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The History of Italian Opera marks the first time a team of expert scholars has worked together to investigate the Italian operatic tradition in its entirety, rather than limiting its focus to individual eras or major composers and their masterworks. Including both musicologists and historians of other arts, the contributors approach opera not only as a distinctive musical genre but also as a form of extravagant theater and a complex social phenomenon-resulting in the sort of panoramic view critical to a deep and fruitful understanding of the art. Opera on Stage, the second book of this multi-volume work to be published in English-in an expanded and updated version-focuses on staging and vie...
Convivial beginnings. The symposium and the birth of opera ; The Renaissance banquet as multimedia art ; Orpheus at the cardinal's table ; Eating at the opera house -- "Tastes funny" : tragic and comic meals from Monteverdi to Mozart ; Comedy as embodiment in Monteverdi and Mozart ; The insatiable : tyrants and libertines ; Indulging in comic opera : gastronomy as identity -- The effects of feasting and fasting ; Coffee and chocolate from Bach to Puccini ; Verdi and the laws of gastromusicology ; The Callas diet.
Why do so many operas end in suicide, murder, and death? Why do many characters in large-scale operas exhibit neurotic behaviors worthy of psychoanalysis? Why are the legendary grands operas - much celebrated in their time - so seldom performed today?
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Since its origin, opera has been identified with the performance and negotiation of power. Once theaters specifically for opera were established, that connection was expressed in the design and situation of the buildings themselves, as much as through the content of operatic works. Yet the importance of the opera house’s physical situation, and the ways in which opera and the opera house have shaped each other, have seldom been treated as topics worthy of examination. Operatic Geographies invites us to reconsider the opera house’s spatial production. Looking at opera through the lens of cultural geography, this anthology rethinks the opera house’s landscape, not as a static backdrop, b...
This study is the first to explore the significance of aria insertion, the practice that allowed singers to introduce music of their own choice into productions of Italian opera during the nineteenth century. Each chapter investigates this practice from varying perspectives and through the experiences of some of the century's most famous prima donnas.
These essays by respected scholars examine representative operatic productions from diverse national schools and periods, together forming a comprehensive history of the staging techniques of opera over the centuries.