsbibliothek Bern verfugt mit uber 2'500 Titeln uber einen einzigartigen und reprasentativen Querschnitt durch 160 Jahre Wagner-Rezeption. Mit der Schenkung der privaten Sammlung von Paul Richard 1982 und durch die konsequente Erganzung von Erstdrucken und Forschungsliteratur durch die Bibliothek entstand eine bemerkenswerte Wagneriana mit Musikalien, Schriften und Sekundarliteratur, uber 700 Fotografien und etwa 200 Grafiken, Theaterzetteln und Plakaten. Eine Briefsammlung von 225 meist unveroeffentlichten Autographen von Richard Wagner und seinem engsten Freundeskreis erganzt die seltene Sammlung. Die Berner Wagneriana zeichnet sich insbesondere durch seltene Erstausgaben und langst vergriffene deutsch-, franzoesisch- und englischsprachige Dokumentationen aus. Die reich illustrierten Ausgaben von Wagners Dramentexten und Schriften zeichnen die Stilgeschichte der Buchillustration des spaten 19. und fruhen 20. Jahrhunderts nach und nehmen manche Sujets heutiger Mystery- und Fantasyfilme vorweg. Die Veroeffentlichung des vorliegenden kommentierten Katalogs soll Anregung sein, in die Wagner-Rezeption mit all ihren Wucherungen, wunderlichen Philosophemen und ideologischen Vereinnahmungen einzusteigen.

Historians of French politics, art, philosophy and literature have long known the tensions and fascinations of Louis XV's reign, the 1750s in particular. David Charlton's study comprehensively re-examines this period, from Rameau to Gluck and elucidates the long-term issues surrounding opera. Taking Rousseau's Le Devin du Village as one narrative centrepiece, Charlton investigates this opera's origins and influences in the 1740s and goes on to use past and present research to create a new structural model that explains the elements of reform in Gluck's tragedies for Paris. Charlton's book opens many new perspectives on the musical practices and politics of the period, including the Querelle des Bouffons. It gives the first detailed account of intermezzi and opere buffe performed by Eustachio Bambini's troupe at the Paris Opera from August 1752 to February 1754 and discusses Rameau's comedies Platee and Les Paladins and their origins.

With its powerful combination of music and theatre, opera is one of the most complex and yet immediate of all art forms. Once opera was studied only as 'a stepchild of musicology', but in the past two decades opera studies have experienced an explosion of energy with the introduction of new approaches drawn from disciplines such as social anthropology and performance studies to media theory, genre theory, gender studies and reception history. Written by leading scholars in opera studies today, this Companion offers a wide-ranging guide to a rapidly expanding field of study and new ways of thinking about a rich and intriguing art form, placing opera back at the centre of our understanding of Western culture over the past 400 years. This book gives lovers of opera as well as those studying the subject a comprehensive approach to the many facets of opera in the past and today.

Verdi bevorzugt C-Dur haufig fur die Maskierten und Demaskierten, A-Dur fur Autoritaten und B-Dur fur erotische Hochgefuhle; er portratiert die Unschuld gerne in E-Dur und die Auseinandersetzungen von Bass und Baritongestalten in f-Moll/F-Dur. Ausgehend von solchen Auffalligkeiten, fuhrt Peter Gisi die Leserschaft am roten Faden der zwoelf Tonartenpaare durch das Gesamtwerk des Komponisten und vermittelt ungewohnte Einsichten in typische Verdi-Themen wie Urangst, Wut, Heimatliebe, Aussenseitertum, Verganglichkeit, Entruckung. Bis anhin wenig Erforschtes - etwa die Symbolik von Feuer, Wasser, Kerker, Sturm - findet dabei gebuhrende Beachtung. Das 2001 bis 2012 entstandene Buch ist eine Hommage zu Verdis 200. Geburtstag. Es kann auch als Opern- und Konzertfuhrer benutzt werden und erweist sich "als wahres Fullhorn fur alle 'Kenner und Liebhaber', aber auch fur den spezialisierten Verdi-Forscher. Unser Wissen um bisher kaum erkannte Zusammenhange wird durch die vorliegende Untersuchung auf ein voellig neues Niveau gehoben." (Prof. Dr. Anselm Gerhard).

Female characters assumed increasing prominence in the narratives of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera. And for contemporary audiences, many of these characters - and the celebrated women who played them - still define opera at its finest and most searingly affective, even if storylines leave them swooning and faded by the end of the drama. The presence and representation of women in opera has been addressed in a range of recent studies that offer valuable insights into the operatic stage as cultural space, focusing a critical lens at the text and the position and signification of female characters. Moving that lens onto the historical, The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century sheds light on the singers who created and inhabited these roles, the flesh-and-blood women who embodied these fabled "doomed women" onstage before an audience. Editors Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss lead a cast of renowned contributors in an impressive display of current approaches to the lives, careers, and performances of female opera singers. Essential theoretical perspectives reflect several broad themes woven through the volume-cultures of celebrity surrounding the female singer; the emergence of the quasi-mythical figure of the diva; explorations of the intricate and sundry arts associated with the prima donna, and with her representation in other media; and the diversity and complexity of contemporary responses to her. The prima donna influenced compositional practices, determined musical and dramatic interpretation, and affected management decisions about the running of the opera house, content of the season, and employment of other artists - a clear demonstration that her position as "first woman" extended well beyond the boards of the operatic stage itself. The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century is an important addition to the collections of students and researchers in opera studies, nineteenth-century music, performance and gender/sexuality studies, and cultural studies, as well as to the shelves of opera singers and enthusiasts.

Die Verbindung der beiden Kunstgattungen Literatur und Musik zieht sich wie der sprichwoertliche rote Faden durch die Literatur - ebenso wie durch die Musikgeschichte. Doch was bedeutet die bekannte Feststellung "Wo die Sprache aufhoert beginnt die Musik"? Was bedeutet es, dass die Grenzen unserer Sprache die Musik zu ihrer Fortfuhrung machen? Es ist der ewige Wunsch, sobald wir Sprache verwenden, mit ihr mehr sagen zu wollen als wir sagen koennen - der Wunsch nach einer Sprache des Geistes und einer anderen des Herzens. Und als ware diese Sprache gefunden worden in der Oper, im Lied, sind Werke entstanden als eine Erfullung des Verlangens die Grenzen der Sprache zu uberwinden. Sprachlose Antworten sind es, die hier untersucht werden und dabei solchen literarischen Werken gegenubergestellt sind, die noch keine solche Erganzung erfahren haben.

All modern artists have had to market themselves in some way. Richard Wagner may just have done it better than anyone else. In a self-promotional effort that began around 1840 in Paris, and lasted for the remainder of his career, Wagner claimed convincingly that he was the most German composer ever and the true successor of Beethoven. More significantly, he was an opera composer who declared that he was not composing operas. Instead, during the 1850s, he mapped out a new direction, conceiving of works that would break with tradition and be literally 'brand new'. This is the first study to examine the innovative ways in which Wagner made himself a celebrity, promoting himself using every means available: autobiography, journal articles, short stories, newspaper announcements, letters, even his operas themselves. Vazsonyi reveals how Wagner created a niche for his works in the crowded opera market that continues to be unique.

This book was first published in 2009. This fascinating study of ethnic theatrical representation provides original perspectives on the cultural milieu, compositional strategies and operatic legacy of Joseph Haydn. The portrayal of Jews changed markedly during the composer's lifetime. Before the Enlightenment, when Jews were treated as a people apart, physical infirmities and other markers of 'difference' were frequently caricatured on the comedic stage. However, when society began to debate the 'Jewish Question' - understood in the later eighteenth century as how best to integrate Jews into society as productive citizens - theatrical representations became more sympathetic. As Caryl Clark describes, Haydn had many opportunities to observe Jews in his working environments in Vienna and Eisenstadt, and incorporated Jewish stereotypes in two early works. An understanding of Haydn's evolving approach to ethnic representation on the stage provides deeper insight into the composer's iconic wit and humanity, and to the development of opera as a cultural art form across the centuries.

Peking opera is one of the most distinctive traditions in Chinese culture - a tradition that can seem mysterious and complex to foreign eyes. In this illustrated introduction, Xu Chengbei explains the colourful make up, intricate costumes, characters, staging, stories and music associated with Peking opera, and discusses the origins and development of this unique performance art. Peking Opera is an essential starting point for all those interested in this intriguing part of China's cultural heritage.

What is opera and how does it work? How has this dramatic form developed and what is its relevance in the modern world? Perfect for music students and opera-goers, this introductory guide addresses these questions and many more, exploring opera as a complete theatrical experience. Organised chronologically and avoiding technical musical terminology, the book clearly demonstrates how opera reflected and reacted to changes in the world around it. A special feature of the volume is the inclusion of illustrative tables throughout. These provide detailed, easy to follow analysis of arias, scenes and acts; visual guides to historical movements; and chronologies relating to genres and individual composers' works. Overall, the book fosters an understanding of opera as a living form as it encounters and uses material from an ever expanding repertoire in time, place and culture.

'La Traviata' was Giuseppe Verdi's eighteenth opera and shows him at the height of his middle-period powers. Adapted from 'La Dame aux Camelias' by Alexandre Dumas fils, it portrays the love between the courtesan Violetta Valery and the young Alfredo Germont in fashionable Parisian society, with its inevitable tragic outcome. It had its premiere at La Fenice in Venice in 1853 and has gone on to become one of the most performed and greatly loved of all operas. There are articles in the guide about Verdi's preparations for the first performances, a musical commentary, an overview of the opera's social background and an examination of how the libretto was adapted from Dumas's play. Also included are a survey of important performances and performers, sixteen pages of illustrations, a musical thematic guide, the full libretto and English translation, a discography, bibliography and DVD and website guides.

Handel's Israelite oratorios are today little known among non-specialists, but in their own day they were unique, pioneering and extremely popular. Dating from the period 1732-1752, they combine the musical conventions of Italian opera with dramatic plots in English that are adaptations of Old Testament narratives. They constitute a form of biblical interpretation, but to date, there has been no thoroughgoing study of the theological ideas or the attitudes towards the biblical text that might be conveyed in the oratorios' libretti. This book aims to fill that gap from an interdisciplinary perspective. Combining the insights of present-day biblical studies with those of Handelian studies, Deborah W. Rooke examines the libretti of ten oratorios - Esther, Deborah, Athalia, Saul, Samson, Joseph and his Brethren, Judas Macchabaeus, Solomon, Susanna and Jephtha - and evaluates the relationship between each libretto and the biblical story on which it is based. Rooke comments on each biblical text from a modern scholarly perspective, and then compares the modern interpretation with the version of the biblical narrative that appears in the relevant libretto. Where the libretto is based on a prior dramatic or literary adaptation of the biblical narrative, she also discusses the prior adaptation and how it relates to both the biblical text and the corresponding oratorio libretto. In this way the distinctive nuances of the oratorio libretti are highlighted, and each libretto is then analysed and interpreted in the light of eighteenth-century religion, scholarship, culture and politics. The result is a fascinating exploration not only of the oratorio libretti but also of how culture and context determines the nature of biblical interpretation.

Human sacrifice has fascinated Western writers since the beginnings of European literature. It is prominent in Greek epic and tragedy, and returned to haunt writers after the discovery of the Aztec mass sacrifices. It has been treated by some of the greatest creative geniuses, including Shakespeare and Wagner, and was a major topic in the works of many Modernists, such as D. H. Lawrence and Stravinsky. In literature, human sacrifice is often used to express a writer's reaction to the residue of barbarism in his own culture. The meaning attached to the theme therefore changes profoundly from one period to another, yet it remains as timely an image of cultural collapse as it did over two thousand years ago. Drawing on sources from literature and music, in this 2007 book Derek Hughes examines the representation of human sacrifice in Western culture from The Iliad to the invasion of Iraq.

Jenny Lind (1820-87) was one of Europe's most famous opera singers. Known as the 'Swedish Nightingale', she first rose to prominence in an 1838 performance of Weber's Freischutz. Despite her immense success over the next ten years, she retired from the stage at the age of twenty-nine. Seeking financial security to pursue her charitable interests, in 1850 she accepted the invitation of impresario P. T. Barnum to undertake a tour of the United States; this was another succession of triumphs. Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918), the theologian and social reformer, and music writer William Smith Rockstro (1823-95) used Lind's own documents, letters and diaries as the basis of this two-volume memoir, published in 1891, which focuses on the first thirty-one years of her life. Volume 1 covers Lind's Swedish childhood and early singing career, and a brief but critical period when she suffered damage to her vocal cords.

Jenny Lind (1820-87) was one of Europe's most famous opera singers. Known as the 'Swedish Nightingale', she first rose to prominence in an 1838 performance of Weber's Freischutz. Despite her immense success over the next ten years, she retired from the stage at the age of twenty-nine. Seeking financial security to pursue her charitable interests, in 1850 she accepted the invitation of impresario P. T. Barnum to undertake a tour of the United States; this was another succession of triumphs. Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918), the theologian and social reformer, and music writer William Smith Rockstro (1823-95) used Lind's own documents, letters and diaries as the basis of this two-volume memoir, published in 1891, which focuses on the first thirty-one years of her life. Volume 2 discusses some of Lind's most memorable performances in Europe and the reasons for her first retirement; it ends with her departure for America.

Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931) was one of the most famous sopranos of her time. Born in Australia, Melba began her training in Melbourne but moved to Europe in 1882 to start her career. She found success in Brussels as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto and was soon well known throughout the continent's opera houses. She debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1893. Her repertoire extended over twenty-five roles, and she was regarded as unmatched in ten of these, continuing to perform throughout her life, in concert recitals as well as in opera, to great acclaim, and becoming one of the earliest modern 'celebrities'. In this autobiography, published in 1925, Melba describes her childhood and her journey from the 'great Australian Bush' to the bright lights of the European and American stage, while also giving a colourful, first-hand account of the world of opera.

Originally published in 1986, this book is a major study in English on Gretry and opera-comique. Opera-comique is the operatic genre that lies behind The Magic Flute and Fidelio. David Charlton's important study examines the genre in the period before the French Revolution, considering the literary sources, performance conditions, contemporary aesthetic criteria and statistics which reveal the popularity of such works at that time. Dr Charlton takes Gretry, composer of some thirty-four operas-comiques, and a fascinating personality of his day, as the central figure of his study, drawing on Gretry's extensive Memoires and other writing, not available in English translation, for the biographical sections. Twenty-four of Gretry's operas-comiques are given a chapter each, with plot summary, critical discussion, summary of different versions and history of performance in Paris. The book can thus be used as a reference tool or read as a comprehensive survey of opera-comique between 1768 and 1791.

Focusing on Verdi's French operas, Giger shows how the composer acquired an ever better understanding of the various approaches to French versification while gradually bringing his works in line with French melodic aesthetic. In his first French opera, Jerusalem, Verdi treated the text in an overly cautious manner, trying to avoid prosodic mistakes; in Les Vepres siciliennes he began to apply more freedom, scanning the verses against some prosodic accents to convey the lightheartedness of a melody; and in Don Carlos he finally drew on the entire palette of prosodic interpretations. Most of Verdi's melodic accomplishments in the French operas carried over into the subsequent Italian ones, setting the stage for what later would be called operatic verismo. Drawing attention to the significance of the libretto for the development of nineteenth-century French and Italian opera, this 2008 text illustrates Verdi's gradual mastery of the challenges he faced, and their historical significance.

Wagner's Tristan und Isolde occupies a singular position in the history of Western culture. What Nietzsche called the 'sweet and terrible infinity' of its basic nexus of longing and death has fascinated audiences since its first performance in 1865. At the same time, its advanced harmonic language, immediately announced by the opening 'Tristan chord', marks a defining moment in the evolution of modern music. This accessible handbook brings together seven leading international writers to discuss the opera's genesis and the libretto's relationship to late Romantic literary concerns, present an analysis of the Prelude, the music of the drama itself, and Wagner's innovative use of instrumental timbre, and illustrate the production history and reception of the music-drama into the twenty-first century. The book includes the first English translation of Wagner's draft prose of the libretto, a detailed discussion of Wagner's orchestration, and rare pictures from important and influential productions.

Best remembered for such light-hearted works as Il barbiere di Siviglia, Gioachino Rossini produced a sequence of large-scale serious French operas after his move to Paris in 1824 which overwhelmed audiences with their musical power, and responded to the French Restoration. Rather than presenting a traditional account of Rossini's life and works, Benjamin Walton traces instead the shifting patterns of Rossinian criticism from before the composer's arrival in Paris to the end of the 1820s, outlining a type of musical history that uses immersion in a narrow time period as a way to reconceive the relationships between opera and the wider currents of life outside the opera house. In place of the comic Rossini of later memory, this book argues for a composer whose music resonated with the experience of contemporary life, and was integrally bound up in the struggle to define French romanticism at the time.

During the July Monarchy, French grand operas, with their plots drawn from historical events, tended to be received as metaphors for current political themes. Previous studies have usually underestimated the role of music and the visual dimensions in articulating an alternative message to that offered by the libretto, and have instead focused on single political interpretations. In this study, five operas - Auber's La Muette de Portici and Gustave III, Niedermeyer's Stradella, Halevy's Charles VI and Meyerbeer's Le Prophete - illustrate the complex, contested nature of political meaning during this period. By setting these operas in the context of the emerging liberal historiography pioneered by Jules Michelet, and analysing the manner in which audiences and critics constructed 'meanings' with reference to their personal and collective experience and memories, this study reveals the central position that grand opera occupied in the period, bringing the past alive.

This three-volume biography, first published in 1796, recounts the colourful life of the popular Italian poet and librettist Pietro Trapassi (1698 1782), better known by his pseudonym Metastasio. Charles Burney (1726 1814), a British composer and the author of a celebrated four-volume History of Music published between 1776 and 1789, interweaves his own accounts of the poet's life with Metastasio's original letters translated into English. Metastasio's posthumously published correspondence with his friends and patrons provides the essential thread to understanding his complex life and affairs. The son of a shopkeeper, Metastasio was adopted as a young boy by the director of the Arcadian Academy, Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina, who was charmed by the child's extraordinary talent for improvising poetry. Volume 1 covers Metastasio's life from his early childhood until 1751, including his musical debut in Rome after his tutor's death, and the beginning of his career in Vienna.