Author: Henry W. SimonPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
100 Great Operas and Their Stories
Author: Henry W. SimonThe Story of a Hundred Operas
Author: Felix MendelsohnPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Operas
Languages : en
Pages : 328
Book Description
Sing Me a Story
Author: Jane RosenbergPublisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 9780500278734
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Book Description
An illustrated retelling of the plots of fifteen well-known operas.
Understanding the Women of Mozart's Operas
Author: Kristi Brown-MontesanoPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520385799
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
Is The Marriage of Figaro just about Figaro? Is Don Giovanni’s story the only one—or even the most interesting one—in the opera that bears his name? For generations of critics, historians, and directors, it’s Mozart’s men who have mattered most. Too often, the female characters have been understood from the male protagonist’s point of view or simply reduced on stage (and in print) to paper cutouts from the age of the powdered wig and the tightly cinched corset. It’s time to give Mozart’s women—and Mozart’s multi-dimensional portrayals of feminine character—their due. In this lively book, Kristi Brown-Montesano offers a detailed exploration of the female roles in Mozart’s four most frequently performed operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte. Each chapter takes a close look at the music, libretto text, literary sources, and historical factors that give shape to a character, re-evaluating common assumptions and proposing fresh interpretations. Brown-Montesano views each character as the subject of a story, not merely the object of a hero’s narrative or the stock figure of convention. From amiable Zerlina, to the awesome Queen of the Night, to calculating Despina, all of Mozart’s women have something unique to say. These readings also tackle provocative social, political, and cultural issues, which are used in the operas to define positive and negative images of femininity: revenge, power, seduction, resistance, autonomy, sacrifice, faithfulness, class, maternity, and sisterhood. Keenly aware of the historical gap between the origins of these works and contemporary culture, Brown-Montesano discusses how attitudes about such concepts—past and current—influence our appreciation of these fascinating representations of women.
Stories from the Great Metropolitan Operas
Author: Helen DikePublisher:
ISBN: 9781494056629
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
This is a new release of the original 1943 edition.
Mozart and His Operas
Author: David CairnsPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520228986
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
A noted music critic weaves a brilliantly engaging narrative which puts Mozart's operas in the context of his life, showing how they illuminate his creativity as a whole.
A History of Opera
Author: Carolyn AbbatePublisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393089533
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 648
Book Description
“The best single volume ever written on the subject, such is its range, authority, and readability.”—Times Literary Supplement Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their “effervescent, witty” (Die Welt, Germany) retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the musical and dramatic means by which it communicates, and its role in society. Now with an expanded examination of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century, this “lucid and sweeping” (Boston Globe) narrative explores the tensions that have sustained opera over four hundred years: between words and music, character and singer, inattention and absorption. Abbate and Parker argue that, though the genre’s most popular and enduring works were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to change the viewer— physically, emotionally, intellectually—with its enduring power.
100 Great Operas And Their Stories
Author: Henry W. SimonPublisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385054483
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 562
Book Description
An invaluable guide for both casual opera fans and aficionados, 100 Great Operas is perhaps the most comprehensive and enjoyable volume of opera stories ever written. From La Traviata to Aïda, from Carmen to Don Giovanni, here are the plots of the world’s best-loved operas, told in an engaging, picturesque, and readable manner. Written by noted opera authority Henry W. Simon, this distinctive reference book contains act-by-act descriptions of 100 operatic works ranging from the historic early seventeenth century masterpieces of Monteverdi to the modern classics of Gian-Carlo Menotti. In addition to highlighting the most important aspects of each opera, the author discusses the main characters, the famous turnings of plot, and the most significant arias. Here, too, is a wealth of anecdotes concerning literary background, past performances and stars, and production problems of the great operas.
Her Stories
Author: Elana LevinePublisher: Duke University Press Books
ISBN: 9781478007661
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic, creative, technological, social, and cultural institution. In Her Stories, Elana Levine draws on archival research and her experience as a longtime soap fan to provide an in-depth history of the daytime television soap opera as a uniquely gendered cultural form and a central force in the economic and social influence of network television. Closely observing the production, promotion, reception, and narrative strategies of the soaps, Levine examines two intersecting developments: the role soap operas have played in shaping cultural understandings of gender and the rise and fall of broadcast network television as a culture industry. In so doing, she foregrounds how soap operas have revealed changing conceptions of gender and femininity as imagined by and reflected on the television screen.
Author: