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Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville surveys the opera's
fascinating performance history, mapping out the myriad changes
that have affected the work since its premiere, exploring many of
the personalities responsible for those alterations, and taking
into account the range of reactions that these changes have
prompted in spectators and critics from the nineteenth century to
the present. Opening with a wide-ranging overview of the types of
alterations that have been imposed on Rossini's score for the past
two centuries, the first chapter addresses the mechanics behind
these changes as well as the cultural forces that both fostered and
encouraged them. The book next looks at some of the opera's
earliest revivals, drawing attention to alterations that were made
to the score and to individual singers who were responsible for the
changes, especially those who appeared in the roles of Almaviva and
Bartolo. An entire chapter is devoted to Rosina, examining the wide
array of creative liberties that prima donnas have unremittingly
and unrepentantly taken with their interpretations of Rossini's
character. The final sections turn to the opera's recent history,
observing how the Rossini Renaissance brought with it a new
dedication to the "work concept" and to shedding the types of
alterations that had long characterized performances of this work.
The book closes with a consideration of operatic consumerism from
the nineteenth century to the present, exploring the myriad ways
that one can now experience The Barber of Seville in all its
recorded, digitized, and commodified glory.
Operatic works by Italian composers of the nineteenth century have
undergone countless transformations since their premieres, shifting
shape in response to a variety of new geographic, temporal,
technological, and performative contexts. These enduring works by
Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, and their
contemporaries have myriad stories to tell. Fashions and Legacies
reconstructs a selection of these stories, exploring ways in which
operatic works have been reshaped and revived throughout the
nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. While focusing
on how these works have been altered, the thirteen contributors in
this book also respond to fundamental questions: how has this music
retained - or sacrificed - its powerful messages in the face of
deconstruction and recontextualization over time and place? What
happens to these operas once they have escaped control of their
authors? The contributions of singers, stage directors, conductors,
and other theatrical personalities stand front and center of the
volume.
Female characters assumed increasing prominence in the narratives
of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera. And for
contemporary audiences, many of these characters - and the
celebrated women who played them - still define opera at its finest
and most searingly affective, even if storylines leave them
swooning and faded by the end of the drama. The presence and
representation of women in opera has been addressed in a range of
recent studies that offer valuable insights into the operatic stage
as cultural space, focusing a critical lens at the text and the
position and signification of female characters. Moving that lens
onto the historical, The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long
Nineteenth Century sheds light on the singers who created and
inhabited these roles, the flesh-and-blood women who embodied these
fabled "doomed women" onstage before an audience. Editors Rachel
Cowgill and Hilary Poriss lead a cast of renowned contributors in
an impressive display of current approaches to the lives, careers,
and performances of female opera singers. Essential theoretical
perspectives reflect several broad themes woven through the
volume-cultures of celebrity surrounding the female singer; the
emergence of the quasi-mythical figure of the diva; explorations of
the intricate and sundry arts associated with the prima donna, and
with her representation in other media; and the diversity and
complexity of contemporary responses to her. The prima donna
influenced compositional practices, determined musical and dramatic
interpretation, and affected management decisions about the running
of the opera house, content of the season, and employment of other
artists - a clear demonstration that her position as "first woman"
extended well beyond the boards of the operatic stage itself. The
Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century is an
important addition to the collections of students and researchers
in opera studies, nineteenth-century music, performance and
gender/sexuality studies, and cultural studies, as well as to the
shelves of opera singers and enthusiasts.
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