Music-Genres & Styles-Opera

Philip Brett's groundbreaking writing on Benjamin Britten altered the course of music scholarship in the later twentieth century. This volume is the first to gather in one collection Brett's searching and provocative work on the great British composer. Some of the early essays opened...

In the age of the French Revolution, opera was the locus of cabals, intrigues, and violent journalistic invective. Yet it was also a period when women composers and librettists gained access to concert halls as never before, some of their works among those most...

Gian Carlo Menotti is a composer known chiefly for his popular operas, including Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Medium, and The Consul. He also wrote a considerable amount of choral, instrumental and chamber music. This addition to the Greenwood Press series Bio-Bibliographies in...

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is one of the most influential - and also one of the most controversial - 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...

There is often a dichotomy between the academic approach to singing that voice students learn in the studio and what professional singers do on the operatic and concert stage. Great singers at the top of the performing profession achieve their place with much analysis...

The Oxford Classical Texts, or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, are renowned for their reliability and presentation. The series consists of a text without commentary but with a brief apparatus criticus at the front of each page. There are now over 1 volumes, representing the...

One of the most controversial figures in the history of ideas as well as music, Richard Wagner continues to stimulate debate whenever his works are performed. Drawing upon the scholarship of The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the most comprehensive dictionary of opera in...

Bach's St. John Passion is surely one of the monuments of Western music, yet performances of it are inevitably controversial. In large part, this is because of the combination of the powerful and highly emotional music and a text that includes passages from a...

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...

Music at the Limits is the first book to bring together three decades of Edward W. Said's essays and articles on music. Addressing the work of a variety of composers, musicians, and performers, Said carefully draws out music's social, political, and cultural contexts and,...

Michael Steen provides a compendium of self-standing short guides to twenty-five of the world's greatest and most popular operas.Michael Steen studied at the Royal College of Music, was organ scholar at Oxford, and is currently Royal College of Music Society chairman.Author: Michael SteenISBN-10: 1848316119ISBN-13:...

For over twenty years, Joseph A. Kestner wrote for Opera News and other publications. Collected for the first time, Kestner's essays explore the creation, influence, context, and meaning of the world's most famous operas as well as hidden gems. For those new to opera,...

A secret aria of courage and suspenseEurope, 1937. Two British sisters: one a dowdy typist, the other a soon-to-be famous romance novelist. One shared passion for opera.With war clouds gathering and harassment increasing, the stars of Continental opera, many of whom are Jewish, face...

Detailed overview of Handel's final 22 operas - including major masterpieces such as Orlando, Ariodante and Alcina and the brilliant lighter works Partenope, Serse and Imeneo - by the world's leading authority. Handel ranks with Monteverdi, Mozart and Verdi among the supreme masters of...

This book takes advantage of new and often surprising biographical research on the Loder family as a whole and its four main figures, using them to illustrate aspects of music history in the 19th century. Musicians of Bath and Beyond: Edward Loder (1809-1865) and...

Insights into an opera stage director's work from an internationally acclaimed director and teacher. Opera is nowadays performed worldwide. But as an art form it is little understood by performers and audiences alike. The Crafty Art of Opera wants to change that. Here, Michael...

This collection of Russell's classic adaptations concludes with Pelleas & Melisande by Maeterlinck and Debussy, Salome by Richard Strauss and the all new The Godfather's Code from Cavalleria Rusticana by Mascagni.Author: P. Craig RussellISBN-10: 1561633895ISBN-13: 9781561633890Publisher: Nantier Beall Minoustchine PublishingLanguage: EnglishPublished: 12/01/2004Pages: 144Format: PaperbackWeight:...

William Grant Still (1895-1978) dreamed of a world in which his eight operas--for him the ultimate form of musical expression--would be heard in the major opera houses in the United States, devoting most of his career toward the pursuit of this goal. The first...

Since the first performance of the first opera in 1600, operas have been telling stories from myth and history. This book - beginning with the Creation and ending in the present day - is a chronology of myth and history as told in opera....

Only six years after its unlikely founding in 1962, the young Scottish Opera entered a period of a dozen years when it could do little wrong.The Company was the brainchild of Sir Alexander Gibson, a conductor who was to prove the most pivotal and...

Author: Benjamin BrittenISBN-10: 0571505384ISBN-13: 9780571505388Publisher: Faber & FaberLanguage: EnglishPublished: 12/01/1998Pages: 999Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.72lbs

Music examples and charts illustrate the analyses, and each essay is fully annotated by the editor. in some cases, the results of the original research by the editor or by others working in the field are published here for the first time. Much of...

A landmark event in the world of music, Mozart's seven major librettos have finally been translated in verse with a sparkling poetic quality that matches the magnificence of the originals. Beginning this epic endeavor with his translation of The Magic Flute, first introduced at...

From operas presented in reconfigured army barracks to those mounted on a stage rivaling that of New York's Metropolitan Opera House, Indiana University Opera Theater has grown into a world-class training ground for opera's next generation. A lavishly illustrated history, Opera for All Seasons...

With her superb coloratura soprano, passion for the world of opera, and down-to-earth personality, Beverly Sills made high art accessible to millions from the time of her meteoric rise to stardom in 1966 until her death in 2007. An unlikely pop culture phenomenon, Sills...

Defined by its distinct performance style, stage practices, and regional and dialect based identities, Cantonese opera originated as a traditional art form performed by itinerant companies in temple courtyards and rural market fairs. In the early 1900s, however, Cantonese opera began to capture mass...

"I complain bitterly of the editions of my last operas, made with such little care, and filled with an infinite number of errors."--Giuseppe Verdi The University of Chicago Press, in collaboration with Casa Ricordi, has undertaken to publish the first critical edition of the...

Mr. and Mrs. Peachum are horrified when they learn of their daughter Polly's secret marriage to the rebellious and notorious highwayman, Macheath. However, their fear is soon mitigated when they decide to kill him for his money. When Macheath is in the tavern, surrounded...

In Operatic Afterlives, Michal Grover-Friedlander examines the implications of opera's founding myth -- the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: Orpheus's attempt to revive the dead Eurydice with the power of singing. Traditionally, opera kills its protagonists that best embody its ideal of the singing...

Explores the political meanings that Italian opera - its composers, agents and institutions - had for audiences in eighteenth-century Britain. The reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714) was pivotal for both politics and opera in Britain. In this study, Thomas McGeary brings together a wide...

A century ago, Claremont, New Hampshire was a cultural mecca-a destination which drew performers from as far off as Boston and Montreal-and spectators from everywhere in between.Imagine if the popular bands of today were to make Claremont, New Hampshire, a tour stop, if your...

In this groundbreaking survey of the fundamentals, methods, and formulas that were taught at Italian music conservatories during the 19th century, Nicholas Baragwanath explores the compositional significance of tradition in Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Boito, and, most importantly, Puccini. Taking account of some 400...

The Moscow Private Opera, founded, sponsored, and directed by Savva Mamontov (1841-1918), was one of Russia's most important theatrical institutions at the dawn of the age of modernism. It presented the Moscow premieres of Lohengrin, La Boh鑪e, and Khovanshchina, among others; launched the career...

In the 17th century, harmonious sounds were thought to represent the well-ordered body of the obedient subject, and, by extension, the well-ordered state; conversely, discordant, unpleasant music represented both those who caused disorder (murderers, drunkards, witches, traitors) and those who suffered from bodily disorders...

For listeners to the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, Boris Goldovsky's cheery "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!" has always heralded a quarter hour of pure enjoyment. Since 1946 Goldovsky has been treating the Met's radio audiences to his scholarly observations and personal...

A long-awaited resource for the young operatic singer, this annotated guide brings together many sources to start the journey toward powerful, informed performance. An extensive discussion of fach and audition repertoire is followed by more than 400 arias organized by voice type, including canonical,...

". . . a remarkable collection of observations and reflections on past experiences by many excellent artists and teachers that will doubtless help . . . those interested in creating 'opera magic.'" --Tito CapobiancoSinging, Acting, and Movement in Opera is designed for use in...

In 1921, Sergei Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges--one of the earliest, most famous examples of modernist opera--premiered in Chicago. Prokofiev's source was a 1913 theatrical divertissement by Vsevolod Meyerhold, who, in turn, took inspiration from Carlo Gozzi's 1761 commedia dell'arte-infused theatrical fairy tale. Only...

Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater is the first systematic exploration of how sung forms of drama tell stories. Through examples from opera's origins to contemporary musicals, Nina Penner examines the roles of character-narrators and how they differ from those in literary and cinematic...

Storytelling in Opera and Musical Theater is the first systematic exploration of how sung forms of drama tell stories. Through examples from opera's origins to contemporary musicals, Nina Penner examines the roles of character-narrators and how they differ from those in literary and cinematic...

In this comprehensive study of Olivier Messiaen's magnum opus, Saint Fran輟is d'Assise, Vincent Perez Benitez examines the opera from both theological and musical-analytical perspectives to ask how Messiaen expresses his Catholic theology through his work. Benitez combines a close reading of the opera score...

In this comprehensive study of Olivier Messiaen's magnum opus, Saint Fran輟is d'Assise, Vincent Perez Benitez examines the opera from both theological and musical-analytical perspectives to ask how Messiaen expresses his Catholic theology through his work. Benitez combines a close reading of the opera score...

From the fall of 1947 through the summer of 1951 composer Igor Stravinsky and poet W. H. Auden collaborated on the opera The Rake's Progress. At the time, their self-consciously conventional work seemed to appeal only to conservative audiences. Few perceived that Stravinsky and...

Yayoi Uno Everett focuses on four operas that helped shape the careers of the composers Osvaldo Golijov, Kaija Saariaho, John Adams, and Tan Dun, which represent a unique encounter of music and production through what Everett calls "multimodal narrative." Aspects of production design, the...

For a long time opera was dominated by larger-than-life characters: kings and queens, gods and goddesses, mythic figures with power over life and death. However, as opera became a more and more popular form of entertainment, the perspective changed. The challenge for composers and...

The Bible and Western culture is a burgeoning area of interest in recent scholarship, but comparatively little has been written on the Bible and music. Leneman's is a groundbreaking work, making some pioneering forays across an important interdisciplinary divide. The Performed Bible is an...

Focusing on songs by the troubadours and trouv鑽es from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera contends that song is not best analyzed as "words plus music" but rather as a distinctive way of sounding words. Rather than situating...

DELUXE BOOK AND DVD COLLECTION 4 COMPLETE OPERAS ON 4 DVDS The partnership of W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan produced a collection of the most best loved and (still!) oft performed comic operas in the history of theatre. Here is the story of...

The tumultuous life of Australia's most famous opera singer, Dame Nellie Melba. AUSTRALIA'S FIRST INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTAR When most people think of Nellie Melba they picture a squarish middle-aged woman dressed in furs and large hats, an imperious Dame whose voice ruled the world for...

Paul Thom argues that opera is a set of practices framed by the concepts of work, interpretation, performance, and art. His argument is that operatic works have the potential to be art, but so do operatic productions, independently of their value as interpretations of...