Sudden Death In Opera

Author : Michael Trimble,Dale Hesdorffer,Robert Ignatius Letellier
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2023-04-22
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1527597954

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Sudden Death in Opera by Michael Trimble,Dale Hesdorffer,Robert Ignatius Letellier Pdf

An aspect of dying in opera, rarely observed or commented on, is Sudden Unexpected Death. There are many deaths in this melodramatic genre: most follow expected causes like murder, suicide, or old age. This book explores those deaths which occur without obvious natural causes. These are often central to the overall drama of the opera, representing denouements forming the epiphany of the story and the apotheosis for the audience. The book identifies 50 operas where such events occur, exploring the role of the dramatis personae, the circumstances of their dying, and specific themes that emerge. These include a preponderance of females, especially in the 19th century, who die mainly at the end of the operas, often in the context of tragedy. It charts the growing awareness in the medical sciences of the unconscious forces driving human behaviour, including liminal mental states and trances, which influenced these operas and continue to affect human behaviour to the present day. In addition, the changing philosophies that are intertwined with operatic narratives, in particular stemming from Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, are important in the book's exegesis, as is the special role of Wagner's compositions. This leads to the exploration of recurrent concepts such as the Liebestod, the ewig Weibliche and redemption itself.

Author : Michael Trimble,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Dale Hesdorffer
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 641 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2021-09-28
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781527575356

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Sudden Death in Opera by Michael Trimble,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Dale Hesdorffer Pdf

An aspect of dying in opera, rarely observed or commented on, is Sudden Unexpected Death. There are many deaths in this melodramatic genre: most follow expected causes like murder, suicide, or old age. This book explores those deaths which occur without obvious natural causes. These are often central to the overall drama of the opera, representing denouements forming the epiphany of the story and the apotheosis for the audience. The book identifies 50 operas where such events occur, exploring the role of the dramatis personae, the circumstances of their dying, and specific themes that emerge. These include a preponderance of females, especially in the 19th century, who die mainly at the end of the operas, often in the context of tragedy. It charts the growing awareness in the medical sciences of the unconscious forces driving human behaviour, including liminal mental states and trances, which influenced these operas and continue to affect human behaviour to the present day. In addition, the changing philosophies that are intertwined with operatic narratives, in particular stemming from Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, are important in the book’s exegesis, as is the special role of Wagner’s compositions. This leads to the exploration of recurrent concepts such as the Liebestod, the ewig Weibliche and redemption itself.

Author : Lorenzo Bianconi,Giorgio Pestelli
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2003-11
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780226045924

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Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth by Lorenzo Bianconi,Giorgio Pestelli Pdf

The History of Italian Opera marks the first time a team of scholars has worked together to investigate the entire Italian operatic tradition, rather than limiting its focus to 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. This sixth volume in the series centers on the sociological and critical aspects of opera in Italy, considering the art in the context of an Italian literary and cultural canon rarely revealed in English and American studies. In its six chapters, contributors survey critics' changing attitudes toward opera over several centuries, trace the evolution of formal conventions among librettists, explore the historical relationships between opera and Italian literature, and examine opera's place in Italian popular and national culture. In perhaps the volume's most striking contribution, German scholar Carl Dahlouse offers his most important statement on the dramaturgy of opera.

Author : Linda Hutcheon,Michael Hutcheon
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 1996-01-01
Category : Music
ISBN : 0803273185

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Opera by Linda Hutcheon,Michael Hutcheon Pdf

An interdisciplinary study of the interconnected subtexts of erotic attraction, illness, and death in several 19th- and 20th-century operatic texts. This is an examination of how opera uses the singing body to give voice to the suffering person. It presents medical and literary sources to make sense of the changing depiction of disease in opera.

Author : Linda Hutcheon,Michael Hutcheon
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2009-06-30
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780674038912

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Opera by Linda Hutcheon,Michael Hutcheon Pdf

Our modern narratives of science and technology can only go so far in teaching us about the death that we must all finally face. Can an act of the imagination, in the form of opera, take us the rest of the way? Might opera, an art form steeped in death, teach us how to die, as this provocative work suggests? In "Opera: The Art of Dying" a physician and a literary theorist bring together scientific and humanistic perspectives on the lessons on living and dying that this extravagant and seemingly artificial art imparts. Contrasting the experience of mortality in opera to that in tragedy, the Hutcheons find a more apt analogy in the medieval custom of "contemplatio mortis"--a dramatized exercise in imagining one's own death that prepared one for the inevitable end and helped one enjoy the life that remained. From the perspective of a contemporary audience, they explore concepts of mortality embodied in both the common and the more obscure operatic repertoire: the terror of death (in Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites"); the longing for death (in Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde"); preparation for the good death (in Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung"); and suicide (in Puccini's "Madama Butterfly"). In works by Janacek, Ullmann, Berg, and Britten, among others, the Hutcheons examine how death is made to feel logical and even right morally, psychologically, and artistically--how, in the art of opera, we rehearse death in order to give life meaning.

Author : Katherine K. Preston
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 649 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780199371655

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Opera for the People by Katherine K. Preston Pdf

Opera for the People is an in-depth examination of a forgotten chapter in American social and cultural history: the love affair that middle-class Americans had with continental opera (translated into English) in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Author Katherine Preston reveals how-contrary to the existing historiography on the American musical culture of this period-English-language opera not only flourished in the United States during this time, but found its success significantly bolstered by the support of women impresarios, prima-donnas, managers, and philanthropists who provided financial backing to opera companies. This rich and compelling study details the lives and professional activities of several important players in American postbellum opera, including manager Effie Ober, philanthropist Jeannette Thurber, and performers/artistic directors Caroline Richings, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Clara Louise Kellogg, and "the people's prima donna" Emma Abbott. Drawing from an impressive range of primary sources, including contemporaneous music and theater periodicals, playbills, memoirs, librettos, scores, and reviews and commentary on the performances in digitized newspapers, Preston tells the story of how these and other women influenced the activities of some of the more than one hundred opera companies touring the United States during the second half of the 19th century, performing opera in English for a diverse range of audiences. Countering a pervasive and misguided historical understanding of opera reception in the United States-unduly influenced by modern attitudes about the genre as elite, exclusive, expensive, and of interest only to a niche market-Opera for the People demonstrates the important (and hitherto unsuspected) place of opera in the rich cornucopia of late-century American musical theatre, which would eventually lead to the emergence of American musical comedy.

Author : Nicholas Tarling
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2015-04-23
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781442245440

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Orientalism and the Operatic World by Nicholas Tarling Pdf

Western opera is a globalized and globalizing phenomenon and affords us a unique opportunity for exploring the concept of “orientalism,” the subject of literary scholar Edward Said’s modern classic on the topic. Nicholas Tarling’s Orientalism and the Operatic World places opera in the context of its steady globalization over the past two centuries. In this important survey, Tarling first considers how the Orient appears on the operatic stage in Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States before exploring individual operas according to the region of the “Orient” in which the work is set. Throughout, Tarling offers key insights into such notable operas as George Frideric Handel’s Berenice, Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, Giacomo Puccini’s MadamaButterfly, Pietro Mascagni’s Iris, and others. Orientalism and the Operatic World argues that any close study of the history of Western opera, in the end, fails to support the notion propounded by Said that Westerners inevitably stereotyped, dehumanized, and ultimately sought only to dominate the East through art. Instead, Tarling argues that opera is a humanizing art, one that emphasizes what humanity has in common by epic depictions of passion through the vehicle of song. Orientalism and the Operatic World is not merely for opera buffs or even first-time listeners. It should also interest historians of both the East and West, scholars of international relations, and cultural theorists.

Author : Dominic Symonds,Pamela Karantonis
Publisher : Rodopi
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9789401209502

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The Legacy of Opera. by Dominic Symonds,Pamela Karantonis Pdf

The Legacy of Opera: Reading Music Theatre as Experience and Performance is the first volume in a series of books compiled by the Music Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. The series explores the widening of the meaning of the term “music theatre” to reflect new ways of thinking about this creative practice beyond the genres circumscribed by discourses of theatre studies and musicology. Specifically it interrogates the experience of music theatre and its performance energies for contemporary audiences who engage with the emergence of new expressive idioms, new performative paradigms, new technologies and new ways of thinking. The Legacy of Opera considers some of the ways in which opera’s influence has informed our understanding of and approach to the musical stage, from the multiple perspectives of the ideological, historical, corporeal and artistic. With contributions from international scholars in music theatre, its chapters explore both canonic and experimental examples of music theatre, spanning a period from the seventeenth century to the present day.

Author : Richard Wagner
Publisher : Alma Books
Page : 358 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2018-01-01
Category : Music
ISBN : 9780714544663

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Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg by Richard Wagner Pdf

Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg is the only comedy among Richard Wagner's mature works. Unusually for Wagner, it is set in a historically specific time and place, sixteenth-century Nuremberg, and tells of a song contest among the town's guildsmen. It nevertheless explores the same themes of renewal, renunciation and human love as Wagner's other great music dramas. The finely drawn humanity of its principal characters and the brilliance of its musical invention make it one of the most rewarding operas in the repertory.The guide contains articles on the complex historical and political background to the opera, a detailed examination of its musical structure and a survey of its sometimes contentious performance history. Further articles explore some of the work's roots in the poetry of Schiller and the vexed question of the extent to which Wagner's virulent anti-Semitism may be said to be present in the opera. The guide also includes the full libretto with English translation, sixteen pages of illustrations, a musical thematic guide, a discography, a bibliography and DVD and website guides.Contains:Snapshots of Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg, John DeathridgeThe Music: A Commentary, Arnold WhittallHans Sachs and Friedrich Schiller, Tim BlanningThe Beckmesser Problem, Hans Rudolf VagetThe Performance Legacy of Die Meistersinger, Aine SheilDie Meistersinger von Nuernberg: Poem by Richard WagnerThe Mastersingers of Nurenberg: Libretto by Peter Branscombe

Author : Andrew R. Walkling
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2016-08-25
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781317099703

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Masque and Opera in England, 1656-1688 by Andrew R. Walkling Pdf

Masque and Opera in England, 1656–1688 presents a comprehensive study of the development of court masque and through-composed opera in England from the mid-1650s to the Revolution of 1688–89. In seeking to address the problem of generic categorization within a highly fragmentary corpus for which a limited amount of documentation survives, Walkling argues that our understanding of the distinctions between masque and opera must be premised upon a thorough knowledge of theatrical context and performance circumstances. Using extensive archival and literary evidence, detailed textual readings, rigorous tabular analysis, and meticulous collation of bibliographical and musical sources, this interdisciplinary study offers a host of new insights into a body of work that has long been of interest to musicologists, theatre historians, literary scholars and historians of Restoration court and political culture, but which has hitherto been imperfectly understood. A companion volume will explore the phenomenon of "dramatick opera" and its precursors on London’s public stages between the early 1660s and the first decade of the eighteenth century.

Author : National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 946 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 1899
Category : Incunabula
ISBN : UCD:31175035486953

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Index-catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office, United States Army by National Library of Medicine (U.S.) Pdf

Author : Anna Selby
Publisher : Pen and Sword
Page : 158 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2011-06-13
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781844685349

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The Pocket Guide to Opera by Anna Selby Pdf

Everything you need to know about opera in one handy guide. Part of our best-selling Pocket Guide series, The Pocket Guide to Opera contains A-Z synopses of operas and biographies of the characters, lyricists and composers. The book features the history of opera, setting it in the context of its day and discussing the influence of world events and influences such as the Freemasons and the composers patrons. With factboxes highlighting surprising, little known and often quirky operatic facts, this fascinating book is a must-buy guide for everyone who loves opera.

Author : Rebecca Harris-Warrick
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 505 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2016-10-27
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781107137899

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Dance and Drama in French Baroque Opera by Rebecca Harris-Warrick Pdf

Examines the evolving practices in music, librettos, choreographed dance, and staging throughout the history of French Baroque opera.

Author : Franklin Mesa
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 474 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2015-05-07
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781476605371

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Opera by Franklin Mesa Pdf

This encyclopedia includes entries for 1,153 world premiere (and other significant) performances of operas in Europe, the United States, Latin America and Russia. Entries offer details about key persons, arias, interesting facts, and date and location of each premiere. There is a biographical dictionary with 1,288 entries on historical and modern operatic singers, composers, librettists, and conductors. Fully indexed and with a bibliography.

Author : Jane W. Davidson,Michael Halliwell,Stephanie Rocke
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2020-12-29
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781000299861

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Opera, Emotion, and the Antipodes Volume I by Jane W. Davidson,Michael Halliwell,Stephanie Rocke Pdf

There can be little doubt that opera and emotion are inextricably linked. From dramatic plots driven by energetic producers and directors to the conflicts and triumphs experienced by all associated with opera’s staging to the reactions and critiques of audience members, emotion is omnipresent in opera. Yet few contemplate the impact that the customary cultural practices of specific times and places have upon opera’s ability to move emotions. Taking Australia as a case study, this two-volume collection of extended essays demonstrates that emotional experiences, discourses, displays and expressions do not share universal significance but are at least partly produced, defined, and regulated by culture. Spanning approximately 170 years of opera production in Australia, the authors show how the emotions associated with the specific cultural context of a nation steeped in egalitarian aspirations and marked by increasing levels of multiculturalism have adjusted to changing cultural and social contexts across time. Volume I adopts an historical, predominantly nineteenth-century perspective, while Volume II applies historical, musicological, and ethnological approaches to discuss subsequent Australian operas and opera productions through to the twenty-first century. With final chapters pulling threads from the two volumes together, Opera, Emotion, and the Antipodes establishes a model for constructing emotion history from multiple disciplinary perspectives.