xxv + 122 pp.

The three Mozart/Da Ponte operas offer a inexhaustible wellspring for critical reflection, possessing a complexity and equivocation common to all great humane works. They have the potential to reflect and refract whatever locus of contemporaneity may be the starting point for enquiry. Thus, even postmodern and postmillennial concerns, far from seeming irrelevant to these operas, are instead given new perspectives by them, while the music and the dramatic situations have the multivalency to accept each refreshed palette of interpretation without loss of their essential character. These operas seem perennially new. In exploring the evergreen qualities of Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, the authors of this book do not shun approaches that have foundations in established theory, but refract them through such problems as the tension between operatic tradition and psychological realism, the coexistence of multiple yet equal plots, and the antagonism between the tenets of tradition and the need for self-actualization. In exploring such themes, the authors not only illuminate new aspects of Mozart's operatic compositions but also probe the nature of musical analysis itself.

This collection of sixteen essays, drawn from across the arts, humanities and social sciences, represents a cross-disciplinary exploration of some of the ways in which identities - whether of individuals, communities, or nations - are constructed, maintained and contested. It is introduced by the editor, Sam Wiseman, with a preface by Regenia Gagnier, and the essays are subdivided into four sections: Performative Identities; British Identities; Ethnic, Bodily and Sexual Identities; and Visual ...

In this definitive biography, Wolfgang Hildesheimer demythologizes Mozart, revealing him as a flawed and puzzling human being, but a matchless artist. Hildesheimer's fresh approach to the music itself, his telling quotations from Mozart's letters (Mozart was one of the greatest and most outrageous of letter writers), and his sympathetic but unsentimental insights make this a remarkably readable portrait of one of the most popular composers of all time. Book jacket.

With its powerful combination of music and theatre, opera is one of the most complex and yet immediate of all art forms. Once opera was studied only as 'a stepchild of musicology', but in the past two decades opera studies have experienced an explosion of energy with the introduction of new approaches drawn from disciplines such as social anthropology and performance studies to media theory, genre theory, gender studies and reception history. Written by leading scholars in opera studies today, this Companion offers a wide-ranging guide to a rapidly expanding field of study and new ways of thinking about a rich and intriguing art form, placing opera back at the centre of our understanding of Western culture over the past 400 years. This book gives lovers of opera as well as those studying the subject a comprehensive approach to the many facets of opera in the past and today.

Dorothea Link examines singers’ voices and casting practices in late eighteenth-century Italian opera as exemplified in Vienna’s court opera from 1783 to 1791. The investigation into the singers’ voices proceeds on two levels: understanding the performers in terms of the vocal-dramatic categories employed in opera at the time; and creating vocal profiles for the principal singers from the music composed expressly for them. In addition, Link contextualizes the singers within the company in order to expose the court opera's casting practices. Authoritative and insightful, The Italian Opera Singers in Mozart's Vienna offers a singular look at a musical milieu and a key to addressing the performance-practice problem of how to cast the Mozart roles today.

Benser explores the kaleidoscopic world of twenty-first-century pianism through a series of extended interviews with eight major pianists. Interviewees talk with Benser about such matters as their first experiences at the piano, the meaning of musicianship to them, and the joys and difficulties of a professional career doing what they love.

Theodore Fenner’s Opera in London offers a vivid portrait of the operatic and cultural life of a London under the influence of Romanticism as perceived by the English press and the public who viewed the performances. In part 1, Fenner discusses the rise of the periodical press in early nineteenth-century London and the critics of these publications who reviewed opera performances, such as Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt. Fenner lists in the appendixes for part 1 the leading periodicals—including the Althenaeum, Examiner, and Spectator,— the critics, and reviews by leading critics. Fenner, in part 2, examines the productions of Italian opera in London at the King’s Theatre, including the problems in theatre management and financing; the varied nature of the audience; the operas and performances— those that were popular and those that failed in the words of the critics and the responses of the audience; the singers; and themes and attitudes of the period as expressed by the critics. In part 3, Fenner explores the same topics for the English operas presented at Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and other playhouses. Parts 2 and 3 also contain extensive appendixes listing seasonal and annual performances and reviews, productions by composers and by librettists, comic and serious productions, operas by known playwrights, and minor singers. Forty-eight illustrations of singers, critics, performances, composers, and theatres add to the richness of this study.

Discusses voice categories and the soubrette voice category. Presents seventeen arias in vocal score, together with the opera story, a historical perspective, a musical perspective, and a dramatic perspective for each. Word-by-word translations and phonetic readings are given where appropriate.