Sentimental Opera
Questions of Genre in the Age of Bourgeois Drama

Castelvecchi presents a critical re-evaluation of the operatic genre system and the cult of sensibility in the age of Mozart.

Stefano Castelvecchi (Author)

9781108461832, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 March 2018

297 pages, 13 b/w illus. 17 music examples
24.5 x 17 x 1.6 cm, 0.54 kg

'A valuable contribution not only to the study of late eighteenth-century opera but to our awareness of the priorities, absorptions and obsessions of cultured Europe on the eve of the French Revolution.' The Times Literary Supplement

Sentimental Opera is a study of the relationship between opera and two major phenomena of eighteenth-century European culture - the cult of sensibility and the emergence of bourgeois drama. A thorough examination of social and cultural contexts helps to explain the success of operas such as Paisiello's Nina as well as the extreme emotional reactions of their audiences. Like their counterparts in drama, literature and painting, these works brought to the fore serious contemporary problems including the widespread execution of deserters, the treatment of the insane, and anxieties relative to social and familial roles. They also developed a specifically operatic version of the dominant language of sensibility. This wide-ranging study involves such major cultural figures as Goldoni, Diderot and Mozart, while refining our understanding of the theatrical genre system of their time.

Preface
A prologue on genre
1. Pamela goes to the opera
2. The emergence of bourgeois drama
3. The codification of bourgeois drama
4. Opera as drame
5. Sensibility and the moral cure
6. A sentimental opera
7. Sentimental, anti-sentimental
8. Avenues
Appendix: Bartolomeo Benincasa's preface to Il disertore (1784).

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], European history [HBJD], Western "classical" music [AVGC]