The Shubert name has been synonymous with Broadway for almost as long as Broadway entertainment itself. With seventeen Broadway theatres including the Ambassador, the Music Box, and the Winter Garden, The Shubert Organization perpetuates brothers Lee and Jacob Shubert's business legacy. In The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows: The Untold Tale of Ziegfeld's Rivals, author Jonas Westover investigates beyond the Shuberts' business empire into their early revues and the centrifugal role they played in developing American theatre as an art form. The Shubert-produced revues, titled Passing Shows, were terrifically popular in the teens and twenties, consistently competing with Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies for the greatest numbers of stars, biggest spectacles, and ultimately the largest audiences. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows is the first-ever book to unpack the colorful history of the productions, delving into their stars, costumes, stagecraft, and orchestration in unprecedented detail. Providing a fresh and exciting window into American theatrical history, Westover traces the fascinating history of the Shuberts' revue series, presented annually from 1912-1924, and covers more broadly the glorious days of early Broadway. In addition to its compelling history of Broadway's Golden Age, The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows also provides a revisionary argument about the overarching history of the revue. Bolstered by a rich collection of documents in the Shubert Theater Archive, Westover argues against the popular misconception that the Shubert's competitor, producer Florenz Ziegfield - responsible for the better-known Follies - was the sole proprietor of Broadway audiences. As Westover proves, not only were the Passing Shows as popular as the Follies but also a key component in a history of the revue that is vastly more complex than previous scholarship has shown. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows brings to fruition years of original research and invaluable insights into the gilded formation of present day Broadway.

Regina Mingotti was the first female impresario to run London's opera house. Born in Naples in 1722, she was the daughter of an Austrian diplomat, and had worked at Dresden under Hasse from 1747. Mingotti left Germany in 1752, and travelled to Madrid to sing at the Spanish court, where the opera was directed by the great castrato, Farinelli. It is not known quite how Francesco Vanneschi, the opera promoter, came to hire Mingotti, but in 1754 (travelling to England via Paris), she was announced as being engaged for the opera in London 'having been admired at Naples and other parts of Italy, by all the Connoisseurs, as much for the elegance of her voice as that of her features'. Michael Burden offers the first considered survey of Mingotti's London years, including material on Mingotti's publication activities, and the identification of the characters in the key satirical print 'The Idol'. Burden makes a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding of eighteenth-century singers' careers and status, and discusses the management, the finance, the choice of repertory, and the pasticcio practice at The King's Theatre, Haymarket during the middle of the eighteenth century. Burden also argues that Mingotti's years with Farinelli influenced her understanding of drama, fed her appreciation of Metastasio, and were partly responsible for London labelling her a 'female Garrick'. The book includes the important publication of the complete texts of both of Mingotti's Appeals to the Publick, accounts of the squabble between Mingotti and Vanneschi, which shed light on the role a singer could play in the replacement of arias.

A collection of papers on the origins of Italian opera and its influence in the development of western music.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

In Russia at the turn of the twentieth century, printed literature and performances - from celebrity narratives and opera fandom to revolutionary acts and political speeches - frequently articulated extreme emotional states and passionate belief. A uniquely intense approach to public life and private expression - the 'melodramatic imagination' - is at the center of this study. Previously, scholars have only indirectly addressed the everyday appropriation of melodramatic aesthetics in Russia, choosing to concentrate on canonical texts and producers of mass culture. Collective fantasies and affects are daunting objects of study, difficult to render, and almost impossible to prove empirically. Music and art historians, with some notable exceptions, have been reluctant to discuss reception for similar reasons. By analyzing the artifacts and practices of a commercialized opera culture, author Anna Fishzon provides a solution to these challenges. Her focus on celebrity and fandom as features of the melodramatic imagination helps illuminate Russian modernity and provides the groundwork for comparative studies of fin-de-siecle European popular and high culture, selfhood, authenticity, and political theater.

The English courtly masque was a lavish multi-dimensional entertainment which flourished during the reigns of the first two Stuarts. It involves some of the greatest artists of early 17th-century England. Although it has received considerable attenton from literary scholars, this is the first study of its music. By combining documentary, textual, and musical evidence, Peter Walls builds up a picture of the form and function of music in the masque, from the ascension of James I until the beginning of the civil war.

Consisting of six studies that present hermeneutical analyses of Wagnerian dramas, this book discusses Wagner's mature single dramas from Hollander to Parsifal with reference to the concept of Romantic irony and the basic theoretical orientation of post-structuralism. Wagner is best known as a composer of mythological works, but these music-dramas contain basic problems that essentially contradict what is regarded as their mythological or legendary nature. They all self-referentially play out certain critical processes. Focusing on the very issue of interpretation, this work asks how Wagner's dramas use their legendary or mythological raw material in a specifically 19th-century Romantic way to create meaning. It is argued that by means of Romantic irony, internal self-reflection or self-consciousness, each work deconstructs its own mythological or legendary nature. Musicologists with an interest in Wagner's works, and literary scholars who are interested in interdisciplinary applications of literary-critical theory, will appreciate this unique application of literary, theoretical, and critical concepts to the understanding of his music-dramas. This work will also appeal to scholars of German literature and of German cultural history. It discusses Wagner's single dramas from Hollander to Parsifal.

Mates shows the musical stage in all its guises--from burlesque to musical comedy to grand opera--from its beginnings in pre-Revolutionary America to the present day. He deals sensitively with the recurrent aesthetic question of popular versus highbrow art and also looks at critical reactions to popular theatrical forms of musical entertainment. He introduces the reader to various types of theatrical companies, the changing repertory, and the many kinds of musical performers who have animated the stage. Mates focuses on the creative relationships between the different forms of opera, the minstrel show and circus, melodrama and dance, burlesque, revue, vaudeville, and musical comedy.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

Ottenberg synthesizes material from a variety of sources--annals, memoirs, and scholarly sources--and, with them, weaves a coherent narrative of what was performed where, by whom, and what developments took place. Works, companies, and individual singers are discussed to reveal the 19th-century world of performance styles and audience expectations. This is a fascinating look at a relatively unexplored part of American musical and cultural history; the book casts new light on opera in America--its variety, popularity, and appeal to changing audiences throughout the century.

The first comprehensive discography on one of Wagner's music dramas, this volume lists all complete performance recordings, all major selections recorded, and hundreds of individually-recorded excerpts, both vocal, and instrumental, from the earliest acoustic recordings to recent laser discs. Many excerpts have never appeared in discographies or other works on Wagner, and pirate recordings have been identified. Precise information is given as to date and place of recording and record numbers as well as performers, choruses, orchestras, and conductors. Musical incipits introduce each excerpt. The index provides access to more than 230 singers of the principal roles and over 130 conductors. A lengthy introduction provides a lively and provocative commentary on the recordings. Written in Australia where Parsifal has never been fully staged, the discography was researched in major libraries and archives of Europe and the United States as well as old record shops in New York, London, Paris, and Sydney. The result is an important resource for the discographer and record collector, the student of opera and vocal art, and all lovers of Wagner in performance.

Margaret Webster presided over many firsts in the American theater. She was the first woman to direct Shakespearean plays on Broadway, she was one of the founders of the American Repertory Theatre, she was active in the beginning of the Off-Broadway movement, and she wrote an assortment of articles, speeches, memoirs, and autobiographies. This reference provides an overview of her life and a detailed record of her many accomplishments in 20th-century American theater. The volume begins with a biographical essay that discusses her life and career. A chronology then highlights the most significant events in her career. The sections that follow list her many productions for the stage and opera, and provide detailed information about them. A discography is also included, followed by lists of Webster's awards and honors, and a description of the various archives that hold information about her. An extensive annotated bibliography concludes the work.

In January of 1972 the Golden Age of Opera series of the Edward J. Smith Recordings was succeeded by the Unique Opera Records Corporation (UORC) and released two-hundred and eighty numbered releases between 1972 and December, 1977. Smith's final private label, the A.N.N.A. Record Company (ANNA) released seventy-three numbered issues between 1978 and 1982. Interspersed between UORC and ANNA, and spanning the years 1954 to 1981, numerous "special label" issues were released under fugitive names. As a companion to the first volume, EJS: Discography of the Edward J. Smith Recordings "The Golden Age of Opera," 1956-1971, this volume continues where the first left off. The three labels are catalogued in separate sections. Researchers will appreciate the ten indexes provided and the selectively quoted material from Smith's personal correspondence that supplements the text.

Published in the run-up to the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth in 2013, and written by one of the most distinguished Wagner scholars in the world, this will be the Wagner book of the bicentenary. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is one of the most influential - and also one of the most polarizing - composers in the history of music. Over the course of his long career, he produced a stream of spellbinding works that challenged musical convention through their richness and tonal experimentation, ultimately paving the way for modernism. This book presents an in-depth but easy-to-read overview of Wagner's life, work and times. Making use of the very latest scholarship - much of it undertaken by the author himself in connection with his editorship of The Wagner Journal - Millington reassesses received notions about Wagner and his work, demolishing ill-informed opinion in favour of proper critical understanding. It is a radical - and occasionally controversial - reappraisal of this most perplexing of composers. The book considers a whole range of themes, including the composer's original sources of inspiration; his fetish for exotic silks; his relationship with his wife, Cosima, and with his mistress, Mathilde Wesendonck; his anti-semitism; the operas' proto-cinematic nature; and the turbulent legacy both of the Bayreuth Festival and of Wagnerism itself. The volume's arrangement - unique among books on the composer - combines an accessible text, intriguing images and original documents in carefully co-ordinated sections, thus ensuring a consistently fresh approach.

Though studying opera often requires attention to aesthetics, libretti, staging, singers, compositional history, and performance history, the music itself is central. This book examines operatic music by five Italian composers-Rossini, Bellini, Mercadante, Donizetti, and Verdi-and one non-Italian, Meyerbeer, during the period from Rossini's first international successes to Italian unification. Detailed analyses of form, rhythm, melody, and harmony reveal concepts of musical structure different from those usually discussed by music theorists, calling into question the notion of a common practice. Taking an eclectic analytical approach, author William Rothstein uses ideas originating in several centuries, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first, to argue that operatic music can be heard not only as passionate vocality but also in terms of musical forms, pitch structures, and rhythmic patterns-that is, as carefully crafted music worth theoretical attention. Although no single theory accounts for everything, Rothstein's analysis shows how certain recurring principles define a distinctively Italian practice, one that left its mark on the German repertoire more familiar to music theorists.

A regiment of women warriors strides across the battlefield of German culture - on the stage, in the opera house, on the page, and in paintings and prints. These warriors are re-imaginings by men of figures such as the Amazons, the Valkyries, and the biblical killer Judith. They are transgressive and therefore frightening figures who leave their proper female sphere and have to be made safe by being killed, deflowered, or both. This has produced some compelling works of Western culture - Cranach's and Klimt's paintings of Judith, Schiller's Joan of Arc, Hebbel's Judith, Wagner's Brunnhilde, Fritz Lang's Brunhild. Nowadays, representations of the woman warrior are used as a way of thinking about the woman terrorist. Women writers only engage with these imaginings at the end of the 19th century, but from the late 18th century on they begin to imagine fictional cross-dressers going to war in a realistic setting and thus think the unthinkable. What are the roots of these imaginings? And how are they related to Freud's ideas about women's sexuality?

The first full-length treatment of the operatic querelles in eighteenth-century France, placing individual querelles in historical context and tracing common themes of authority, national prestige and the power of music over popular sentiment. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, French cultural life seethed with debates about the proper nature and form of musical expression, particularly in opera. Expressed in a flood of pamphlets, articles, letters and poems as well as in the actual disruption of performances, these so-called querelles were seen at the time as a distinctively French phenomenon and have been mined by scholars since for what they can tell us about French politics and culture in the revolutionary period. This is the first full-length treatment of the entire history of this phenomenon, from its beginnings in the last years of Louis XIV to the 1820s when the new musical challenges of Berlioz and Wagner put an end to this particular form of debate. Arnold analyses the individual querelles, showing how they reflected and played their part in wider political and cultural events. At the same time, hetraces themes common in varying degrees to them all - questions of authority, the issue of national prestige, and the relation of language to music. Where some scholars have characterised these disputes as simply politics by proxy, Arnold paints a more nuanced picture, showing that music itself was taken seriously beyond artistic circles because it was seen as having great, potentially limitless, power over popular sentiment and thus implicitly power to reform society and change the world. R.J. Arnold is an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London

Wagner's Ring, an important phenomenon of the German drama tradition, is situated and examined alongside other major works of the canon. Wagner defines tragedy as a mythological drama. The theoretical foundation of the Ring is a complex dialectic of history and myth. By contrasting the Ring with the dramas of Schiller, Hebbel, Hofmannsthal, and Brecht different facets of Wagner's work are uniquely highlighted beyond theoretical generalizations or broad overviews. This series of comparisons offers fresh insight into the interrelationships of the Ring with the previous German drama tradition, and also investigates its influence on twentieth-century drama and opera. Scholars of German literature and culture will appreciate this innovative interpretation and study of the Ring. New ideas proposed include the suggestions that Schiller's Wallenstein trilogy might have served as a covert source for the Ring and that Ariadne auf Naxos and Mahagonny represent parodies of the Ring. The theory underlying the Ring will attract musicologists and interdisciplinary literary scholars interested in the interrelationship between words and music and literature and opera.

This comprehensive research guide surveys the most significant published materials relating to Giuseppe Verdi. This new edition includes research since the publication of the first edition in 1998.

This literary and critical approach to Wagner's Ring provides an original interpretation of the Ring tetralogy and challenges the standard political analyses of the work. The Ring is examined in the tradition of the Romantic drama as a reworking of Greek tragedy as theoretically expressed in the second part of Oper und Drama. In the Ring, using myth as a metaphor for history presents a paradoxical world. The innertextual reflection that Wotan performs in his monologue causes the Ring to self-destruct from within. He actually dismantles or deconstructs the text of the Ring. The doom of the gods happens because the Ring has undermined, unworked, and dismantled its system of signification. Studies of Wagner's theoretical writings and music-dramas have not emphasized aspects of his works within the tradition of German drama and aesthetic theory. This discussion of Wagner's revision of Greek tragedy in Oper und Drama, supplemented by an original interpretation of the Ring operas, places Wagner's writings within these realms. As a fresh interpretation of the Ring tetralogy, this valuable analysis will appeal to Wagner scholars and musicologists interested in Wagner's operas as well as to German cultural history and literary scholars.

Benjamin Britten's works for the stage developed from the traditional late nineteenth-century romantic opera structure of Peter Grimes to the experimental format of the church parables and of Death in Venice, his last opera. At the core of this development seems to have been Britten's intention to use the stage as a pulpit to express his philosophical views. This book explores an assessment of how these influenced his creative choices, mainly examining the composer's own writings, from his early involvement with left wing activism during the Thirties through to his more spiritually oriented objectives after the war, and offers alternative readings of two of Britten's most controversial works for the stage, The Rape of Lucretia and Death in Venice.