David Manning
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195182392
- eISBN:
- 9780199851485
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182392.003.0034
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Giuseppe Verdi wrote operas. He did not add music to plays full of superficial philosophy or bogus psychology. Verdi carried on his drama by means of lyric song. His orchestra, it is true, has a ...
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Giuseppe Verdi wrote operas. He did not add music to plays full of superficial philosophy or bogus psychology. Verdi carried on his drama by means of lyric song. His orchestra, it is true, has a wonderful sonority, but it is the voice on which he counts to elucidate the situation. Verdi realised that song can carry on a plot in a way which words alone can never do. A good example of this comes from the last Act of the Verdi opera, Rigoletto. This chapter also discusses Verdi's Requiem, which is a heap of contradictions. It gives the strongest proofs that there are no canons of art. Any right-minded musician who only knew the Requiem from description would certainly condemn it. Verdi frankly makes frequent use of such well-worn aids to excitement as the diminished seventh and the chromatic scale.Less
Giuseppe Verdi wrote operas. He did not add music to plays full of superficial philosophy or bogus psychology. Verdi carried on his drama by means of lyric song. His orchestra, it is true, has a wonderful sonority, but it is the voice on which he counts to elucidate the situation. Verdi realised that song can carry on a plot in a way which words alone can never do. A good example of this comes from the last Act of the Verdi opera, Rigoletto. This chapter also discusses Verdi's Requiem, which is a heap of contradictions. It gives the strongest proofs that there are no canons of art. Any right-minded musician who only knew the Requiem from description would certainly condemn it. Verdi frankly makes frequent use of such well-worn aids to excitement as the diminished seventh and the chromatic scale.
Albert R. Rice
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195343281
- eISBN:
- 9780199867813
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195343281.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Chapter five is dedicated to bass clarinet music grouped in the categories: early reported works; notation practice; a chronological description of works from 1834 to 1860 listed by composer; band ...
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Chapter five is dedicated to bass clarinet music grouped in the categories: early reported works; notation practice; a chronological description of works from 1834 to 1860 listed by composer; band music; and music written for the contra bass and contra alto clarinets.Less
Chapter five is dedicated to bass clarinet music grouped in the categories: early reported works; notation practice; a chronological description of works from 1834 to 1860 listed by composer; band music; and music written for the contra bass and contra alto clarinets.
Pierluigi Petrobelli and Roger Parker
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264348
- eISBN:
- 9780191734250
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264348.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
Julian Medford Budden (1924–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was the finest scholar of nineteenth-century Italian opera of his generation. He will be remembered for his achievements as a ...
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Julian Medford Budden (1924–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was the finest scholar of nineteenth-century Italian opera of his generation. He will be remembered for his achievements as a producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), for his broadcasts and reviews, and above all for his books on Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. Indeed, his passing leaves a huge gap in the field of opera studies. Budden was born in Hoylake, near Liverpool, on April 9, 1924, the only child of Lionel Budden and Maud Budden. In 1951 he started at the BBC, where he remained for his entire working life. Budden's first post was as a clerk and script editor; he then rose through the ranks to become a producer, Chief Producer of Opera, and finally External Services Music Organizer. Two aspects of Budden's background were likely to have been fundamental to his scholarly achievement: his exposure to Classics at Oxford University and his career in BBC Radio.Less
Julian Medford Budden (1924–2007), a Fellow of the British Academy, was the finest scholar of nineteenth-century Italian opera of his generation. He will be remembered for his achievements as a producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), for his broadcasts and reviews, and above all for his books on Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. Indeed, his passing leaves a huge gap in the field of opera studies. Budden was born in Hoylake, near Liverpool, on April 9, 1924, the only child of Lionel Budden and Maud Budden. In 1951 he started at the BBC, where he remained for his entire working life. Budden's first post was as a clerk and script editor; he then rose through the ranks to become a producer, Chief Producer of Opera, and finally External Services Music Organizer. Two aspects of Budden's background were likely to have been fundamental to his scholarly achievement: his exposure to Classics at Oxford University and his career in BBC Radio.
Roger Parker
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520244184
- eISBN:
- 9780520931787
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520244184.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Opera performances are often radically inventive. Composers' revisions, singers' improvisations, and stage directors' re-imaginings continually challenge our visions of canonical works. But do they ...
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Opera performances are often radically inventive. Composers' revisions, singers' improvisations, and stage directors' re-imaginings continually challenge our visions of canonical works. But do they go far enough? This book spans almost the entire history of opera and re-examines attitudes toward some of our best-loved musical works. It looks at opera's history of multiple visions and revisions and asks a simple question: what exactly is opera? The book considers works by Handel, Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, and Berio in order to challenge what many regard as sacrosanct: the opera's musical text. Scholarly tradition favors the idea of great operatic texts permanently inscribed in the canon. The book considers examples ranging from Cecilia Bartoli's much-criticized insistence on using Mozart's alternative arias in the Marriage of Figaro to Luciano Berio's new ending to Puccini's unfinished Turandot, and argues that opera is an inherently mutable form, and that all of us—performers, listeners, scholars—should celebrate operatic revisions as a way of opening works to contemporary needs and new pleasures.Less
Opera performances are often radically inventive. Composers' revisions, singers' improvisations, and stage directors' re-imaginings continually challenge our visions of canonical works. But do they go far enough? This book spans almost the entire history of opera and re-examines attitudes toward some of our best-loved musical works. It looks at opera's history of multiple visions and revisions and asks a simple question: what exactly is opera? The book considers works by Handel, Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, and Berio in order to challenge what many regard as sacrosanct: the opera's musical text. Scholarly tradition favors the idea of great operatic texts permanently inscribed in the canon. The book considers examples ranging from Cecilia Bartoli's much-criticized insistence on using Mozart's alternative arias in the Marriage of Figaro to Luciano Berio's new ending to Puccini's unfinished Turandot, and argues that opera is an inherently mutable form, and that all of us—performers, listeners, scholars—should celebrate operatic revisions as a way of opening works to contemporary needs and new pleasures.
Mary Ann Smart
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520239951
- eISBN:
- 9780520939875
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520239951.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
When Friedrich Nietzsche dubbed Richard Wagner “the most enthusiastic mimomaniac” ever to exist, he was objecting to a hollowness he felt in the music, a crowding out of any true dramatic impulse by ...
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When Friedrich Nietzsche dubbed Richard Wagner “the most enthusiastic mimomaniac” ever to exist, he was objecting to a hollowness he felt in the music, a crowding out of any true dramatic impulse by extravagant poses and constant nervous movements. This book takes Nietzsche's accusation as an invitation to listen to Wagner's music—and that of several of his near-contemporaries—for the way it serves to intensify the visible and the enacted. This productive fusion of music and stage movement often arises when music forsakes the autonomy so prized by the Romantics to function mimetically, underlining the sighs of a Vincenzo Bellini heroine, for instance, or the authoritarian footsteps of a Giuseppe Verdi baritone. The book tracks such effects through readings of operas by Daniel Auber, Bellini, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Verdi, and Wagner. Listening for gestural music, it finds resemblance in unexpected places: between the overwrought scenes of supplication in French melodrama of the 1820s and a cluster of late Verdi arias that end with the soprano falling to her knees, or between the mute heroine of Auber's La Muette de Portici and the solemn, almost theological pantomimic tableaux Wagner builds around characters such as Sieglinde or Kundry. The book shows how attention to gesture suggests a new approach to the representation of gender in this repertoire, replacing aural analogies for voyeurism and objectification with a more specifically musical sense of how music can surround, propel, and animate the body on stage.Less
When Friedrich Nietzsche dubbed Richard Wagner “the most enthusiastic mimomaniac” ever to exist, he was objecting to a hollowness he felt in the music, a crowding out of any true dramatic impulse by extravagant poses and constant nervous movements. This book takes Nietzsche's accusation as an invitation to listen to Wagner's music—and that of several of his near-contemporaries—for the way it serves to intensify the visible and the enacted. This productive fusion of music and stage movement often arises when music forsakes the autonomy so prized by the Romantics to function mimetically, underlining the sighs of a Vincenzo Bellini heroine, for instance, or the authoritarian footsteps of a Giuseppe Verdi baritone. The book tracks such effects through readings of operas by Daniel Auber, Bellini, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Verdi, and Wagner. Listening for gestural music, it finds resemblance in unexpected places: between the overwrought scenes of supplication in French melodrama of the 1820s and a cluster of late Verdi arias that end with the soprano falling to her knees, or between the mute heroine of Auber's La Muette de Portici and the solemn, almost theological pantomimic tableaux Wagner builds around characters such as Sieglinde or Kundry. The book shows how attention to gesture suggests a new approach to the representation of gender in this repertoire, replacing aural analogies for voyeurism and objectification with a more specifically musical sense of how music can surround, propel, and animate the body on stage.
Ellen Rosand
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520249349
- eISBN:
- 9780520933279
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520249349.003.0009
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter places Monteverdi, the dramatist, within the context of the history of opera, as initiator of and participant in the grand tradition that links him with such figures as Handel and ...
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This chapter places Monteverdi, the dramatist, within the context of the history of opera, as initiator of and participant in the grand tradition that links him with such figures as Handel and Mozart, and especially his co-nazionale—and near namesake—at the other end of that tradition, Giuseppe Verdi. Although the modern Monteverdi revival came long after his death, Verdi, by the example of his last operas, may have prepared the way for that new appreciation, reaffirming the dramatic power of music which his Venetian predecessor had first demonstrated over three centuries earlier.Less
This chapter places Monteverdi, the dramatist, within the context of the history of opera, as initiator of and participant in the grand tradition that links him with such figures as Handel and Mozart, and especially his co-nazionale—and near namesake—at the other end of that tradition, Giuseppe Verdi. Although the modern Monteverdi revival came long after his death, Verdi, by the example of his last operas, may have prepared the way for that new appreciation, reaffirming the dramatic power of music which his Venetian predecessor had first demonstrated over three centuries earlier.
Steven Rings
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195384277
- eISBN:
- 9780199897001
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195384277.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition, History, Western
Chapter 2 introduces a Generalized Interval System (or GIS) that models intervals among heard scale degrees. A heard scale-degree is formalized as an ordered pair (sd, pc), in which sd is a sensation ...
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Chapter 2 introduces a Generalized Interval System (or GIS) that models intervals among heard scale degrees. A heard scale-degree is formalized as an ordered pair (sd, pc), in which sd is a sensation of scale-degree quality and pc is a pitch class. Relevant ideas from music cognition concerning tonal qualities (or qualia) are surveyed. The various sections of the chapter explore the formal and interpretive resources of the sd/pc GIS, including: familiar and exotic intervals among heard scale degrees; sd/pc sets and set-classes; keys; accidentals; and various species of transposition and inversion. The utility of these theoretical constructs is demonstrated in analytical vignettes on music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler.Less
Chapter 2 introduces a Generalized Interval System (or GIS) that models intervals among heard scale degrees. A heard scale-degree is formalized as an ordered pair (sd, pc), in which sd is a sensation of scale-degree quality and pc is a pitch class. Relevant ideas from music cognition concerning tonal qualities (or qualia) are surveyed. The various sections of the chapter explore the formal and interpretive resources of the sd/pc GIS, including: familiar and exotic intervals among heard scale degrees; sd/pc sets and set-classes; keys; accidentals; and various species of transposition and inversion. The utility of these theoretical constructs is demonstrated in analytical vignettes on music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler.
Abramo Basevi
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226094915
- eISBN:
- 9780226095073
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226095073.003.0021
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
This chapter analyzes Verdi's Aroldo, first performed in August 1857 at Rimini. The opera is nothing more than a reshuffled Stiffelio. Verdi made changes in the plot and the music due to the ...
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This chapter analyzes Verdi's Aroldo, first performed in August 1857 at Rimini. The opera is nothing more than a reshuffled Stiffelio. Verdi made changes in the plot and the music due to the difficulties created by censorship and by the bad public reception of Stiffelio. The main alteration in the plot was that the priest Stiffelio became the warrior Aroldo. With regard to the music, some things from Stiffelio were preserved in Aroldo and others were changed or added.Less
This chapter analyzes Verdi's Aroldo, first performed in August 1857 at Rimini. The opera is nothing more than a reshuffled Stiffelio. Verdi made changes in the plot and the music due to the difficulties created by censorship and by the bad public reception of Stiffelio. The main alteration in the plot was that the priest Stiffelio became the warrior Aroldo. With regard to the music, some things from Stiffelio were preserved in Aroldo and others were changed or added.
Charles Scribner III
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199795307
- eISBN:
- 9780199932894
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795307.003.0014
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
God made things perfectly, and Michelangelo presented them in idealized form in his sculpture and painting. The anguish Michelangelo suffered to create beautiful things spurred him on to create an ...
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God made things perfectly, and Michelangelo presented them in idealized form in his sculpture and painting. The anguish Michelangelo suffered to create beautiful things spurred him on to create an enormous number of beautiful shapes. His paintings of creation are mirrored in music in Haydn's grand oratorio The Creation, the writing of which was a deeply religious experience for Haydn. The early Church gradually chose “lovely” art and music as preferred ways to portray Christian belief. Church architecture found new ways to proclaim Christ as King and illustrate both his life and life with him in heaven. Caravaggio launched the age of the Baroque in Rome with his bold and brutal naturalism, portraying figures the way he saw them. In his paintings he provided wonderful, novel psychological interpretations of biblical accounts. Rubens also showed exquisite sensitivity to biblical accounts of the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ. Bernini combined art, architecture, and sculpture in many of his works to create a beautiful whole, and he was always careful to credit God for his inspirations. His Ecstasy of St. Teresa is a beautiful interpretation in marble of a sublime experience. Mozart and Verdi were great composers of religious music.Less
God made things perfectly, and Michelangelo presented them in idealized form in his sculpture and painting. The anguish Michelangelo suffered to create beautiful things spurred him on to create an enormous number of beautiful shapes. His paintings of creation are mirrored in music in Haydn's grand oratorio The Creation, the writing of which was a deeply religious experience for Haydn. The early Church gradually chose “lovely” art and music as preferred ways to portray Christian belief. Church architecture found new ways to proclaim Christ as King and illustrate both his life and life with him in heaven. Caravaggio launched the age of the Baroque in Rome with his bold and brutal naturalism, portraying figures the way he saw them. In his paintings he provided wonderful, novel psychological interpretations of biblical accounts. Rubens also showed exquisite sensitivity to biblical accounts of the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ. Bernini combined art, architecture, and sculpture in many of his works to create a beautiful whole, and he was always careful to credit God for his inspirations. His Ecstasy of St. Teresa is a beautiful interpretation in marble of a sublime experience. Mozart and Verdi were great composers of religious music.
Richard Osborne
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195181296
- eISBN:
- 9780199851416
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195181296.003.0031
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
In its original form, Mosè in Egitto is an Azione Tragico-Sacra, a biblical drama suitable for staging during Lent. As was the custom, Gioachino Rossini and his librettist, Andrea Leone Tottola, made ...
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In its original form, Mosè in Egitto is an Azione Tragico-Sacra, a biblical drama suitable for staging during Lent. As was the custom, Gioachino Rossini and his librettist, Andrea Leone Tottola, made the restriction palatable by grafting a secular narrative onto a sacred one. In this instance the story of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt is joined with Francesco Ringhieri’s 1760 romance L’Osiride. Thus a young Jewish girl, Elcia, falls in love with the Pharaoh’s son, Osiride. Like Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, it is a tale of the tension between love and duty, of disputed homelands, and of the counterpointing of the bonds of family and the bonds of country. For much of its length Mosè in Egitto has a guileless beauty about it, appropriate to the theme of young love and young nationhood, qualities which are not so much sacrificed as choked and smothered in the grandiose revision Rossini prepared for the Paris Opera in 1827.Less
In its original form, Mosè in Egitto is an Azione Tragico-Sacra, a biblical drama suitable for staging during Lent. As was the custom, Gioachino Rossini and his librettist, Andrea Leone Tottola, made the restriction palatable by grafting a secular narrative onto a sacred one. In this instance the story of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt is joined with Francesco Ringhieri’s 1760 romance L’Osiride. Thus a young Jewish girl, Elcia, falls in love with the Pharaoh’s son, Osiride. Like Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, it is a tale of the tension between love and duty, of disputed homelands, and of the counterpointing of the bonds of family and the bonds of country. For much of its length Mosè in Egitto has a guileless beauty about it, appropriate to the theme of young love and young nationhood, qualities which are not so much sacrificed as choked and smothered in the grandiose revision Rossini prepared for the Paris Opera in 1827.
Howard Pollack
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199791590
- eISBN:
- 9780199949625
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199791590.003.0019
- Subject:
- Music, History, American, Popular
This chapter discusses Blitzstein’s work as director, translator, and adapter from 1950 to the end of his life. This includes his supervision of a production of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan for which ...
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This chapter discusses Blitzstein’s work as director, translator, and adapter from 1950 to the end of his life. This includes his supervision of a production of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan for which Leonard Bernstein had written the music; his adaptation of Benjamin Britten’s Let’s Make an Opera for American audiences; his adaptations of Verdi’s La Traviata, Offenbach’s L’îsle de Tulipatan, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and Brecht’s Mother Courage, among other works. The adaptation of The Threepenny Opera, which starred Lotte Lenya and Scott Merrill, enjoyed special success; by the time of its close in 1961, it had broken the record for New York’s longest-running musical, while one of its songs, “Mack the Knife,” proved one of the great hits of the time, with recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin, and Ella Fitzgerald.Less
This chapter discusses Blitzstein’s work as director, translator, and adapter from 1950 to the end of his life. This includes his supervision of a production of J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan for which Leonard Bernstein had written the music; his adaptation of Benjamin Britten’s Let’s Make an Opera for American audiences; his adaptations of Verdi’s La Traviata, Offenbach’s L’îsle de Tulipatan, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and Brecht’s Mother Courage, among other works. The adaptation of The Threepenny Opera, which starred Lotte Lenya and Scott Merrill, enjoyed special success; by the time of its close in 1961, it had broken the record for New York’s longest-running musical, while one of its songs, “Mack the Knife,” proved one of the great hits of the time, with recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin, and Ella Fitzgerald.
Adrian Streete
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635238
- eISBN:
- 9780748652297
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635238.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
This chapter reports that both Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi were dominant presences in the European obsession with opera in the nineteenth century. An analysis of some complex confluences of ...
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This chapter reports that both Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi were dominant presences in the European obsession with opera in the nineteenth century. An analysis of some complex confluences of Shakespearean history, politics and performance is presented. The chapter then explores in detail the genesis and first performances of Otello. Some of the major recorded interpretations of the role of Otello during the twentieth century are reviewed. It also shows that the performance history of Otello is as contested and complex as the original play upon which Verdi and his team of collaborators drew. Today, the world's opera houses offer only one of many outlets for operatic performances. There are any number of iconic singers whose interpretations of the canonical Shakespearean operas either on recordings or on film deserve wider exposure and further examination beyond the remit of classical music and opera scholars.Less
This chapter reports that both Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi were dominant presences in the European obsession with opera in the nineteenth century. An analysis of some complex confluences of Shakespearean history, politics and performance is presented. The chapter then explores in detail the genesis and first performances of Otello. Some of the major recorded interpretations of the role of Otello during the twentieth century are reviewed. It also shows that the performance history of Otello is as contested and complex as the original play upon which Verdi and his team of collaborators drew. Today, the world's opera houses offer only one of many outlets for operatic performances. There are any number of iconic singers whose interpretations of the canonical Shakespearean operas either on recordings or on film deserve wider exposure and further examination beyond the remit of classical music and opera scholars.
Mary Ann Smart
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520239951
- eISBN:
- 9780520939875
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520239951.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
When Friedrich Nietzsche turned against Richard Wagner, one of his complaints was that Wagner was an incorrigible “man of the theater,” “the most enthusiastic mimomaniac” who ever existed. With this, ...
More
When Friedrich Nietzsche turned against Richard Wagner, one of his complaints was that Wagner was an incorrigible “man of the theater,” “the most enthusiastic mimomaniac” who ever existed. With this, Nietzsche was pointing (among other things) to Wagner's continuing attachment to an earlier model of gesture and stage movement, to the composer's affection for extended pantomime scenes and to his frequent reliance on small-scale coordination between music and gesture, both of which betray a hidden debt to the aesthetics of melodrama. One surprising result of retracing nineteenth-century operatic history in relation to gesture and gestural music is to unsettle the traditional opposition between Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, and to highlight the debt to French drama and to grand opera shared by these supposed antipodes of nineteenth-century operatic style. The bodies animated and transformed by the kinds of musical effects discussed here do not only belong to women; “mimomania” can confer authority equally on male and female characters. The appeal of this inquiry into opera's bodies is tightly entwined with the representation of gender.Less
When Friedrich Nietzsche turned against Richard Wagner, one of his complaints was that Wagner was an incorrigible “man of the theater,” “the most enthusiastic mimomaniac” who ever existed. With this, Nietzsche was pointing (among other things) to Wagner's continuing attachment to an earlier model of gesture and stage movement, to the composer's affection for extended pantomime scenes and to his frequent reliance on small-scale coordination between music and gesture, both of which betray a hidden debt to the aesthetics of melodrama. One surprising result of retracing nineteenth-century operatic history in relation to gesture and gestural music is to unsettle the traditional opposition between Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, and to highlight the debt to French drama and to grand opera shared by these supposed antipodes of nineteenth-century operatic style. The bodies animated and transformed by the kinds of musical effects discussed here do not only belong to women; “mimomania” can confer authority equally on male and female characters. The appeal of this inquiry into opera's bodies is tightly entwined with the representation of gender.
Mary Ann Smart
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520239951
- eISBN:
- 9780520939875
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520239951.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter begins with Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (1831) because a single aria from that opera exerted a powerful magnetism for Giuseppe Verdi. It looks at the conjunction between melodic ...
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This chapter begins with Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (1831) because a single aria from that opera exerted a powerful magnetism for Giuseppe Verdi. It looks at the conjunction between melodic climax and kneeling gesture in Verdi's career. One context for Verdi's kneeling scenes can be found in Enrico delle Sedie's 1885 treatise on operatic acting, the Estetica del canto e dell'arte melodrammatica. Given the kneeling gesture's roots in the lexicon of mélodrame, it is hardly surprising that a very similar pose appears in Verdi's own grand opera—although the scene for a kneeling soprano in Don Carlos (1867) is far less static and less semiotically transparent than the stock situations of mélodrame. Verdi's near-erasure of pulse and emphasis on consummation in the afterlife in both the Don Carlos and Aida (1871) duets leave behind early nineteenth-century aesthetics of sensibility, to move both toward a more “transcendent” musical style and toward a dramatic mode in which the body (and especially the female body) is more symbolic than concrete.Less
This chapter begins with Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (1831) because a single aria from that opera exerted a powerful magnetism for Giuseppe Verdi. It looks at the conjunction between melodic climax and kneeling gesture in Verdi's career. One context for Verdi's kneeling scenes can be found in Enrico delle Sedie's 1885 treatise on operatic acting, the Estetica del canto e dell'arte melodrammatica. Given the kneeling gesture's roots in the lexicon of mélodrame, it is hardly surprising that a very similar pose appears in Verdi's own grand opera—although the scene for a kneeling soprano in Don Carlos (1867) is far less static and less semiotically transparent than the stock situations of mélodrame. Verdi's near-erasure of pulse and emphasis on consummation in the afterlife in both the Don Carlos and Aida (1871) duets leave behind early nineteenth-century aesthetics of sensibility, to move both toward a more “transcendent” musical style and toward a dramatic mode in which the body (and especially the female body) is more symbolic than concrete.
Roger Parker
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520244184
- eISBN:
- 9780520931787
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520244184.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter focuses on Giuseppe Verdi's operas Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata. These works are among the earliest operas by any composer to have retained a place in the repertory since the ...
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This chapter focuses on Giuseppe Verdi's operas Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata. These works are among the earliest operas by any composer to have retained a place in the repertory since the moment of their arrival. It questions the tendency to group the three works together and highlights the similarities and differences among them.Less
This chapter focuses on Giuseppe Verdi's operas Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata. These works are among the earliest operas by any composer to have retained a place in the repertory since the moment of their arrival. It questions the tendency to group the three works together and highlights the similarities and differences among them.
Roger Parker
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520244184
- eISBN:
- 9780520931787
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520244184.003.0004
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter examines Giuseppe Verdi's opera Falstaff. It suggests that one of the notable aspects of Verdi's late compositional practice is that there emerged important discontinuities, both with ...
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This chapter examines Giuseppe Verdi's opera Falstaff. It suggests that one of the notable aspects of Verdi's late compositional practice is that there emerged important discontinuities, both with his previous methods and, arguably, within the works themselves. It evaluates Verdi's work in relation to Theodor W. Adorno's discussion and criticism on Richard Wagner's works. It also discusses the moral lessons in the different chapters of Falstaff.Less
This chapter examines Giuseppe Verdi's opera Falstaff. It suggests that one of the notable aspects of Verdi's late compositional practice is that there emerged important discontinuities, both with his previous methods and, arguably, within the works themselves. It evaluates Verdi's work in relation to Theodor W. Adorno's discussion and criticism on Richard Wagner's works. It also discusses the moral lessons in the different chapters of Falstaff.
Jason Thompson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9789774165993
- eISBN:
- 9781617976520
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774165993.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
Auguste Mariette went to Egypt to collect Coptic manuscripts for the Bibliothèque Nationale. He failed in that mission but made one of the most sensational Egyptological discoveries of the century, ...
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Auguste Mariette went to Egypt to collect Coptic manuscripts for the Bibliothèque Nationale. He failed in that mission but made one of the most sensational Egyptological discoveries of the century, the Serapeum at Saqqara. In 1858 he established Egypt's Antiquities Service and became its first director, a post that gave him an extraordinary level of authority over all antiquities in Egypt. Mariette's priorities were to protect Egypt's monuments, which he had seen damaged and lost at an alarming rate, and to clear the monuments from the accumulations of the ages. He established the Bulaq Museum, the precursor of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In his energetic efforts Mariette was assisted by several able individuals at the Antiquities Service and by his talented friend, the great German Egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch who benefitted in turn by the access that Mariette provided to the monuments. Mariette wrote the scenario and designed the costumes and backdrops for Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, which premiered in Cairo in 1871.Less
Auguste Mariette went to Egypt to collect Coptic manuscripts for the Bibliothèque Nationale. He failed in that mission but made one of the most sensational Egyptological discoveries of the century, the Serapeum at Saqqara. In 1858 he established Egypt's Antiquities Service and became its first director, a post that gave him an extraordinary level of authority over all antiquities in Egypt. Mariette's priorities were to protect Egypt's monuments, which he had seen damaged and lost at an alarming rate, and to clear the monuments from the accumulations of the ages. He established the Bulaq Museum, the precursor of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In his energetic efforts Mariette was assisted by several able individuals at the Antiquities Service and by his talented friend, the great German Egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch who benefitted in turn by the access that Mariette provided to the monuments. Mariette wrote the scenario and designed the costumes and backdrops for Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, which premiered in Cairo in 1871.
Abramo Basevi
Stefano Castelvecchi (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226094915
- eISBN:
- 9780226095073
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226095073.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Opera
Abramo Basevi published his study of Verdi's operas in Florence in 1859, in the middle of the composer's career. The first thorough, systematic examination of Verdi's operas, it covered the twenty ...
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Abramo Basevi published his study of Verdi's operas in Florence in 1859, in the middle of the composer's career. The first thorough, systematic examination of Verdi's operas, it covered the twenty works produced between 1842 and 1857—from Nabucco and Macbeth to Il trovatore, La traviata, and Aroldo. But while the Basevi's work is still widely cited and discussed—and nowhere more so than in the English-speaking world—no translation of the entire volume has previously been available. This book aims to provide a critical apparatus and commentary on Basevi's work. As a contemporary of Verdi and a trained musician, erudite scholar, and critic conversant with current and past operatic repertories, Basevi presented pointed discussion of the operas and their historical context, offering today's readers a unique window into many aspects of operatic culture, and culture in general, in Verdi's Italy. He wrote with precision on formal aspects, use of melody and orchestration, and other compositional features, which made his study an acknowledged model for the growing field of music criticism.Less
Abramo Basevi published his study of Verdi's operas in Florence in 1859, in the middle of the composer's career. The first thorough, systematic examination of Verdi's operas, it covered the twenty works produced between 1842 and 1857—from Nabucco and Macbeth to Il trovatore, La traviata, and Aroldo. But while the Basevi's work is still widely cited and discussed—and nowhere more so than in the English-speaking world—no translation of the entire volume has previously been available. This book aims to provide a critical apparatus and commentary on Basevi's work. As a contemporary of Verdi and a trained musician, erudite scholar, and critic conversant with current and past operatic repertories, Basevi presented pointed discussion of the operas and their historical context, offering today's readers a unique window into many aspects of operatic culture, and culture in general, in Verdi's Italy. He wrote with precision on formal aspects, use of melody and orchestration, and other compositional features, which made his study an acknowledged model for the growing field of music criticism.
Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226255590
- eISBN:
- 9780226255620
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226255620.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Later life is a fraught topic in our commercialized, anti-aging, death-denying culture. Where does creativity fit in? The canonical composers whose stories are told here—Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), ...
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Later life is a fraught topic in our commercialized, anti-aging, death-denying culture. Where does creativity fit in? The canonical composers whose stories are told here—Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), Richard Strauss (1864–1949), Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), and Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)—offer radically individual responses to that question. In their late years, each of these national icons wrote an opera around which coalesced for them major issues about their creativity and aging. While these and other late works helped them explore creatively their own aging and mortality, the composers nonetheless had to face a variety of challenges that came with their own aging—ranging from health issues to the critical expectations that accompany success. They also had to deal with the social, political and aesthetic changes of their times, including World Wars and the rise of musical modernism. By investigating their own attitudes to their aging and their creativity, their late compositions, and the critical reception of them, this book tells the stories of their different but creative ways of dealing with those changes, Each composer began his career in an individual manner; each also ended it in a unique way. It is the complexity of the interrelationship of aging and creativity in all its individuality that this book investigates.Less
Later life is a fraught topic in our commercialized, anti-aging, death-denying culture. Where does creativity fit in? The canonical composers whose stories are told here—Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), Richard Strauss (1864–1949), Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992), and Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)—offer radically individual responses to that question. In their late years, each of these national icons wrote an opera around which coalesced for them major issues about their creativity and aging. While these and other late works helped them explore creatively their own aging and mortality, the composers nonetheless had to face a variety of challenges that came with their own aging—ranging from health issues to the critical expectations that accompany success. They also had to deal with the social, political and aesthetic changes of their times, including World Wars and the rise of musical modernism. By investigating their own attitudes to their aging and their creativity, their late compositions, and the critical reception of them, this book tells the stories of their different but creative ways of dealing with those changes, Each composer began his career in an individual manner; each also ended it in a unique way. It is the complexity of the interrelationship of aging and creativity in all its individuality that this book investigates.
William Kinderman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780195366921
- eISBN:
- 9780199344864
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195366921.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition, History, Western
Klingsor’s kingdom represents the anti-Grail, and his chromatic music is pitted against the diatonic music of the Grail. This conflict is brought to a climax in the great scene between Parsifal and ...
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Klingsor’s kingdom represents the anti-Grail, and his chromatic music is pitted against the diatonic music of the Grail. This conflict is brought to a climax in the great scene between Parsifal and Kundry: as she delivers her poisoned kiss, a dissonant, chromatic contamination of the rising, aspiring head of the Communion theme conveys the dark forces at work. In responding to the kiss, Parsifal becomes an agent of the Grail and begins to act as a supernatural medium. The music of Act 2 has influenced other composers including Verdi and Mahler. The concluding music at Parsifal’s confrontation with Klingsor, with its collision of C major and B minor, was misunderstood by Adorno, but offers a superb example of Wagner’s use of tonal spaces to convey dramatic conflict.Less
Klingsor’s kingdom represents the anti-Grail, and his chromatic music is pitted against the diatonic music of the Grail. This conflict is brought to a climax in the great scene between Parsifal and Kundry: as she delivers her poisoned kiss, a dissonant, chromatic contamination of the rising, aspiring head of the Communion theme conveys the dark forces at work. In responding to the kiss, Parsifal becomes an agent of the Grail and begins to act as a supernatural medium. The music of Act 2 has influenced other composers including Verdi and Mahler. The concluding music at Parsifal’s confrontation with Klingsor, with its collision of C major and B minor, was misunderstood by Adorno, but offers a superb example of Wagner’s use of tonal spaces to convey dramatic conflict.
