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Jacques Leguerney, heir to the exquisite French mélodie tradition, is beautifully served in this carefully researched and practical performance guide. The Leguerney melodies are gratifying vehicles for both singers and pianists. They reflect the nature of the man himself: elegance, grace, sophistication, and an awareness of beauty in all its forms. To be in the presence of Monsieur Leguerney, no matter how briefly, was itself an aesthetic experience. This study leads the way to establishing international recognition for a composer who so richly deserves it. Richard Miller, Wheeler Professor of Performance and Director of the Vocal Arts Center, Oberlin Conservatoty. The songs of the extraord...
A word-by-word translation in English and IPA, and annotated guides to the dialogue and recitative versions of the opera, this book is a complete reference for anyone studying or producing Bizet's Carmen. It provides all the material necessary for practical use by singers, conductors, coaches, stage directors, opera producers, students and teachers. - from the publisher's notes.
A ground-breaking study of the musical and literary priorities, professional practices and creative interactions that shaped one of the most adventurous artforms of the Belle Époque.
Mary Dibbern, Music Director of Education and Family Programs at The Dallas Opera, and adjunct faculty member at the University of North Texas has created a Performance Guide for Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann. This contribution to the Vox Musicae series presents a word-by-word translation and IPA transcription of the published versions of the French libretto, and her translations of its literary sources trace the libretto's development from E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Tales." The Guide includes an interview with French opera specialist Janine Reiss, and a Foreword by Thomas Grubb. This well-rounded volume is designed for use by singers, vocal coaches, conductors, producers and directors, as well as opera-lovers.
For literary scholars, plays are texts; for scenographers, plays are performances. Yet clearly a drama is both text and performance. Dramatic Spaces examines period-specific stage spaces in order to assess how design shaped the thematic and experiential dimensions of plays. This book highlights the stakes of the debate about spatiality and the role of the spectator in the auditorium – if audience members are co-creators of the drama, how do they contribute? The book investigates: Roman comedy and Shakespearean dramas in which the stage-space itself constituted the primary scenographic element and actors’ bodies shaped the playing space more than did sets or props the use of paid applaude...
Introduction. Coloratura and Female Vocality -- The New Franco-Italian School of Singing -- Verdi and the End of Italian Coloratura -- Melismatic Madness and Technology -- Caroline Carvalho and Her World -- Carvalho, Gounod, and the Waltz -- Vestiges of Virtuosity : The French Coloratura Soprano -- Epilogue. Unending Coloratura.
A young woman meets a man at a restaurant while eating alone and contemplating her own death. They exchange words only briefly, but by the end of the week he has entered her world with an intensity rivaled only by her desire to end her life. Told with the lyrical persistence of a Greek chorus, The Ancestry of Objects unravels the story of the unnamed narrator’s affair with David: married, graying, and ultimately a form of erotic power to which the narrator succumbs. As they meet more and more frequently, her thoughts move from their increasingly fraught encounters to her history with religion and the mystery of her absent mother, Ruth. The ghosts of her grandparents roam her ancestral hous...
Carol Kimball's comprehensive survey of art song literature has been the principal one-volume American source on the topic. Now back in print after an absence of several years this newly revised edition includes biographies and discussions of the work of
The Nightgown is a mythic, mystic, and hungry collection of poems, a roiling landscape wandered over by wild swerves of language, creatures of all sorts, and mysterious beings such as The Folklore, The Hurt Opera, The Eunuch, and the titular angry Nightgown. Haunted by the magic and transformations of Slavic and Western European fairy tales, the symbolism of the Tarot, the medieval world, feminism, and a mythology all its own, The Nightgown bears an immigrant’s fascination with the black, alien syrup of the English language’s first stratum, that merciless Anglo-Saxon word-hoard preserving an ancient consciousness of human, beast, and earth. Funny and loud, the poems are strangely accessible in their animal awareness of mortality and urgency for contact with the unknown. The Nightgown is the debut book of poetry from renowned writer Taisia Kitaiskaia (Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers).
In 1850, the French mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot wrote to her friend Turgenev: "Among that mass of talented composers who are witty in a vulgar sort of way, intelligible not because of their clarity but because of their trivilaity, the appearance of a musical personality such as Gounod's is so rare that one cannot welcome him heartily enough." Pendragon Press welcomes this addition to their Vox Musicae Series of Operatic Performance Guides by Mary Dibbern. The libretti and literary sources of Gounod's two masterpieces are studied in depth. The libretto section includes word-by-word translations into English and IPA transcriptions of both libretti in their final, opéra-comique versions. Dibbern explains how the literary source materials were converted into libretti, as well as the history of the various musical editions and versions. Numerous illustrations have been provided by a member of Gounod's family.