Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera

Leading scholars investigate the ways in which operas by nineteenth-century Italian composers have been reshaped and revived over time.

Roberta Montemorra Marvin (Edited by), Hilary Poriss (Edited by)

9780521889988, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 February 2010

302 pages, 10 tables 45 music examples
25.4 x 17.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.74 kg

"Marvin and Poriss have brought together a fascinating group of essays which presents the interested reader with much food for thought."
-Richard LeSueur,Ann Arbor

Operatic works by Italian composers of the nineteenth century have undergone countless transformations since their premieres, shifting shape in response to a variety of new geographic, temporal, technological, and performative contexts. These enduring works by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, and their contemporaries have myriad stories to tell. Fashions and Legacies reconstructs a selection of these stories, exploring ways in which operatic works have been reshaped and revived throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. While focusing on how these works have been altered, the thirteen contributors in this book also respond to fundamental questions: how has this music retained - or sacrificed - its powerful messages in the face of deconstruction and recontextualization over time and place? What happens to these operas once they have escaped control of their authors? The contributions of singers, stage directors, conductors, and other theatrical personalities stand front and center of the volume.

1. Introduction: Italian opera's fashions and legacies Hilary Poriss
2. Viardot sings Handel (with thanks to George Sand, Chopin, Meyerbeer, Gounod, and Julius Rietz) Ellen T. Harris
3. Partners in rhyme: Alphonse Royer, Gustave Vaëz, and foreign opera in Paris during the July Monarchy Mark Everist
4. Verdian opera in the Victorian parlor Roberta Montemorra Marvin
5. I falsi Puritani: the opera's early history in Italy Fabrizio Della Seta
6. To the ear of the amateur: performing Ottocento opera piecemeal Hilary Poriss
7. Peeping at pachyderms: convergences of sex and music in France around 1800 Jeffrey Kallberg
8. Aida and nine readings of 'empire' Ralph P. Locke
9. Comic sights: stage directions in Luigi Ricci's autograph scores Francesco Izzo
10. Staging and form in Giuseppe Verdi's Otello Andreas Giger
11. Stanislavski's La bohème (1927) David B. Rosen
12. What is tradition? Will Crutchfield
13. Epilogue: the art of 'translation' John Mauceri.

Subject Areas: Opera [AVGC9], Music [AV]