Covering over 1500 singers from the birth of opera to the present day, this marvelous volume will be an essential resource for all serious opera lovers and an indispensable companion to the enormously successful Grove Book of Operas.
The most comprehensive guide to opera singers ever produced, this volume offers an alphabetically arranged collection of authoritative biographies that range from Marion Anderson (the first African American to perform at the Met) to Benedict Zak (the classical tenor and close friend and colleague of Mozart). Readers will find fascinating articles on such opera stars as Maria Callas and Enrico Caruso, Ezio Pinza and Fyodor Chaliapin, Lotte Lehmann and Jenny Lind, Lily Pons and Luciano Pavarotti. The profiles offer basic information such as birth date, vocal style, first debut, most memorable roles, and much more. But these articles often go well beyond basic biographical information to offer colorful portraits of the singer's personality and vocal style, plus astute evaluations of their place in operatic history and many other intriguing observations. Many entries also include suggestions for further reading, so that anyone interested in a particular performer can explore their life and career in more depth. In addition, there are indexes of singers by voice type and by opera role premiers. The articles are mostly drawn from the acclaimed Grove Music Online and have been fully revised, and the book is further supplemented by more than 40 specially commissioned articles on contemporary singers.
A superb new guide from the first name in opera reference, The Grove Book of Opera Singers is a lively and authoritative work, beautifully illustrated with color and black-and-white pictures. It is an essential volume--and the perfect gift--for opera lovers everywhere.

(Vocal Collection). For well over a century, the G. Schirmer edition of 24 Italian Songs & Arias of the 17th and 18th Centuries has introduced millions of beginning singers to serious Italian vocal literature. Offered in two accessible keys suitable for all singers, it is likely to be the first publication a voice teacher will ask a first-time student to purchase. The classic Parisotti realizations result in rich, satisfying accompaniments which allow singers pure musical enjoyment. For ease of practice, carefully prepared accompaniments are also recorded on CD by John Keene, a New York-based concert accompanist and vocal coach who has performed throughout the United States for radio and television. Educated at the University of Southern California, Keene has taught accompanying at the university level and collaborated with Gian Carlo Menotti and Thea Musgrave on productions of their operas.

Mit diesem Buch zu Problemen der Operettenubersetzung untersucht die Autorin ein Thema, das in der Wissenschaft nur vereinzelt behandelt wurde. Denn obwohl der Sprachmittler aktiv an der Erschaffung einer zielsprachigen Inszenierung beteiligt ist, wird sein Wirken im Theaterkontext oftmals marginalisiert oder gar ignoriert. Ziel der Autorin ist es, einen ersten Einblick in das Feld der Operettenubersetzung zu geben. Dazu zeigt sie Probleme wie Sangbarkeit, Sprechbarkeit und Auffuhrbarkeit auf und arbeitet mittels Erkenntnissen aus anderen wissenschaftlichen Bereichen Loesungsansatze heraus.

"Libretto-bashing has a distinguished tradition in the blood sport of opera," writes Arthur Groos in the introduction to this broad survey of critical approaches to that much-maligned genre. To examine, and to challenge, the long-standing prejudice against libretti and the scholarly tradition that has, until recently, reiterated it, Groos and Roger Parker have commissioned thirteen stimulating essays by musicologists, literary critics, and historians. Taken as a whole, the volume demonstrates that libretti are now very much within the purview of contemporary humanistic scholarship. Libretti pose questions of intertextuality, transposition of genre, and reception history. They invite a broad spectrum of contemporary reading strategies ranging from the formalistic to the feminist. And as texts for music they raise issues in the relation between the two mediums and their respective traditions. Reading Opera will be of value to anyone with a serious interest in opera and contemporary opera criticism. The essays cover the period from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on works of the later nineteenth century. The contributors are Carolyn Abbate, William Ashbrook, Katherine Bergeron, Caryl Emerson, Nelly Furman, Sander L. Gilman, Arthur Groos, James A. Hepokoski, Jurgen Maehder, Roger Parker, Paul Robinson, Christopher Wintle, and Susan Youens. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Well-known for leading audiences to a new appreciation of Verdi as a subtle and elaborate musical thinker, Pierluigi Petrobelli here turns his attention to the intriguing question of how musical theater works. In this collection of lively, penetrating essays, Petrobelli analyzes specific operas, mainly by Verdi, in terms of historical context, musical organization, and dramaturgical conventions. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Wie der Erstdruck vermerkt, vertonte Robert Schumann im Jahr 1849 die Ballade "Schoen Hedwig" op. 106 "fur Declamation mit Begleitung des Pianoforte". Unter derselben Besetzungsangabe wurden drei Jahre spater die "Ballade von Haideknaben" und "Die Fluchtlinge" op. 122 publiziert. Die Autorin untersucht die zeitgenoessischen positiven AEusserungen zu Schumanns Werken, die in einem Umfeld der grundsatzlichen Ablehnung des Melodrams markant hervortreten. Sie zeigt, wie vor allem die Konzertmelodramen tiefgreifende Einblicke in seine Musik- und Gattungsasthetik ermoeglichen: Mit dem Melodramatischen als Vertonungsstrategie betrat der Komponist - trotz einer uber siebzigjahrigen Gattungstradition - musikalisch neues Terrain.

One of the most original and engaging composers of the twentieth century, Leos Janacek is now regarded as one of its major musical dramatists. His operas have become a regular part of the repertory, but a full understanding of their diverse subjects and backgrounds has been hampered by the lack of source materials in English. John Tyrrell has here selected and translated the chief literary documents relating to the genesis and early performances of each of the composer's nine operas and presented them in the form of a compelling documentary narrative. Janacek was a vigorous letter-writer and kept every letter he received. A vast quantity of material on his life has survived, providing a unique insight into his working methods and attitudes toward his operas. Scrupulously translated and annotated, the sources in this volume have not previously been brought together in this way. Some have appeared in scattered and often inaccessible publications in Czech, and others, such as the sequence of daily letters that Janacek wrote to his wife during the rehearsals for the Prague premiere of Jenufa, or his instructions to his librettist for Fate, have never been published before. The book is complemented by a chronology of Janacek's operas keyed to the numbered documents in each chapter, a bibliography, and a list of sources. Drawing on twenty-five years of work at the Janacek archive in Brno, this work is a classic of music documentary scholarship. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Richard Strauss turned his genius to opera at the turn of the twentieth century, and this guide contains the texts and introductions to his first two masterpieces in what was, for him, a new genre. Despite obvious similarities - both operas consisting of one act, centred upon one female title role - the works are quite different in subject and treatment. Salome, based on Oscar Wilde's notorious play, has a kaleidoscopic range of orchestral colour and a lurid climax. Elektra, derived from the myths of the ancient Greeks and the first collaboration between Strauss and Hofmannsthal, is a study in neurosis, ripe for Jungian comparative analysis. Contents: Richard Strauss and the Unveiling of 'Salome', Paul Banks; Salome: Libretto by Hedwig Lachmann; Salome: English translation by Tom Hammond; Hofmannsthal's 'Elektra': from Drama to Libretto, Kenneth Segar; Elektra and the 'Elektra Complex', Christopher Wintle; Elektra: Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal; Elektra: English translation by Anthony Hose; Strauss's Orchestra in 'Salome' and 'Elektra', Jonathan Burton

From its origins in the 1670s through the French Revolution, serious opera in France was associated with the power of the absolute monarchy, and its ties to the crown remain at the heart of our understanding of this opera tradition (especially its foremost genre, the tragedie en musique). In Opera and the Political Imaginary in Old Regime France, however, Olivia Bloechl reveals another layer of French opera's political theater. The make-believe worlds on stage, she shows, involved not just fantasies of sovereign rule, but also aspects of government. Plot conflicts over public conduct, morality, security, and law thus appear side-by-side with tableaus hailing glorious majesty. What's more, opera's creators dispersed sovereign-like dignity and powers well beyond the genre's larger-than-life rulers and gods, to its lovers, magicians, and artists. This speaks to the genre's distinctive combination of a theological political vocabulary with a concern for mundane human capacities, which is explored here for the first time. By looking at the political relations among opera characters and choruses in recurring scenes of mourning, confession, punishment, and pardoning, we can glimpse a collective political experience underlying, and sometimes working against, ancienregime absolutism. Through this lens, French opera of the period emerges as a deeply conservative, yet also more politically nuanced, genre than previously thought.

The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan provides the complete text of all the Gilbert & Sullivan operas which are still performed today, together with extensive annotations covering 'lost' songs, alterations and additions, obscure allusions, production points, and comments of interest. Each opera has an introduction which places it in its context, and a potted history of performances up to the present. No other book provides such extensive commentary on the texts of the Savoy Opera nor such a source of innocent merriment to fans of the incomparable Victorian duo. For each opera, there is a short introduction describing how the work came to be written, and giving its performance history. The text, including stage directions, is given on the right-hand page, and on the left (keyed in by line numbers) are notes. These give such information as the identity of a real-life person appearing or mentioned as a character, wordings that were different in the original edition (the one sent to the Lord Chamberlain for licensing), changes made for the first American performance, glosses on technical terms (e.g. legal terms), literary references, cross-references to similar items in other Savoy operas, comments from first-night critics, and many other things

In Persephone vereinten zu Beginn der 1930er Jahre mit Andre Gide und Igor Strawinsky zwei der bedeutendsten Kunstschaffenden ihrer Zeit ihr Koennen. Diese Studie zielt daher - neben der Nachzeichnung der Entstehungsgeschichte - auf eine Gegenuberstellung der unterschiedlichen Charaktere, die Darstellung ihrer gedanklichen Nahe auf verschiedenen Ebenen sowie die Offenlegung der gegenseitigen Einflussnahme von Musik und Dichtung im Denken der Kunstler. Wenn auch Theodore Strawinsky der Meinung war, dass die Zusammenarbeit seines Vaters mit Gide es nicht vermochte, zwei Naturen einander naherzubringen, "die ein Abgrund voneinander trennte", muss dennoch festgehalten werden, dass eine UEbereinstimmung ihres Denkens in wesentlichen Punkten vorhanden ist.

During the course of the 17th century, the dramatic arts reached a pinnacle of development in France; but despite the volumes devoted to the literature and theatre of the ancien regime, historians have largely neglected the importance of music and dance. This study defines the musical practices of comedy, tragicomedy, tragedy, and mythological and non-mythological pastoral drama, from the arrival of the first repertory companies in Paris until the establishment of the Comedie-Francaise. The dynamic interaction of the performing arts in primarily spoken theatre, cross-fertilized by ballet de cour and imported Italian opera, gave rise to a set of musical conventions that later informed the pastorale en musique and early French pastoral opera. The performance history of four comedies-ballets by Moliere, Lully, and Charpentier leads to a discussion of the musical and balletic performance practices of Moliere's theatre and the interconnections between Moliere's last comedie-ballet, Le Malade imaginaire, and Lully's first opera, Les Festes de l'Amour et de Bacchus.

Verdi's enduring presence on the opera stages of the world and as a subject for study by scholars in various disciplines has placed him as a central figure within modern culture. His operas, including La traviata, Rigoletto and Aida, are among the most frequently performed worldwide and his popularity from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day is undisputed. The Cambridge Verdi Encyclopedia covers all aspects of Verdi's life, his music and his world. Appendices list Verdi's known works, both published and unpublished, the characters in his operas and the singers who created them, and a chronology of his life. As a starting point for information on specific works, people, places and concepts associated with Verdi, the Encyclopedia reflects the very latest scholarship, presented by an international array of experts and will have a broad appeal for opera lovers, students and scholars.

Die wissenschaftliche Musikpadagogik ist auf vielfaltige Weise mit benachbarten Disziplinen vernetzt. Hinter dem Titel Rollenspiele verbergen sich 28 Grenzgange in den Bereichen Musik und Buhne, Musikpadagogik als Wissenschaft sowie Musik und Popularitat. Die wissenschaftlichen Beitrage dieses Bandes stammen sowohl von Autorinnen und Autoren des Instituts fur Musik und Musikwissenschaft der TU Dortmund als auch von namhaften auswartigen Verfasserinnen und Verfassern. Sie alle bedanken sich damit bei Mechthild von Schoenebeck fur ihr jahrelanges Wirken als Professorin am groessten Schulmusik-Institut des Landes.

For well over two hundred years, Joseph Haydn has been by turns lionized and misrepresented - held up as celebrity, and disparaged as mere forerunner or point of comparison. And yet, unlike many other canonic composers, his music has remained a fixture in the repertoire from his day until ours. What do we need to know now in order to understand Haydn and his music? With over eighty entries focused on ideas and seven longer thematic essays to bring these together, this distinctive and richly illustrated encyclopedia offers a new perspective on Haydn and the many cultural contexts in which he worked and left his indelible mark during the Enlightenment and beyond. Contributions from sixty-seven scholars and performers in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania, capture the vitality of Haydn studies today - its variety of perspectives and methods - and ultimately inspire further exploration of one of western music's most innovative and influential composers.

Purcell's Dido and Aeneas stands as the greatest operatic achievement of seventeenth-century England, and yet, despite its global renown, it remains cloaked in mystery. The date and place of its first performance cannot be fixed with precision, and the absolute accuracy of the surviving scores, which date from almost 100 years after the work was written, cannot be assumed. In this thirtieth-anniversary new edition of her book, Ellen Harris closely examines the many theories that have been proposed for the opera's origin and chronology, considering the opera both as political allegory and as a positive exemplar for young women. Her study explores the work's historical position in the Restoration theater, revealing its roots in seventeenth-century English theatrical and musical traditions, and carefully evaluates the surviving sources for the various readings they offer-of line designations in the text (who sings what), the vocal ranges of the soloists, the use of dance and chorus, and overall layout. It goes on to provide substantive analysis of Purcell's musical declamation and use of ground bass. In tracing the performance history of Dido and Aeneas, Harris presents an in-depth examination of the adaptations made by the Academy of Ancient Music at the end of the eighteenth century based on the surviving manuscripts. She then follows the growing interest in the creation of an "authentic" version in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through published editions and performance reviews, and considers the opera as an important factor in the so-called English Musical Renaissance. To a significant degree, the continuing fascination with Purcell's Dido and Aeneas rests on its apparent mutability, and Harris shows this has been inherent in the opera effectively from its origin.

Abbate and Parker's A History of Opera is the first full new history of opera in sixty years - now in paperback in an updated second edition 'The best single volume ever written on the subject' The Times Literary Supplement Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their scrupulous and provocative retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the means by which it communicates, and its societal role. In a new revision with an expanded examination of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century this book explores the tensions that have sustained opera over 400 years: between words and music, character and singer, inattention and absorption. Abbate and Parker argue that, though the genre's most popular and enduring works were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to transform the viewer with its enduring power.

Emslie's study of Wagner's creativity examines the centrality of love - and its obverse, hate - to the composer's world view. Richard Wagner and the Centrality of Love is a bold book which argues that Wagner's music dramas cannot be understood if treated separately from his essays, his life, the intellectual and artistic climate of his day, and the broader history of Germany. Wagner attempts a range of reconciliations that are radical in content and form and appear to succeed partly because he is in well-nigh complete command of the aesthetic product; not only text and music, but also production practice. Nonetheless, all the reconciliations ultimately break down, but in a manner that is illuminating. This is not a celebration of the seamless work of art, but a radical unpicking of the seemingly seamless. 'Love' is the central organising concept of the whole Wagnerian project. Love - sexual and spiritual, egotistical and charitable, love of the individual and of the race - is the key Wagnerian driving force. And therefore so is hate. Of course Wagner cannot employ love without its opposite, and it is critically significant that his anti-semitism is based upon his view that the Jews are 'loveless'. The book handles Wagner's anti-semitism (andthe ongoing row about it) in a unique way, in that it is shown to be aesthetically and intellectually productive (for him!). This leads to a radical reinterpretation of Wagner's music dramas. BARRY EMSLIE is an independent scholar who lives and teaches in Berlin.

Mozart's comic operas are among the masterworks of Western civilization, and yet the musical environment in which Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte wrote these now-popular operas has received little critical attention. In this richly detailed book, Mary Hunter offers a sweeping, synthetic view of opera buffa in the lively theatrical world of late-eighteenth-century Vienna. Opera buffa (Italian-language comic opera) persistently entertained audiences at a time when Joseph was striving for a German national theater. Hunter attributes opera buffa's success to its ability to provide "sheer" pleasure and hence explores how the genre functioned as entertainment. She argues that opera buffa, like mainstream film today, projects a social world both recognizable and distinct from reality. It raises important issues while containing them in the "merely entertaining" frame of the occasion, as well as presenting them as a series of easily identifiable dramatic and musical conventions.

Exploring nearly eighty comic operas, Hunter shows how the arias and ensembles convey a multifaceted picture of the repertory's social values and habits. In a concluding chapter, she discusses "Cos" fan tutte" as a work profoundly concerned with the conventions of its repertory and with the larger idea of convention itself and reveals the ways Mozart and da Ponte pointedly converse with their immediate contemporaries.

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.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) aimed to be more than just a composer. He set out to redefine opera as a "total work of art" combining the highest aspirations of drama, poetry, the symphony, the visual arts, even religion and philosophy. Equally celebrated and vilified in his own time, Wagner continues to provoke debate today regarding his political legacy as well as his music and aesthetic theories. "Wagner and His World" examines his works in their intellectual and cultural contexts.

Seven original essays investigate such topics as music drama in light of rituals of naming in the composer's works and the politics of genre; the role of leitmotif in Wagner's reception; the urge for extinction in "Tristan und Isolde" as psychology and symbol; Wagner as his own stage director; his conflicted relationship with pianist-composer Franz Liszt; the anti-French satire "Eine Kapitulation" in the context of the Franco-Prussian War; and responses of Jewish writers and musicians to Wagner's anti-Semitism. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Karol Berger, Leon Botstein, Lydia Goehr, Kenneth Hamilton, Katherine Syer, and Christian Thorau.

This book also includes translations of essays, reviews, and memoirs by champions and detractors of Wagner; glimpses into his domestic sphere in Tribschen and Bayreuth; and all of Wagner's program notes to his own works. Introductions and annotations are provided by the editor and David Breckbill, Mary A. Cicora, James Deaville, Annegret Fauser, Steven Huebner, David Trippett, and Nicholas Vazsonyi.

Messa da Requiem is the fourth work to be published in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi. Following the strict requirements of the series, this edition is based on Verdi's autograph and other authentic sources, and has been reviewed by a distinguished editorial board--Philip Gossett (general editor), Julian Budden, Martin Chusid, Francesco Degrada, Ursula Gunther, Giorgio Pestelli, and Pierluigi Petrobelli. It is available as a two-volume set: a full orchestral score and a critical commentary. The appendixes include two pieces from the compositional history of the Requiem: an early version of the Libera me, composed in 1869 as part of a collaborative work planned as a memorial to Rossini; and the Liber scriptus, which in the original score of the Manzoni memorial Requiem was composed as a fugue in G minor. The score, which has been beautifully bound and autographed, is printed on high-grade paper in an oversized format. The introduction to the score discusses the work's genesis, instrumentation, and problems of notation. The critical commentary, printed in a smaller format, discusses the editorial decisions and traces the complex compositional history of the Requiem.