Reflecting a wide variety of approaches to eighteenth-century opera, this Companion brings together leading international experts in the field to provide a valuable reference source. Viewing opera as a complex and fascinating form of art and social ritual, rather than reducing it simply to music and text analysis, individual essays investigate aspects such as audiences, architecture of the theaters, marketing, acting style, and the politics and strategy of representing class and gender. Overall, the volume provides a synthesis of well established knowledge, reflects recent research on eighteenth-century opera, and stimulates further research. The reader is encouraged to view opera as a cultural phenomenon that can reveal aspects of our culture, both past and present. Eighteenth-century opera is experiencing continuing critical and popular success through innovative and provoking productions world-wide, and this Companion will appeal to opera goers as well as to students and teachers of this key topic.

In 1847 Wagner read the Oresteian trilogy, the finest surviving work by Aeschylus. The impact on him of Aeschylus' work, at this crucial time in his development, changed Wagner's entire vision of his own role as an artist. As he wrote in his autobiography: 'I could actually see the Oresteia with my mind's eye, as though it were actually being performed and its effect on me was indescribable. ... My ideas about the significance of drama and of the theatre were, without a doubt, moulded by these impressions ...' Wagner and Aeschylus examines the role that the Oresteia played in the shaping of the Ring, showing how Aeschylus' masterpiece influenced Wagner's at many levels, from the basic idea of using mythical material for a cycle of 'stage festival dramas' right through to profound aspects of subject matter and form and Wagner's conception of the role of music in opera. Two introductory chapters look at the overall relationship between Wagner and Aeschylus; there follows an analysis of the four dramas of the Ring: the points of affinity and the differences, between Wagner's cycle and Aeschylus' are discussed in detail, an approach which throws fresh light on the form and meaning of the Ring.

This edited volume brings together academic specialists writing on the multi-media operatic form from a range of disciplines: comparative literature, history, sociology, and philosophy. The presence in the volume's title of Pierre Bourdieu, the leading cultural sociologist of the late twentieth century, signals the editors' intention to synthesise advances in social science with advances in musicological and other scholarship on opera. Through a focus on opera in Italy and France, the contributors to the volume draw on their respective disciplines both to expand our knowledge of opera's history and to demonstrate the kinds of contributions that stand to be made by different disciplines to the study of opera. The volume is divided into three sections, each of which is preceded by a concise and informative introduction explaining how the chapters in that section contribute to our understanding of opera.

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.

Patrick Barbier's entertaining and authoritative book is the first full study of the subject in the context of the baroque period. Covering the lives of more than sixty singers from the end of the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, he blends history and anecdote as he examines their social origins and backgrounds, their training and debuts, their brilliant careers their relationship with society and the Church, and their decline and death. The castrati became a legend that still fascinates us today. Thousands flocked to hear and see these singing hybrids - part man, part woman, part child - who portrayed virile heroes on the operatic stage, their soprano or contralto voices weirdly at variance with their clothes and bearing. The sole surviving scratchy recording tells us little of the extraordinary effect of those voices on their audiences - thrilling, unlike any sound produced by the normal human voice. Illustrated with photographs and engravings, the book ranges from the glories of patronage and adulation to the darker side of a fashion that exploited the sons of poor families, denied them their manhood and left them, when they were old, to decline into poverty and loneliness. It is a story that will intrigue opera-lovers and general readers alike, superbly told by a writer who has researched his subject with the thoroughness of a true enthusiast.

This book presents Wagner's view of how the Ring should be performed. He requested Heinrich Porges, a member of his circle, to 'follow all my rehearsals very closely and note down everything I say, even the smallest details, about the interpretation and performance, so that a tradition goes down in writing'. In the opinion of the eminent Wagner scholar, Curt von Westernhagen, Porges conscientious record shows 'amazing insight and perception' since what distinguishes it is his 'ability to always locate the endless detail of Wagner's instructions in an overall intellectual context'. The book is therefore required reading not only for conductors, producers, instrumentalists and singers but also for musicologists and critics. In addition it is a fascinating read for anyone who knows and loves the Ring since it takes the form of a blow-by-blow commentary on the stage action as it unfolds. The writing has vitality and flow and one is caught up in the spirit of the thing as Wagner felt it. It provides a re-experience of the Ring through his eyes.

This book is concerned not so much with the 'prima donna' as with prime donne: a group of working artists (sometimes famous but more often relatively unknown and now long forgotten) and the circumstances of their professional lives. It attempts to locate these singers within a broader history, including not only the specificities of operatic stage practice but the life beyond the opera house - the social, cultural and political framing that shaped individual experience, artistic endeavour and audience reception. Rutherford addresses questions such as the multiple discourses on the image of the singer and their impact on the changing profile of the professional artist from figlia dell'arte at the beginning of the era to middle-class woman at the end; the aspect of the 'stage mother' and patronage; issues of vocal training and tuition; professional life in the operatic market-place; and performance (both vocal and dramatic) conventions and practices.

Memorable melodies and fanciful worlds - the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan remain as popular today as when they were first performed. This Companion provides a timely guide to the history and development of the collaboration between the two men, including a fresh examination of the many myths and half-truths surrounding their relationship. Written by an international team of specialists, the volume features a personal account from film director Mike Leigh on his connection with the Savoy Operas and the creation of his film Topsy-Turvy. Starting with the early history of the operatic stage in Britain, the Companion places the operas in their theatrical and musical context, investigating the amateur performing tradition, providing new perspectives on the famous patter songs and analysing their dramatic and operatic potential. Perfect for enthusiasts, performers and students of Gilbert and Sullivan's enduring work, the book examines their legacy and looks forward to the future.

Reflecting a wide variety of approaches to eighteenth-century opera, this Companion brings together leading international experts in the field to provide a valuable reference source. Viewing opera as a complex and fascinating form of art and social ritual, rather than reducing it simply to music and text analysis, individual essays investigate aspects such as audiences, architecture of the theaters, marketing, acting style, and the politics and strategy of representing class and gender. Overall, the volume provides a synthesis of well established knowledge, reflects recent research on eighteenth-century opera, and stimulates further research. The reader is encouraged to view opera as a cultural phenomenon that can reveal aspects of our culture, both past and present. Eighteenth-century opera is experiencing continuing critical and popular success through innovative and provoking productions world-wide, and this Companion will appeal to opera goers as well as to students and teachers of this key topic.

Memorable melodies and fanciful worlds - the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan remain as popular today as when they were first performed. This Companion provides a timely guide to the history and development of the collaboration between the two men, including a fresh examination of the many myths and half-truths surrounding their relationship. Written by an international team of specialists, the volume features a personal account from film director Mike Leigh on his connection with the Savoy Operas and the creation of his film Topsy-Turvy. Starting with the early history of the operatic stage in Britain, the Companion places the operas in their theatrical and musical context, investigating the amateur performing tradition, providing new perspectives on the famous patter songs and analysing their dramatic and operatic potential. Perfect for enthusiasts, performers and students of Gilbert and Sullivan's enduring work, the book examines their legacy and looks forward to the future.

In this unusual study, Emanuele Senici explores the connection between landscape and gender in Italian opera through the emblematic figure of the Alpine virgin. In the nineteenth century, operas portraying an emphatically virginal heroine, a woman defined by her virginity, were often set in the mountains, most frequently the Alps. The clarity of the sky, the whiteness of the snow and the purity of the air were associated with the 'innocence' of the female protagonist. Senici discusses a number of works particularly relevant to the origins, transformations and meanings of this conventional association including Bellini's La sonnambula (1831), Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix (1842), Verdi's Luisa Miller (1849), and Puccini's La fanciulla del West (1910). This convention presents an unusual point of view - a theme rather than a composer, a librettist, a singer or a genre - from which to observe Italian opera 'at work' over a century.

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

Scientific thinking has long been linked to music theory and instrument making, yet the profound and often surprising intersections between the sciences and opera during the long nineteenth century are here explored for the first time. These touch on a wide variety of topics, including vocal physiology, theories of listening and sensory communication, technologies of theatrical machinery and discourses of biological degeneration. Taken together, the chapters reveal an intertwined cultural history that extends from backstage hydraulics to drawing-room hypnotism, and from laryngoscopy to theatrical aeronautics. Situated at the intersection of opera studies and the history of science, the book therefore offers a novel and illuminating set of case studies, of a kind that will appeal to historians of both science and opera, and of European culture more generally from the French Revolution to the end of the Victorian period.

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 book is the first study of the development of German opera in northern Germany from the first comic operas of Johann Adam Hiller at Leipzig in 1766 to the end of the century. Intellectually and historically, the period witnessed the flowering of the German stage and German letters. German opera was an inseparable part of the new aspirations of the German stage during the Enlightenment. Thomas Bauman stresses the vital role of the mixed repertories of German companies in effecting changes in the genre. North German opera began as a basically literary genre. It then changed dramatically in response to two major trends: first, the contact with the serious elements and styles of tragedy and secondly, the triumph on German stages of Italian, French, and Viennese comic operas. The book is generously illustrated with music examples. There is also a complete catalogue of texts of North German opera: those composed for performance and unset published librettos both cross-indexed under the librettists' names.

From its conception in 1857 to its first performances in 1882, Parsifal represented the culmination of the themes that preoccupied Wagner during the latter part of his life. This guide includes a series of articles on Wagner's profound and complex opera, which the composer preferred to call a Buhnen weihfestspiel - a 'Stage Consecration Festival Play'. Dieter Borchmeyer discusses the mythological foundations of Parsifal and its relation to Wagner's earlier works. Barry Emslie's thought-provoking piece explores the 'virtues of sin' in Wagner's last opera. Robin Holloway provides a study of Parsifal's musical motifs, followed by Carolyn Abbate's article, which examines the relation between music and drama in the opera. Gerd Rienacker contributes an essay on the dramaturgy, and analyses some of the major scenes. Finally, Mike Ashman writes about Parsifal on the stage. The present edition contains a literal translation of the libretto opposite the original German text, a number of photographs covering a wide chronology to the present day, a comprehensive thematic guide, a bibliography and discography, as well as DVD and website guides. It will prove an essential companion for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Wagner's final masterpiece. English National Opera, based at the London Coliseum, is a creative and vibrant home for compelling, high quality theatrical productions created by imaginative stage directors and designers from across the arts, performed by leading British and international artists.

The first comprehensive study of Verdi's perennially popular opera Il trovatore, written by one of the world's great Verdi authorities. No full-length study has ever been written on Il trovatore, in his day Verdi's most successful stage work. This book by one of the world's great Verdi authorities fills that gap, providing a comprehensive look at the opera,from its genesis and structure to its early performance history and critical reception. Starting with the background of the opera, the volume traces the origins of the original play by Antonio Garcia Gutierrez, El trovador, and offers a new, more credible source for the drama. In addition, it examines the evolution of the libretto, the music, and the arrangement of the narrative, revealing innovative musical and dramatic features not seenby other critics. The book also includes a discussion of contemporary reviews and a section on some of the important performers in the twentieth century (for example, Toscanini and Caruso), as well as a consideration of several ofthe more unusual stagings of the work mounted during the final decades of the century. With these and other explorations, Martin Chusid offers a thorough survey of Verdi's Il trovatore and in the process deepens and enhances our encounter with one of the mainstays of the operatic reparatory. Martin Chusid is Professor Emeritus of Music, New York University, and founding director of the American Institute for Verdi Studies.

A detailed investigation of the reception and cultural contexts of Puccini's music, this book offers a fresh view of this historically important but frequently overlooked composer. Wilson's study explores the ways in which Puccini's music and persona were held up as both the antidote to and the embodiment of the decadence widely felt to be afflicting late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy, a nation which although politically unified remained culturally divided. The book focuses upon two central, related questions that were debated throughout Puccini's career: his status as a national or international composer, and his status as a traditionalist or modernist. In addition, Wilson examines how Puccini's operas became caught up in a wide range of extra-musical controversies concerning such issues as gender and class. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of both the history of opera and of the wider artistic and intellectual life of turn-of-the-century Italy.

This study recognizes the broad impact of opera in early-modern French culture. Downing A. Thomas considers the use of operatic spectacle and music by Louis XIV as a vehicle for absolutism; the resistance of music to the aesthetic and political agendas of the time; and the long-term development of opera in eighteenth-century humanist culture. He argues that French opera moved away from the politics of the absolute monarchy in which it originated to address Enlightenment concerns with sensibility and feeling. The book combines close readings of significant seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century operatic works, circumstantial writings and theoretical works on theatre and opera, together with a measure of reception history. Thomas examines key works by Lully, Rameau and Charpentier, among others, and extends his reach from the late seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth.

In Robert Ward's The Crucible: Creating an American Musical Nationalism, Robert Paul Kolt explores the life of the American composer Robert Ward through an examination of his most popular and enduring work, The Crucible. Focusing on the musical-linguistic relationships within the opera, Kolt demonstrates Ward's unique synthesis of text and music, one that lends itself to the perception of American musical nationalism. This book contains the most thorough and in-depth biography of Ward yet in print. Based on interviews with the composer, Kolt presents new information about Ward's life and career, focusing on his opera and examining the formation and construction of The Crucible's libretto and score, in turn offering new insights into the process of composing an opera. Kolt observes how the libretto's linguistic aspects helped Ward formulate the opera's melodic and rhythmic musical material. A detailed and unique analysis of the opera, particularly the musical and linguistic techniques Ward employed, demonstrates how these techniques lend themselves to the opera's reception as a work of American musical nationalism. The book also provides yet unpublished information on Arthur Miller's play, examining how it came to be written and soon after became the basis for Ward's work. Several appendixes provide a fuller picture, including a deleted scene from Miller's play and Ward's version of the scene, a chronological overview of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, and illustrations and photo reproductions from Ward's manuscript.

This 2004 book is a full-length, scholarly study of what is widely regarded as Mozart's most enigmatic opera and Lorenzo Da Ponte's most erudite text. Against the long-standing judgement that the opera uses a misguided confidence in reason to traduce feeling, Goehring's study shows how Cosi affirms comedy's regenerative powers and its capacity to grant access to modes of sympathy and understanding that are otherwise inaccessible. In making this argument, the book surveys a rich literary, operatic and intellectual territory. It offers fresh perspective on the relationships between text and tone in the opera, on the tension between comedy and philosophy and its representation in stage works and on the pastoral mode which the opera uses in subtle ways. Throughout, Goehring's argument is sustained by close readings of primary sources, many of them little known, and is richly illustrated with musical examples.

In this valuable collection of essays, published to coincide with the tercentenary of Handel's birth, Reinhard Strohm examines the relationship between Handel's great operas and the earlier European Baroque tradition, focusing on the Italian school, to which they are so crucially indebted. Handel's immediate heritage included the figures of Scarlatti, Gasparini and Vivaldi; this book establishes that context, concentrating on contemporary operatic practice, and proceeds to analyse three of Handel's best-known works. It shows how they elaborate and develop the style and method of the Italian operatic theatre, embracing previous traditions and synthesizing them with a new and exciting accentuation.

Sarah Caldwell: The First Woman of Opera is the first biography of this significant musician, conductor, and director and documents Ms. Caldwell's genius as an indomitable force for opera in America. Caldwell mounted many U.S. premieres and brought rare editions of standard works to her audiences. At the height of her career, she raised her baton over four of the top five orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and conducted orchestras in such cities as Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Antonio, Atlanta, Mexico City, and Puerto Rico. She conducted ensembles in Canada, Sweden, South Africa, and Russia; was a musical director for Wolf Trap; and was the first woman to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera. She founded the renowned Opera Company of Boston, as well as the outreach effort Opera New England and a nation-wide touring enterprise, the American National Opera Company. Caldwell's undeniable zeal was evident in whatever she undertook, and her accomplishments invite reflection, showing what an opera company could and should be in America. Daniel Kessler presents Ms. Caldwell's life in flashbacks and explores her 1978 landmark production of Gaetano Donizetti's Don Pasquale, which serves as a prime example of how she engaged with her creative Muse. He describes her personal and professional life, including her experience with the impresario Boris Goldovsky, her ability to create her own brand of "stage wizardry," and her moments of overreaching and hubris, such as her unorthodox fundraising methods and her experience with Imelda Marcos. Complete with several illustrations, a bibliography, an index, and the comprehensive annals of her three opera companies, Sarah Caldwell demonstrates what one person of genius, imagination, and passion can accomplish single-handedly.

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 text illustrates Verdi's gradual mastery of the challenges he faced, and their historical significance.

In this third edition of the classic Verdi, renowned authority Julian Budden offers a comprehensive overview of Verdi the man and the artist, tracing his ascent from humble beginnings to the status of a cultural patriarch of the new Italy, whose cause he had done much to promote, and demonstrating the gradual enlargement over the years of his artistic vision. This concise study is an accessible, insightful, and engaging summation of Verdi scholarship, acquainting the non-specialist with the personal details Verdi's life, with the operatic world in which he worked, and with his political ideas, his intellectual vision, and his powerful means of communicating them through his music. In his survey of the music itself, Budden emphasizes the unique character of each work as well as the developing sophistication of Verdi's style. He covers all of the operas, the late religious works, the songs, and the string quartet. A glossary explains even the most obscure operatic terms current in Verdi's time.