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Michael Ewans explores how classical Greek tragedy and epic poetry have been appropriated in opera, through eight selected case studies. These range from Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, drawn from Homer's Odyssey, to Mark-Antony Turnage's Greek, based on Sophocles's Oedipus the King. Choices have been based on an understanding that the relationship between each of the operas and their Greek source texts raise significant issues, involving an examination of the process by which the librettist creates a new text for the opera, and the crucial insights into the nature of the drama that are bestowed by the composer's musical setting. Ewans examines the issues through a comparative analysis of significant divergences of plot, character and dramatic strategy between source text, libretto and opera.
Acting Greek Tragedy explores the dynamics of physical interaction and the dramaturgical construction of scenes in ancient Greek tragedy. Ley argues that spatial distinctions between ancient and modern theatres are not significant, as core dramatic energy can be placed successfully in either context. Guiding commentary on selected passages from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides illuminates the problems involved with performing monologue, dialogue, scenes requiring three actors, and scenes with properties. A companion website - actinggreektragedy.com - offers recorded illustrations of scenes from the Workshops. What the book offers is a practical approach to the preparation of Greek scripts for performance. The translations used have all been tested in workshops, with those of Euripides newly composed for this book. The companion website can be found here: www.actinggreektragedy.com
A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama offers a series of original essays that represent a comprehensive overview of the global reception of ancient Greek tragedies and comedies from antiquity to the present day. Represents the first volume to offer a complete overview of the reception of ancient drama from antiquity to the present Covers the translation, transmission, performance, production, and adaptation of Greek tragedy from the time the plays were first created in ancient Athens through the 21st century Features overviews of the history of the reception of Greek drama in most countries of the world Includes chapters covering the reception of Greek drama in modern opera and film
This volume assembles twelve interdisciplinary essays that were originally presented at the Second International Conference on Word and Music Studies at Ann Arbor, MI, in 1999, a conference organized by the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). The contributions to this volume focus on two centres of interest. The first deals with general issues of literature and music relations from culturalist, historical, reception-aesthetic and cognitive points of view. It covers issues such as conceptual problems in devising transdisciplinary histories of both arts, cultural functions of opera as a means of reflecting postcolonial national identity, the problem of verbalizing music...
This book examines the performance of Greek tragedy in the classical Athenian theatre. David Wiles explores the performance of tragedy as a spatial practice specific to Athenian culture, at once religious and political. After reviewing controversies and archaeological data regarding the fifth-century performance space, Wiles turns to the chorus and shows how dance mapped out the space for the purposes of any given play. The book shows how performance as a whole was organised and, through informative diagrams and accessible analyses, Wiles brings the theatre of Greek tragedy to life.
Ancient Greek tragedy has been an inspiration to Western culture, but the way it was first performed has long remained in question. In The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy, Graham Ley provides an illuminating discussion of key issues relating to the use of the playing space and the nature of the chorus, offering a distinctive impression of the performance of Greek tragedy in the fifth century BCE. Drawing on evidence from the surviving texts of tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Ley explains how scenes with actors were played in the open ground of the orchestra, often considered as exclusively the dancing place of the chorus. In reviewing what is known of the music and dance of ...
A compelling portrait of this enigmatic musical genius within the context of the cultural and political currents of his time
As a creative medium, ancient Greek tragedy has had an extraordinarily wide influence: many of the surviving plays are still part of the theatrical repertoire, and texts like Agamemnon, Antigone, and Medea have had a profound effect on Western culture. This Companion is not a conventional introductory textbook but an attempt, by seven distinguished scholars, to present the familiar corpus in the context of modern reading, criticism, and performance of Greek tragedy. There are three main emphases: on tragedy as an institution in the civic life of ancient Athens, on a range of different critical interpretations arising from fresh readings of the texts, and on changing patterns of reception, adaptation, and performance from antiquity to the present. Each chapter can be read independently, but each is linked with the others, and most examples are drawn from the same selection of plays.
Richard Wagner's knowledge of and passion for Greek drama was so profound that for Friedrich Nietzsche, Wagner was Aeschylus come alive again. Surprisingly little has been written about the pervasive influence of classical Greece on the quintessentially German master. In this elegant and masterfully argued book, renowned opera critic Father Owen Lee describes for the contemporary reader what it might have been like to witness a dramatic performance of Aeschylus in the theatre of Dionysus in Athens in the fifth century B.C. something that Wagner himself undertook to do on several occasions, imagining a performance of The Oresteia in his mind, reading it aloud to his friends, providing his ...
This collection of published and unpublished essays connects antiquity with the present by debating the current prohibiting conceptions of performance theory and the insistence on a limited version of ‘the contemporary’. The theatre is attractive for its history and also for its lively present. These essays explore aspects of historical performance in ancient Greece, and link thoughts on its significance to wider reflections on cultural theory from around the world and performance in the contemporary postmodern era, concluding with ideas on the new theatre of the diaspora. Each section of the book includes a short introduction; the essays and shorter interventions take various forms, but...