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1bobopera First Message
Hi all,
I'm a newbie on LibraryThing.com, and this is my first post to the group. I look forward to chatting with you all in the future about opera!
Speaking of the future, as a librarian I'm constantly trying to stay on top of new and forthcoming titles in the area of music. So, I thought I'd share with you three opera-related books I've flagged that are due out in the next couple of months. Annotations, by the way, are from Books in Print.
1. Wagner and Russia, by Rosamund Bartlett. Cambridge University Press, May 2007. This book explores the immense influence of the composer Richard Wagner on 19th- and 20th-century Russian writers, musicians and artists. It contains a history of the production of Wagner's works in Russia and the Soviet Union (by directors including Meyerhold and Eisenstein), an account of Wagner's visit to Russia in 1863, and a detailed investigation of the impact of his music and ideas on the Russian modernist movement. The last two chapters explore the fate of Wagner's works after the 1917 Revolution, when he was first hailed but then reviled, and finally rehabilitated during the years of glasnost.
2. Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky, by David J. Levin. University of Chicago Press. May 2007. What happens when operas that are comfortably ensconced in the canon are thoroughly rethought and radically recast on stage? What does a staging do to our understanding of an opera, and of opera generally? While a stage production can disrupt a work that was thought to be established, David J. Levin here argues that the genre of opera is itself unsettled, and that the performance of operas, at its best, clarifies this condition by bringing opera’s restlessness and volatility to life. Unsettling Opera explores a variety of fields, considering questions of operatic textuality, dramaturgical practice, and performance theory. Levin opens with a brief history of opera production, opera studies, and dramatic composition, and goes on to consider in detail various productions of the works of Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, and Alexander Zemlinsky.
3. The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines, and Opera, by Edward Muir. Harvard University Press, May 2007. In the summer of 1591 students from the University of Padua attacked the local Jesuit college and successfully appealed to the Venetian Senate to intervene on behalf of the university. When the Jesuits were expelled from the Venetian dominion a few years later, religious censorship was virtually eliminated. The result was a remarkable era of cultural innovation that promoted free inquiry in the face of philosophical and theological orthodoxy, advocated libertine morals, critiqued the tyranny of aristocratic fathers over their daughters, and expanded the theatrical potential of grand opera...In Venice some of Cremonini's students founded the Accademia degli Incogniti (Academy of the Unknowns), one of whose most notorious members was the brilliant polemicist Ferrante Pallavicino. The execution of Pallavicino for his writings attacking Pope Urban VIII silenced the more outrageous members of the Incogniti, who soon turned to writing libretti for operas. The final phase of the Venetian culture wars pitted commercial opera, with its female performers and racy plot lines, against the decorous model of Jesuit theater. The libertine inclinations of the Incogniti suffuse many of the operas written in the 1640s, especially Monteverdi's masterpiece, L'Incoronazione di Poppea.
I'm a newbie on LibraryThing.com, and this is my first post to the group. I look forward to chatting with you all in the future about opera!
Speaking of the future, as a librarian I'm constantly trying to stay on top of new and forthcoming titles in the area of music. So, I thought I'd share with you three opera-related books I've flagged that are due out in the next couple of months. Annotations, by the way, are from Books in Print.
1. Wagner and Russia, by Rosamund Bartlett. Cambridge University Press, May 2007. This book explores the immense influence of the composer Richard Wagner on 19th- and 20th-century Russian writers, musicians and artists. It contains a history of the production of Wagner's works in Russia and the Soviet Union (by directors including Meyerhold and Eisenstein), an account of Wagner's visit to Russia in 1863, and a detailed investigation of the impact of his music and ideas on the Russian modernist movement. The last two chapters explore the fate of Wagner's works after the 1917 Revolution, when he was first hailed but then reviled, and finally rehabilitated during the years of glasnost.
2. Unsettling Opera: Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky, by David J. Levin. University of Chicago Press. May 2007. What happens when operas that are comfortably ensconced in the canon are thoroughly rethought and radically recast on stage? What does a staging do to our understanding of an opera, and of opera generally? While a stage production can disrupt a work that was thought to be established, David J. Levin here argues that the genre of opera is itself unsettled, and that the performance of operas, at its best, clarifies this condition by bringing opera’s restlessness and volatility to life. Unsettling Opera explores a variety of fields, considering questions of operatic textuality, dramaturgical practice, and performance theory. Levin opens with a brief history of opera production, opera studies, and dramatic composition, and goes on to consider in detail various productions of the works of Wagner, Mozart, Verdi, and Alexander Zemlinsky.
3. The Culture Wars of the Late Renaissance: Skeptics, Libertines, and Opera, by Edward Muir. Harvard University Press, May 2007. In the summer of 1591 students from the University of Padua attacked the local Jesuit college and successfully appealed to the Venetian Senate to intervene on behalf of the university. When the Jesuits were expelled from the Venetian dominion a few years later, religious censorship was virtually eliminated. The result was a remarkable era of cultural innovation that promoted free inquiry in the face of philosophical and theological orthodoxy, advocated libertine morals, critiqued the tyranny of aristocratic fathers over their daughters, and expanded the theatrical potential of grand opera...In Venice some of Cremonini's students founded the Accademia degli Incogniti (Academy of the Unknowns), one of whose most notorious members was the brilliant polemicist Ferrante Pallavicino. The execution of Pallavicino for his writings attacking Pope Urban VIII silenced the more outrageous members of the Incogniti, who soon turned to writing libretti for operas. The final phase of the Venetian culture wars pitted commercial opera, with its female performers and racy plot lines, against the decorous model of Jesuit theater. The libertine inclinations of the Incogniti suffuse many of the operas written in the 1640s, especially Monteverdi's masterpiece, L'Incoronazione di Poppea.
2lilithcat
Hi, and welcome to the group!
Thanks for the tip on the new books. The last one looks especially interesting to me. I've just been reading John Julius Norwich's A History of Venice, which touches on a couple of the issues mentioned.
I'll have to take a look at Levin's book, too. The whole concept of updating and restaging operas (and plays) is an interesting one, with loud voices on both sides. I come down firmly in the middle. I've seen marvelous restagings (the Chicago Opera Theatre's placement of Cosi in the modern club scene worked very well), and others that stunk up the house.
Thanks for the tip on the new books. The last one looks especially interesting to me. I've just been reading John Julius Norwich's A History of Venice, which touches on a couple of the issues mentioned.
I'll have to take a look at Levin's book, too. The whole concept of updating and restaging operas (and plays) is an interesting one, with loud voices on both sides. I come down firmly in the middle. I've seen marvelous restagings (the Chicago Opera Theatre's placement of Cosi in the modern club scene worked very well), and others that stunk up the house.
