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The study of the business of opera has taken on new importance in the present harsh economic climate for the arts. This book presents research that sheds new light on a range of aspects concerning marketing, audience development, promotion, arts administration and economic issues that beset professionals working in the opera world. The editors' aim has been to assemble a coherent collection of essays that engage with a single theme (business), but differ in topic and critical perspective. The collection is distinguished by its concern with the business of opera here and now in a globalized market. This includes newly commissioned operas, sponsorship, state funding, and production and marketing of historic operas in the twenty-first century.
Richard Wagner has arguably the greatest and most long-term influence on wider European culture of all nineteenth-century composers. And yet, among the copious English-language literature examining Wagner's works, influence, and character, research into the composer’s impact and role in Russia and Eastern European countries, and perceptions of him from within those countries, is noticeably sparse. Wagner in Russia, Poland and the Czech Lands aims to redress imbalance and stimulate further research in this rich area. The eight essays are divided in three parts - one each on Russia, the Czech lands and Poland - and cover a wide historical span, from the composer’s first contacts with and appearances in these regions, through to his later reception in the Communist era. The contributing authors examine his influences in a wide range of areas such as music, literary and epistolary heritage, politics, and the cultural histories of Russia, the Czech lands, and Poland, in an attempt to establish Wagner’s place in a part of Europe not commonly addressed in studies of the composer.
Sacred and Secular Intersections in Music of the Long Nineteenth Century: Church, Stage, and Concert Hall explores interconnections of the sacred and the secular in music and aesthetic debates of the long nineteenth century. The essays in this volume view the category of the sacred not as a monolithic attribute that applies only to music written for and performed in a religious ritual. Rather, the “sacred” is viewed as a functional as well as a topical category that enhances the discourse of cross-pollination of musical vocabularies between sacred and secular compositions, church and concert music. Using a variety of methodological approaches, the contributors articulate how sacred and religious identities coalesce, reconcile, fuse, or intersect in works from the long nineteenth century that traverse an array of genres and compositional styles.
"A gathering chiefly of talks given either by invitation or at conferences throughout the world over the last quarter century. The topics range widely, but recurrent themes include the place of classical music in contemporary society and culture, the fraught relationship between aesthetics and ethics, and the responsibilities of scholarship in an age of spin"--
A prevailing belief among Russia’s cultural elite in the early twentieth century was that the music of composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, and Nikolai Medtner could forge a shared identity for the Russian people across social and economic divides. In this illuminating study of competing artistic and ideological visions at the close of Russia’s “Silver Age,” author Rebecca Mitchell interweaves cultural history, music, and philosophy to explore how “Nietzsche’s orphans” strove to find in music a means to overcome the disunity of modern life in the final tumultuous years before World War I and the Communist Revolution.
The volume offers a variety of new interpretations of a selection of well-known and culturally established works of verbal and visual culture. It demonstrates how the two spheres of literature and broadly understood art, as well as the two qualities of old and new, interfuse, affect, re-shape, and complement each other. The focus here is particularly directed towards the perception of the canonical texts of culture by the modern, often young, addressee. Who are the Old Masters? Are contemporary works of art influenced by them? Is it possible to create ‘new classics’ without reference to the established conventions? These basic questions serve as a starting point for a stimulating academic discussion and a vibrant intellectual exchange.
Uncovers a world of forgotten triumphs of musical theatre that shine a light on major social topics. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This volume is a comprehensive Handbook of Russian thought that provides an in-depth survey of major figures, currents, and developments in Russian intellectual history, spanning the period from the late eighteenth century to the late twentieth century. Written by a group of distinguished scholars as well as some younger ones from Russia, Europe, the United States, and Canada, this Handbook reconstructs a vibrant picture of the intellectual and cultural life in Russia and the Soviet Union during the most buoyant period in the country's history. Contrary to the widespread view of Russian modernity as a product of intellectual borrowing and imitation, the essays collected in this volume reveal the creative spirit of Russian thought, which produced a range of original philosophical and social ideas, as well as great literature, art, and criticism. While rejecting reductive interpretations, the Handbook employs a unifying approach to its subject matter, presenting Russian thought in the context of the country's changing historical landscape. This Handbook will open up a new intellectual world to many readers and provide a secure base for its further exploration.
The Lost Tradition of Dvořák’s Operas: Myth, Music, and Nationalism examines Antonín Dvořák’s operas, specifically Jakobín and Rusalka, from a critical standpoint, focusing on such criteria as tonal structures, thematic material and motives, subject matter, Czech folklore and musical influences, textual language, nationalism, characters, compositional history, performance history, and reception. The intent of this research is to vindicate and validate Dvořák as an opera composer; to show him to be an overlooked master in Nineteenth Century opera and the bridge between the Verdi and Wagner traditions. Now, well over one hundred years after his death, it is now time for Dvořák to take his rightful place in the operatic echelon.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was not only a philosopher who loved and wrote about music; he was also a musician, pianist, and composer. In this ground-breaking volume, philosophers, historians, musicians, and musicologists come together to explore Nietzsche’s thought and music in all its complexity. Starting from the role that music played in the formation and articulation of Nietzsche’s thought, as well as the influence that contemporary composers had on him, the essays provide an in-depth analysis of the structural and stylistic aspects of his compositions. The volume highlights the significance of music in Nietzsche’s life and looks deeply at his musical experiments which led to a new and radically different style of composition in relation with his philosophical thought. It also traces the influence that Nietzsche had on many other musicians and musical genres, from Russian composers to current rock music and heavy metal.