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Opera recordings have been with us since the creation of the first wax cylinders. Now at a time when the 25-year reign of the compact disc appears to be coming to an end is the moment to take stock of the history of recordings of arguably the most popular composer of operas, Giacomo Puccini. In Giacomo Puccini: A Discography, librarian and music historian Roger Flury looks at each opera chronologically from Le Villi to Turandot, followed by sections on Puccini's instrumental, chamber, orchestral, and solo vocal works. Details of each complete opera are listed by recording date, followed by excerpts in the order in which they occur in the opera. Recordings of each aria are listed alphabetical...
The Court Cities of Northern Italy examines painting, sculpture, decorative arts, and architecture produced within the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
Despite the vast amount of research on Italian anarchism conducted over the last forty years, little is known about the history of Milanese anarchists. Living Like Nomads: The Milanese Anarchist Movement Before Fascism illuminates anarchist ideas, practices and militants in Milan during the two decades before the rise of fascism. It tells the fascinating stories of some Italian anarchists at the beginning of the twentieth century, and sheds light on their lifestyle, political campaigns and ideological debates. Living Like Nomads examines anarchist thought, particularly the relationship between theories of individualism and communist anarchism. It engages with masters of this school of philos...
In Europe, love has been given a prominent place in European self-representations from the Enlightenment onwards. The category of love, stemming from private and personal spheres, was given a public function and used to distinguish European civilisation from others. Contributors to this volume trace historical links and analyse specific connections between the two discourses on love and Europe over the course of the twentieth century, exploring the distinctions made between the public and private, the political and personal. In doing so, this volume develops an innovative historiography that includes such resources as autobiographies, love letters, and cinematic representations, and takes issue with the exclusivity of Eurocentrism. Its contributors put forth hypotheses about the historical pre-eminence of emotions and consider this history as a basis for a non-Eurocentric understanding of new possible European identities.
From antiquity to the Enlightenment, astrology, magic, and alchemy were considered important tools to unravel the mysteries of nature and human destiny. As a result of the West's exposure during the Middle Ages to the astrological beliefs of Arab philosophers and the mystical writings of late antiquity, these occult traditions became rich sources of inspiration for Western artists. In this latest volume in the popular Guide to Imagery series, the author presents a careful analysis of occult iconography in many of the great masterpieces of Western art, calling out key features in the illustrations for discussion and interpretation. Astrological symbols decorated medieval churches and illuminated manuscripts as well as fifteenth-century Italian town halls and palaces. The transformational zymology of magic and alchemy that enlivened the work of a wide range of Renaissance artists, including Bosch, Brueghel, D: urer, and Caravaggio, found renewed expression in the visionary works of nineteenth-century artists, such as Fuseli and Blake, as well as in the creative output of the twentieth century's Surrealists.
Italian cinema gave rise to a number of the best-known films of the postwar years, from Rome Open City to Bicycle Thieves. Although some neorealist film-makers would have preferred to abolish stars altogether, the public adored them and producers needed their help in relaunching the national film industry. This book explores the many conflicts that arose in Italy between 1945 and 1953 over stars and stardom, offering intimate studies of the careers of both well-known and less familiar figures, shedding new light on the close relationship forged between cinema and society during a time of political transition and shifting national identities.
This volume offers unparalleled coverage of all aspects of art and architecture from medieval Western Europe, from the 6th century to the early 16th century. Drawing upon the expansive scholarship in the celebrated 'Grove Dictionary of Art' and adding hundreds of new entries, it offers students, researchers and the general public a reliable, up-to-date, and convenient resource covering this field of major importance in the development of Western history and international art and architecture.
A new history of how one of the Renaissance’s preeminent cities lost its independence in the Italian Wars. In 1499, the duchy of Milan had known independence for one hundred years. But the turn of the sixteenth century saw the city battered by the Italian Wars. As the major powers of Europe battled for supremacy, Milan, viewed by contemporaries as the “key to Italy,” found itself wracked by a tug-of-war between French claimants and its ruling Sforza family. In just thirty years, the city endured nine changes of government before falling under three centuries of Habsburg dominion. John Gagné offers a new history of Milan’s demise as a sovereign state. His focus is not on the successi...