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This is the first book for a century to explore the development of French opera with spoken dialogue from its beginnings. Musical comedy in this form came in different styles and formed a distinct genre of opera, whose history has been obscured by neglect. Its songs were performed in private homes, where operas themselves were also given. The subject-matter was far wider in scope than is normally thought, with news stories and political themes finding their way onto the popular stage. In this book, David Charlton describes the comedic and musical nature of eighteenth-century popular French opera, considering topics such as Gherardi's theatre, Fair Theatre and the 'musico-dramatic art' created in the mid-eighteenth century. Performance practices, singers, audience experiences and theatre staging are included, as well as a pioneering account of the formation of a core of 'canonical' popular works.
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First published in 1986, this major study in English explores Grétry and opéra-comique between 1768 and 1791.
This book offers a long-awaited opportunity to assess the thought and influence of one of the most famous of all writers on music and the musical links with his fiction. Containing the first complete appearance in English of Kreisleriana, it reveals a masterpiece of imaginative writing and whose profound humour and irony can now be fully appreciated.
A wide-ranging account of opera on stage and in society in the age of Rousseau, from Rameau to Gluck.
When George Best, a dark-haired skinny teenager from Belfast, made his United debut in the autumn of 1963, he was joining a club still recovering from the horrors of Munich. Among his team-mates were goalscorer supreme Denis Law and England midfielder Bobby Charlton. Together they would combine to help United to win two league titles and a long-awaited European Cup as the Reds came to personify all that was most exciting about the Swinging Sixties. By 1968, all three men would have been honoured as European Footballer of the Year - the only time three winners of that award have lined up in the same side. In David Meek's compelling portrait of the United Trinity, he not only reveals their different characters and what made them so successful on the pitch, he also speaks to many of their team-mates to find out what it was like playing in the same side and researches contemporary reports to assess how they were viewed at the time. Having reported on their entire careers together, Meek has a unique insight into what made Best, Law and Charlton stand out as the truly special players they were.
Duende y Duelos : the Andalusian spirit in the Lorca settings / Anthony Gilbert -- An interplay of passion and spirit : The nightingale's to blame / Richard E. McGregor -- Images in sound : movement, harmony and colour in the early music / Philip Rupprecht -- Myth and narrative in 3 for Icarus / Edward Venn -- Sound, sense and syntax : the Emily Dickinson settings / Steph Power -- Piano music / Stephen Gutman -- Redefining the cello's voice : musical agency in feet of clay / Rebecca Thumpston -- Performance and reflections : Holt's music for oboe and cor anglais / Melinda Maxwell -- Shaking the bars : the yellow wallpaper / Steph Power -- Listening to the river's road : stance, texture and space in the concertos / David Beard -- Orchestral works in performance / Thierry Fischer -- Oblique themes and still centres : a conversation between / Julia Bardsley and Simon Holt -- Sketching and idea-gathering / Simon Speare -- Art, conceptualism and politics in Holt's music / David Charlton
Applying the 2,000-year-old Sanskrit text - the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - to yoga practiced today and demonstrating its relevance.
Rouget de Lisle's famous anthem, La marseillaise, admirably reflects the confidence and enthusiasm of the early years of the French Revolution. But the effects on music of the Revolution and the events that followed it in France were more far-reaching than that. Hymns, chansons and even articles of the Constitution set to music in the form of vaudevilles all played their part in disseminating Revolutionary ideas and principles; music education was reorganized to compensate for the loss of courtly institutions and the weakened maitrises of cathedrals and churches. Opera, in particular, was profoundly affected, in both its organization and its subject matter, by the events of 1789 and the succeeding decade. The essays in this book, written by specialists in the period, deal with all these aspects of music in Revolutionary France, highlighting the composers and writers who played a major role in the changes that took place there. They also identify some of the traditions and genres that survived the Revolution, and look at the effects on music of Napoleon's invasion of Italy.