Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Operas
Languages : en
Pages : 664
Book Description
Opera Premieres
Author: Grand Opera
Author: Charles AffronPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520958977
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 469
Book Description
The Metropolitan has stood among the grandest of opera companies since its birth in 1883. Tracing the offstage/onstage workings of this famed New York institution, Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron tell how the Met became and remains a powerful actor on the global cultural scene. In this first new history of the company in thirty years, each of the chronologically sequenced chapters surveys a composer or a slice of the repertoire and brings to life dominant personalities and memorable performances of the time. From the opening night Faust to the recent controversial production of Wagner’s "Ring," Grand Opera is a remarkable account of management and audience response to the push and pull of tradition and reinvention. Spanning the decades between the Gilded Age and the age of new media, this story of the Met concludes by tipping its hat to the hugely successful "Live in HD" simulcasts and other twenty-first-century innovations. Grand Opera’s appeal extends far beyond the large circle of opera enthusiasts. Drawing on unpublished documents from the Metropolitan Opera Archives, reviews, recordings, and much more, this richly detailed book looks at the Met in the broad context of national and international issues and events.
Opera After the Zero Hour
Author: Emily Richmond PollockPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190063769
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
Opera After the Zero Hour: The Problem of Tradition and the Possibility of Renewal in Postwar West Germany presents opera as a site for the renegotiation of tradition in a politically fraught era of rebuilding. Though the "Zero Hour" put a rhetorical caesura between National Socialism and postwar West Germany, the postwar era was characterized by significant cultural continuity with the past. With nearly all of the major opera houses destroyed and a complex relationship to the competing ethics of modernism and restoration, opera was a richly contested art form, and the genre's reputed conservatism was remarkably multi-faceted. Author Emily Richmond Pollock explores how composers developed different strategies to make new opera "new" while still deferring to historical conventions, all of which carried cultural resonances of their own. Diverse approaches to operatic tradition are exemplified through five case studies in works by Boris Blacher, Hans Werner Henze, Carl Orff, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and Werner Egk. Each opera alludes to a distinct cultural or musical past, from Greek tragedy to Dada, bel canto to Berg. Pollock's discussions of these pieces draw on source studies, close readings, unpublished correspondence, institutional history, and critical commentary to illuminate the politicized artistic environment that influenced these operas' creation and reception. The result is new insight into how the particular opposition between a conservative genre and the idea of the "Zero Hour" motivated the development of opera's social, aesthetic, and political value after World War II.
Opera Premieres
Author: Charles H. ParsonsPublisher: Lewiston, N.Y. : Edwin Mellen Press
ISBN:
Category : Actors
Languages : en
Pages : 694
Book Description
Operas in English
Author: Margaret Ross GriffelPublisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810883252
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1015
Book Description
Although many opera dictionaries and encyclopedias are available, very few are devoted exclusively to operas in a single language. In this revised and expanded edition of Operas in English: A Dictionary, Margaret Ross Griffel brings up to date her original work on operas written specifically to an English text (including works both originally prepared in English, as well as English translations). Since its original publication in 1999, Griffel has added nearly 800 entries to the 4,300 from the original volume, covering the world of opera in the English language from 1634 through 2011. Listed alphabetically by letter, each opera entry includes alternative titles, if any; a full, descriptive title; the number of acts; the composer’s name; the librettist’s name, the original language of the libretto, and the original source of the text, with the source title; the date, place, and cast of the first performance; the date of composition, if it occurred substantially earlier than the premiere date; similar information for the first U.S. (including colonial) and British (i.e., in England, Scotland, or Wales) performances, where applicable; a brief plot summary; the main characters (names and vocal ranges, where known); some of the especially noteworthy numbers cited by name; comments on special musical problems, techniques, or other significant aspects; and other settings of the text, including non-English ones, and/or other operas involving the same story or characters (cross references are indicated by asterisks). Entries also include such information as first and critical editions of the score and libretto; a bibliography, ranging from scholarly studies to more informal journal articles and reviews; a discography; and information on video recordings. Griffel also includes four appendixes, a selective bibliography, and two indexes. The first appendix lists composers, their places and years of birth and death, and their operas included in the text as entries; the second does the same for librettists; the third records authors whose works inspired or were adapted for the librettos; and the fourth comprises a chronological listing of the A–Z entries, including as well as the date of first performance, the city of the premiere, the short title of the opera, and the composer. Griffel also include a main character index and an index of singers, conductors, producers, and other key figures.
Opera
Author: Franklin MesaPublisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476605378
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 477
Book Description
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.
Opera Premiere Reviews and Re-assessments
Author: Charles H. ParsonsPublisher: Edwin Mellen Press
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 156
Book Description
A multi-volume set giving detailed information on every aspect of opera - over 100,000 entries. Improves on Steiger's Opernlexikon by including two additional data-categories for each work (language of text and literary sources) and by covering composers who have appeared since the end-date of Steiger's work (1934).
The Opera Lover's Companion
Author: Charles OsbornePublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300123739
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 648
Book Description
Written by a well-known authority, this book consists of 175 entries that set some of the most popular operas within the context of their composer's career, outline the plot, discuss the music, and more.
Provincional Theater and Its Opera
Author: Jiří KopeckýPublisher: Vydavatelství Filozofické fakulty Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci
ISBN: 8087895509
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 368
Book Description
This monograph is a model essay on the functioning of a municipal German-language theatre, and it introduces a new view into research led by both theatre scientists and musicologists on the European scene. The book is conceived as social history of a citizen's cultural institution and interprets a wide range of problematic themes which we meet to this day in the everyday practice of municipal theatres.
Opera Indigene: Re/presenting First Nations and Indigenous Cultures
Author: Pamela KarantonisPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317085418
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 398
Book Description
The representation of non-Western cultures in opera has long been a focus of critical inquiry. Within this field, the diverse relationships between opera and First Nations and Indigenous cultures, however, have received far less attention. Opera Indigene takes this subject as its focus, addressing the changing historical depictions of Indigenous cultures in opera and the more contemporary practices of Indigenous and First Nations artists. The use of 're/presenting' in the title signals an important distinction between how representations of Indigenous identity have been constructed in operatic history and how Indigenous artists have more recently utilized opera as an interface to present and develop their cultural practices. This volume explores how operas on Indigenous subjects reflect the evolving relationships between Indigenous peoples, the colonizing forces of imperial power, and forms of internal colonization in developing nation-states. Drawing upon postcolonial theory, ethnomusicology, cultural geography and critical discourses on nationalism and multiculturalism, the collection brings together experts on opera and music in Canada, the Americas and Australia in a stimulating comparative study of operatic re/presentation.