The first full-length study of the last great era of Italian opera

Opera has long fascinated creative artists and audiences alike. It is often regarded as the pinnacle of high art, yet it is also shrouded in mystique. Understanding Italian Opera unravels its many layers by looking closely at five of the most enduring and emblematic Italian operas from Monteverdi to Puccini.

David Kimbell traces the history of Italian opera from the Renaissance to the early twentieth century.

Italian Opera in the 18th and 19th centuries was an experience unequaled anywhere else in the world. The unique emotion, flavor, and passion that existed have yet to be attained in any other country. Opera houses in Italy are the birthplace of this great art form. They represent its beauty and richness. More than just concrete, stone, glass, and wood, they are alive, each with a character and history of its own. This work recreates the social, political, architectural, and performance histories of each house by including eyewitness accounts from Italian newspapers, journals, and books of the time. It covers more than 50 Italian opera houses and festivals, organized by their city of origin and geographic region. Each chapter is a journey back in time, beginning with the first theaters and performances in the city and concluding with an architectural description of the principal theater and a practical information guide for visitors (including hotel recommendations). The operatic activities of the main theater, including inaugurations, important performances, and world premieres, are also covered. A photospread, along with brief descriptions of opera-related sites, including the birthplaces, dwellings, and museums of Italy's greatest composers, give an even more complete portrait of the art.

First published in 1988. Italy, the birthplace of opera in the late sixteenth century, has in recent decades seen remarkable and vital musical growth, with composers as diverse as Luciano Berio and Nino Rota, Luigi Nono and Sylvano Bussotti, Giacomo Manzoni, Bruno Maderna and Salvatore Sciarrino. The musical theatre has figured prominently in the work of Italian composers during this period, ranging from operas conceived in a traditional mode to works of a Music Theatre variety, and in style from popular to avant-garde. In this book Raymond Fearn surveys this Italian musico-theatrical phenomenon in the period since the Second World War, examining a wide range of works such as Nono's Intolleranza and Al Gran Sole Carico d'Amore, Berio's Passaggio and Un re in ascolto, Manzoni's Atomtod and La Sentenza and Castiglioni's Oberon and The King's Masque, and places these developments within a cultural and theatrical context

Winner of the 2007 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society and the 2007 Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. Divas and Scholars is a dazzling and beguiling account of how opera comes to the stage, filled with Philip Gossett’s personal experiences of triumphant—and even failed—performances and suffused with his towering and tonic passion for music. Writing as a fan, a musician, and a scholar, Gossett, the world's leading authority on the performance of Italian opera, brings colorfully to life the problems, and occasionally the scandals, that attend the production of some of our most favorite operas. Gossett begins by tracing the social history of nineteenth-century Italian theaters in order to explain the nature of the musical scores from which performers have long worked. He then illuminates the often hidden but crucial negotiations opera scholars and opera conductors and performers: What does it mean to talk about performing from a critical edition? How does one determine what music to perform when multiple versions of an opera exist? What are the implications of omitting passages from an opera in a performance? In addition to vexing questions such as these, Gossett also tackles issues of ornamentation and transposition in vocal style, the matters of translation and adaptation, and even aspects of stage direction and set design. Throughout this extensive and passionate work, Gossett enlivens his history with reports from his own experiences with major opera companies at venues ranging from the Metropolitan and Santa Fe operas to the Rossini Opera Festival at Pesaro. The result is a book that will enthrall both aficionados of Italian opera and newcomers seeking a reliable introduction to it—in all its incomparable grandeur and timeless allure.