Rossini was one of the major innovators in the field of opera. Moise et Pharaon is a score which he revised for Paris ten years after it had been composed for Naples; the result shows the evolution of his taste over a decade - from the neoclassical sublime to spectacular Romantic grand opera. Il barbiere di Siviglia has been a favourite with the public since it opened, and Marco Spada analyses how its stylish comedy has been misunderstood. Other essays throw light on the working conditions of the "opera industry" in Rossini's Italy, on Balzac's delightful novel concerning Moses and on the exceptional challenge of performing this type of music to a high standard. Contents: Rossini: the Serious and the Comic, Philip Gossett; The Composer at Work, John Rosselli; The Roots of a Masterpiece, Marco Spada; A Personal View of Rossini, Ubaldo Gardini; Il barbiere di Siviglia: Libretto by Cesare Sterbini; The Barber of Seville: English version by Edward J. Dent; Balzac, Stendhal and Rossini's 'Moses', Pierluigi Petrobelli; From Sublime to Romantic, Richard Bernas; Moise et Pharaon: Libretto by Victor de Jouy and Louis Balochy; Moses: English translation by John and Nell Moody

It used to be thought that Verdi miscalculated with this attempt at a "grand opera" in the French style. This guide demonstrates that Don Carlos was - and remains - an extraordinary achievement in melding two opposing visions of opera: the spectacular public aspect of the French tradition with the dramatic concision of the Italian. And because of the variety of versions which Verdi sanctioned, this debate is open-ended. Contents: A Grand Opera with a Difference, Julian Budden; Off the Beaten Track, Gilles de Van; "A Family Portrait in a Royal Household": 'Don Carlos' from Schiller to Verdi, F.J. Lamport; Stendhal's 'Don Carlos': "The most moving opera ever written", by Nicholas Cronk; Don Carlos: Grand Opera in Five Acts by Joseph Mery and Camille du Locle; Don Carlo: Italian translation by Achille de Lauzieres and Angelo Zanardini with additional material translated by Piero Faggioni; Don Carlos: English translation by Andrew Porter; Introduction by Jennifer Batchelor

What can explain Wagner's obsession with Tannhauser, which he first conceived in 1845 and still considered unfinished at his death in 1883? Describing of the struggle of a man torn between erotic love and spiritual fulfilment, the opera contains the kernels of all his later works: man's need for love and artistic satisfaction, his desire for an existence beyond death, the operation of memory and the nature of madness. The essays in this volume examine the legends which Wagner chose to weave into his text, while Carolyn Abbate also considers the effect of his many revisions upon the score, pointing out that the initial idea already involved a contrast of musical language to focus the conflict. Contents: 'Tannhauser' - an Obsession, Mike Ashman; Tanhusaere, Danheuser and Tannhauser, Stewart Spencer; Wagner's Most Medieval Opera, Timothy McFarland; Orpheus and the Underworld: The Music of Wagner's 'Tannhauser', Carolyn Abbate; Tannhauser: Poem by Richard Wagner; Tannhauser: English translation by Rodney Blumer

Mozart's Don Giovanni is an operatic masterpiece full of iconic and mythical tensions that still resonate today. The work redefines the terms of power, seduction, and morality, and the resulting conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment and romanticism. The Don Giovanni Moment is the first book to examine the aesthetic and moral legacy of Mozart's opera in the literature, philosophy, and culture of the nineteenth century. The prominent scholars in this collection address the opera's impact on the philosophical visions of Kierkegaard, Goethe, and Williams and its influence on the literary and dramatic works of Pushkin, Hoffmann, Morike, Byron, Wagner, Strauss, and Shaw. Through a close and careful analysis of Don Giovanni's literary and philosophical reception and its many appropriations, rewritings, and retellings, these contributors treat the opera as a vantage point from which theory and philosophy can reconsider romanticism's central themes. As lively and passionate as the opera itself, these essays continue the spirited debate over the meaning and character of Don Giovanni and its powerful legacy. Together they prove that Mozart's brilliant artistic achievement is as potent and relevant today as when it was first performed two centuries ago.

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.

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.

Through a deft compilation of primary sources letters, memoirs, and personal accounts from composers, librettists, and performers Michael Rose re-creates for his readers the circumstances that gave rise to fifteen operatic milestones. From Monteverdi and Mozart to Puccini and Berg, each chapter focuses on a well-known opera and tells the story that lies behind its creation.

Rather than retreading familiar ground with pages of historical and musical analysis, Rose places each opera firmly in the context of the composer s life and provides an engaging text in which the varied and colorful personalities involved are seen to discuss, comment, and contribute in one way or another to the progress of its composition. The reader will find Mozart with a new and flamboyant librettist tackling the risky enterprise of Le Nozze di Figaro; Wagner confessing his hidden love for the woman who inspires him as he creates the passionate drama of Tristan und Isolde; Verdi deep in Shakespearian discussion with Boito as they remodel the tragedy of Otello; and Debussy coming almost literally to blows with Maeterlinck over the soprano to take the leading role in Pelleas et Melisande.

Throughout, Rose offers his readers the most direct possible link to events that have often become twisted or obscured by operatic myth, and in so doing he captures the bizarre interactions of chance, genius, practical necessity, and dogged determination that accompanied the making of some of opera s most enduring masterpieces."

A mesmerizing figure in concert, Charles Munch was celebrated for his electrifying public performances. He was a pioneer in many arenas of classical music-establishing Berlioz in the canon, perfecting the orchestral work of Debussy and Ravel, and leading the world to Roussel, Honegger, and Dutilleux. A pivotal figure, his accomplishments put him on a par with Arturo Toscanini and Leonard Bernstein. In Charles Munch, D. Kern Holoman provides the first full biography of this giant of twentieth-century music, tracing his dramatic survival in occupied Paris, his triumphant arrival at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and his later years, when he was a leading cultural figure in the United States, a man known and admired by Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. He turned to conducting only in middle age, after two decades as a violinist and concertmaster, a background which gave him special insight into the relationship between conductor and orchestra. At the podium, his bond with his musicians unleashed something in them and in himself. "A certain magic took wing that amounts to the very essence of music in concert," the author writes, as if "public performance loosed the facets of character and artistry and poetry otherwise muffled by his timidity and simple disinclination to say much." In concert, Munch was arresting, even seductive, sweeping his baton in an enormous arch from above his head down to his knee. Yet as Holoman shows, he remained a lonely, even sad figure, a widower with no children, a man who fled admirers and avoided reporters. With groundbreaking research and sensitive, lyrical writing, Charles Munch penetrates the enigma to capture this elusive musical titan.

In this innovative book, Gundula Kreuzer argues for the foundational role of technologies in the conception, production, and study of nineteenth-century opera. She shows how composers increasingly incorporated novel audiovisual effects in their works and how the uses and meanings of the required apparatuses changed through the twentieth century, sometimes still resonating in stagings, performance art, and popular culture today. Focusing on devices (which she dubs "Wagnerian technologies") intended to amalgamate opera's various media while veiling their mechanics, Kreuzer offers a practical counternarrative to Wagner's idealist theories of total illusionism. At the same time, Curtain, Gong, Steam's multifaceted exploration of the three titular technologies repositions Wagner as catalyst more than inventor in the history of operatic production. With its broad chronological and geographical scope, this book deepens our understanding of the material and mechanical conditions of historical operatic practice as well as of individual works, both well known and obscure.

AEneas i Carthago von Joseph Martin Kraus bildete das umfangreichste und langwierigste Opernprojekt am Hofe des schwedischen Koenigs Gustav III. Das Libretto verfasste der Dichter Johan Henrik Kellgren nach einem Entwurf des Koenigs. Etwa ein Jahrzehnt, von 1781 bis 1792, wurde an dem opulenten Werk gearbeitet, ohne dass es zu einer Auffuhrung gekommen ware. Das permanente Scheitern erweist sich freilich aus Sicht der heutigen Forschung als Glucksfall, da die reichhaltig uberlieferten Quellen Entstehung und Entwicklung der Oper anschaulich dokumentieren. Jens Dufner untersucht die dramaturgische und musikalische Umsetzung des Aeneas-Stoffes am schwedischen Hof und analysiert anhand der Genese von Libretto und Musik die komplexen Rahmenbedingungen der "gustavianischen Oper".

Amazonen, die Kriegerinnen aus der antiken Mythologie, sind seit Jahrhunderten Gegenstand der Literatur. Jennifer Villarama untersucht erstmalig vertiefend die Rezeption und literarische Bearbeitung des Amazonen-Stoffes im deutschsprachigen Raum der Fruhen Neuzeit. Sie analysiert, aus welchen Grunden auf bestimmte Amazonen-Mythen zuruckgegriffen wurde und wie zeitgenoessische Debatten um die weibliche Regierungsfahigkeit oder die Beschreibung ferner Lander die Konzeption der Amazone in der fruhneuzeitlichen Hofkultur beeinflusst haben. Das kulturhistorisch und interdisziplinar ausgerichtete Buch zeigt am Beispiel von Romanen, Opernlibretti und Sprechdramen, wie vielschichtig die Figur der Amazone seit dem ausgehenden 17. Jahrhundert funktionalisiert wurde.

Thema des Buches ist Kundry, die weibliche Hauptfigur in Richard Wagners Spatwerk Parsifal (1882) und eine singulare Gestalt der Operngeschichte. Als Grenzgangerin und in sich Zerrissene findet sie - zwischen Schrei, Lachen und Verstummen - zu verstoerend neuen Artikulationsformen an den Randern des Sagbaren. Ziel der Autorin ist es, das Vielgestaltige, stets wieder Beunruhigende der Kundry-Figur aus verschiedenen Perspektiven zu beleuchten, ihre Vorbilder zu erhellen, die in mythische Fernen zuruckweisen, sowie ihre Fortschreibungen in der verschlungenen Rezeptions- und Inszenierungsgeschichte des Werkes zu erkunden. Dank der ihr innewohnenden Dynamik wird Kundry zum geistesgeschichtlichen Paradigma: zu einer Schlussel- und Schwellenfigur zwischen Romantik und anbrechender Moderne.

Singing in Signs: New Semiotic Explorations of Opera offers a bold and refreshing assessment of the state of opera study as seen through the lens of semiotics. At its core, the volume responds to Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker's Analyzing Opera, utilizing a semiotic framework to embrace opera on its own terms and engage all of its constituent elements in interpretation. Chapters in this collection resurrect the larger sense of serious operatic study as a multi-faceted, interpretive discipline, no longer in isolation. Contributors pay particular attention to the musical, dramatic, cultural, and performative in opera and how these modes can create an intertext that informs interpretation. Combining traditional and emerging methodologies, Singing in Signs engages composer-constructed and work-specific music-semiotic systems, broader socio-cultural music codes, and narrative strategies, with implications for performance and staging practices today.

Gegenstand dieser Studie sind die Auswirkungen der Franzoesischen Revolution auf die Oper des 19. Jahrhunderts. Unter Berucksichtigung der Oper der franzoesischen Revolutionszeit, der neapolitanischen Oper unter franzoesischer Herrschaft und der historischen Opern Rossinis fur Paris wird die Grand opera als Produkt eines Austauschprozesses zwischen Pariser Inszenierungstraditionen und italienischer musikalischer Formgebung interpretiert. Anhand neu aufgefundener Quellen lasst diese Studie eine zentrale Epoche der Operngeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts in einem neuen Licht erscheinen, indem die haufig aggressive Dramaturgie der Grand opera wie auch des italienischen Melodramma des Risorgimento als Konsequenz der Schreckenserfahrungen der Franzoesischen Revolution gedeutet wird.

Sounding American: Hollywood, Opera, and Jazz tells the story of the interaction between musical form, film technology, and ideas about race, ethnicity, and the nation during the American cinema's conversion to sound. Contrary to most accepted narratives about the conversion, which tend to explain the competition between the Hollywood studios' film sound technologies in qualitative and economic terms, this book argues that the battle between disc and film sound was waged primarily in an aesthetic realm. Opera and jazz in particular, though long neglected in studies of the film score, were extremely important in defining the scope of the American soundtrack, not only during the conversion, but also once sound had been standardized. Examining studio advertisements, screenplays, scores, and the films themselves, the book concentrates on the interactions between musical form and film technology, arguing that each of the major studios appropriated opera and jazz in a unique way in order to construct its own version of an ideal American voice. The book's central question asks what the synthesis of opera and jazz during the conversion reveals about the stylistic and ideological norms of classical Hollywood cinema and the racial, ethnic, gendered, and socially stratified spaces of American musical production. Unlike much of the scholarship on film music, which gravitates toward feature film scores, Sounding American concentrates on the musical shorts of the late 1920s, showing how their representations of the stage, conservatory, ballroom, and nightclub reflected what opera and jazz meant for particular groups of Americans and demonstrating how the cinema helped to shape the racial, ethnic, and national identities attached to this music. Traditional histories of Hollywood film music have tended to concentrate on the unity of the score, a model that assumes a passive spectator. Sounding American claims that the classical Hollywood film is essentially an illustrated jazz-opera with a musical structure that encourages an active form of listening and viewing in order to make sense of what is ultimately a fragmentary text.

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.

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).

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.

Selected as one of the Best Music Books of 2010 by The Independent, here is a wonderful collection of 20 wide-ranging interviews with the preeminent opera singers, conductors, and directors working on and behind the stage today. Joshua Jampol invites opera-lovers to listen in as performers speak in frank terms about their strengths and weaknesses, conductors discuss the state of contemporary opera, and directors talk through the complexities involved in staging a successful production. Jampol has unprecedented access and the table of contents reads like a "who's who" of the global opera world, featuring Fleming, Domingo, Ramey, Villazon, Dessay, Conlon, Salonen, Nagano, Boulez, Carsen, Chereau, and more. Each interview highlights a distinctive voice speaking about his or her career path, first break, colleagues, major influences, audiences, critics, and all the diverse professions making up the emotional and extravagant world of the lyric arts. Jampol brings immense knowledge and a wonderful flair to these conversations, allowing his subjects to follow their thoughts wherever they lead, and revealing in the process a more intimate, reflective side of this constellation of operatic stars.

'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.

A team of scholars and writers examines important Romantic operas and traces the origins and development of a style created during an increasingly technical age. The volume analyzes grand operas by Rossini, Auber, Meyerbeer and Halévy and discusses grand opera in Russia and Germany, and the Czechoslovakian territories, Italy, Britain and the Americas. The volume includes an essay by the renowned opera director David Pountney.

Since its beginnings, opera has depended on recognition as a central aspect of both plot and theme. Though a standard feature of opera, recognition - a moment of new awareness that brings about a crucial reversal in the action - has been largely neglected in opera studies. In Recognition in Mozart's Operas, musicologist Jessica Waldoff draws on a broad base of critical thought on recognition from Aristotle to Terence Cave to explore the essential role it plays in Mozart's operas. The result is a fresh approach to the familiar question of opera as drama and a persuasive new reading of Mozart's operas.

A characteristic feature of Wagnerian and post-Wagnerian opera is the tendency to link scenes with numerous and often surprisingly lengthy orchestral interludes, frequently performed with the curtain closed. Often taken for granted or treated as a filler by audiences and critics, these interludes can take on very prominent roles, representing dream sequences, journeys and sexual encounters. Combining studies of individual musical texts with an investigation of the critical discourse surrounding the operas, Christopher Morris investigates the implications of these important but strangely overlooked passages.

Composer, pianist, and critic Claude Debussy's musical aesthetic represents the single most powerful influence on international musical developments during the long fin de siecle period. The development of Debussy's musical language and style was affected by the international political pressures of his time, beginning with the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and the rise of the new Republic in France, and was also related to the contemporary philosophical conceptualization of what constituted art. The Debussy idiom exemplifies the ways in which various disciplines - musical, literary, artistic, philosophical, and psychological - can be incorporated into a single, highly-integrated artistic conception. Rethinking Debussy draws together separate areas of Debussy research into a lucid perspective that reveals the full significance of the composer's music and thought in relation to the broader cultural, intellectual, and artistic issues of the twentieth century. Ranging from new biographical information to detailed interpretations of Debussy's music, the volume offers significant multidisciplinary insight into Debussy's music and musical life, as well as the composer's influence on the artistic developments that followed. Chapters include: "Russian Imprints in Debussy's Piano Music"; "Music as Encoder of the Unconscious in Pelleas et Melisande"; "An Artist High and Low, or Debussy and Money"; "Debussy's Ideal Pelleas and the Limits of Authorial Intent"; "Debussy in Daleville: Toward Early Modernist Hearing in the United States"; and more. Rethinking Debussy will appeal to students and scholars of French music, opera, and modernism, and literary and French studies scholars, particularly concerned with Symbolism and theatre. General readers will be drawn to the book as well, particularly to chapters focusing on Debussy's finances, dramatic works, and reception.

Those whose thoughts of musical theatre are dominated by the Broadway musical will find this book a revelation. From the 1850s to the early 1930s, when urban theatres sought to mount glamorous musical entertainment, it was to operetta that they turned. It was a form of musical theatre that crossed national borders with ease and was adored by audiences around the world. This collection of essays by an array of international scholars examines the key figures in operetta in many different countries. It offers a critical and historical study of the widespread production of operetta and of the enthusiasm with which it was welcomed. Furthermore, it challenges nationalistic views of music and approaches operetta as a cosmopolitan genre. This Cambridge Companion contributes to a widening appreciation of the music of operetta and a deepening knowledge of the cultural importance of operetta around the world.