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Operaby Edward O.D. Downes; Guy A. Marco
Routledge 2001; US$ 175.00Covering over 320 composers and 43 countries, this book will be invaluable to opera scholars, researchers and serious listeners throughout the world. more...
Operatic Stateby Ruth Bereson
Routledge 2002; US$ 120.00Bereson investigates the elite and privileged status of the closed-world of opera, and the way states have financed and supported it since its beginnings. more...
Carl Maria von Weber and the Search for a German Operaby Stephen C. Meyer
Indiana University Press 2003; US$ 31.95Stephen C. Meyer details the intricate relationships between the operas Der Freischütz and Euryanthe, and contemporary discourse on both the "Germany of the imagination" and the new nation itself. In so doing, he presents excerpts from a wide range of philosophical, political, and musical writings, many of which are little known and otherwise unavailable in English. Individual chapters trace the multidimensional concept of German and "foreign" opera through the 19th century. Meyer's study of Der Freischütz places the work within the context of emerging German nationalism, and a chapter on Euryanthe addresses the ... more...
Operettaby Richard Traubner
Routledge 2003; US$ 44.95Considered the classic history of this important musical theater form. Traubner's book, first published in 1983, is still recognized as the key history of the people and productions that made operetta a worldwide phenomenon. more...
Opera and Drama in Eighteenth-Century Londonby Ian Woodfield; Arthur Groos
Cambridge University Press 2001; US$ 62.00This book explores the cultural life of Italian opera in late eighteenth-century London. Through primary sources, many analysed for the first time, Ian Woodfield examines such issues as finances, recruitment policy, handling of singers and composers, links with Paris and Italy, and the role of women in opera management. more...
Mimomaniaby Mary Ann Smart
University of California Press 2004; US$ 26.95When 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. Mary Ann Smart suspects that Nietzsche may have seen and heard more than he realized. In Mimomania she takes his 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. As Smart demonstrates, this productive fusion of music and movement often arises when music forsakes the autonomy so prized by the Romantics to function mimetically, underlining the sighs of a Bellini heroine, for instance, or the... more...
Music Drama at the Paris Odéon, 1824?1828by Mark Everist
University of California Press 2002; US$ 60.00Parisian theatrical, artistic, social, and political life comes alive in Mark Everist's impressive institutional history of the Paris Odéon, an opera house that flourished during the Bourbon Restoration. Everist traces the complete arc of the Odéon's short but highly successful life from ascent to triumph, decline, and closure. He outlines the role it played in expanding operatic repertoire and in changing the face of musical life in Paris. Everist reconstructs the political power structures that controlled the world of Parisian music drama, the internal administration of the theater, and its relationship with composers and librettists, and with the city of Paris itself. His rich depiction of French cultural life and the artistic contexts... more...
Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement by Simon Alexander Morrison
University of California Press 2002; US$ 15.95An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement is a groundbreaking and imaginative treatment of the important yet neglected topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the nineteenth century and the compositions of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, this exceptionally insightful and well-researched book explores how Russian symbolist poets interpreted opera and prompted operatic innovation. more...
Verdi's AIDAby Burton D. Fisher
Opera Journeys Publishing 2001; US$ 19.95A comprehensive guide to Verdi's AIDA, featuring insightful and in depth Commentary and Analysis, a complete, newly translated Libretto with ItalianEnglish side-by side, and over 30 music highlight examples. more...
Bizet's CARMENby Burton D. Fisher
Opera Journeys Publishing 2001; US$ 19.95A comprehensive guide to Bizet's CARMEN, featuring insightful and in depth Commentary and Analysis, a complete, newly translated Libretto with French/English side-by side, and over 30 music highlight examples. more...