Nineteenth-century Italian Opera from Rossini to Puccini

Nineteenth-century Italian Opera from Rossini to Puccini PDF

Author: Danièle Pistone

Publisher: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13:

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Intended for the performer and general music lover as well as for students and musicologists, this three-part retrospective of Italian opera of the romantic era focuses on the settings, characters, and styles of the librettos; the voices, orchestration, and formal structure of the music; and the contemporary exigencies of the performance itself, moving from behind-the-scenes administration and artistry to the front-and-center interpreters and the audiences they played to. More than 120 musical examples support the text, the majority of them in an alphabetical appendix of "Famous Melodies", which includes the themes of popular arias along with captions detailing the operas, the composers, the acts in which the melodies occur, and the characters who sing them. The book also includes appendices of main characters, celebrated singers and conductors, and principal librettists; a glossary; and a note on Italian pronunciation. Numerous illustrations and tables, an exhaustive topical bibliography, and a select, current CD discography round out this informative introduction to opera's golden age.

The Italian Traditions & Puccini

The Italian Traditions & Puccini PDF

Author: Nicholas Baragwanath

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2011-07-08

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 0253001668

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“A major contribution . . . not only to Puccini studies but also to the study of nineteenth-century Italian opera in general.” —Nineteenth-Century Music Review In this groundbreaking survey of the fundamentals, methods, and formulas that were taught at Italian music conservatories during the 19th Century, Nicholas Baragwanath explores the compositional significance of tradition in Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Boito, and, most importantly, Puccini. Taking account of some 400 primary sources, Baragwanath explains the varying theories and practices of the period in light of current theoretical and analytical conceptions of this music. The Italian Traditions and Puccini offers a guide to an informed interpretation and appreciation of Italian opera by underscoring the proximity of archaic traditions to the music of Puccini. “Dense and challenging in its detail and analysis, this work is an important addition to the growing corpus of Puccini studies. . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice

Music in the Present Tense

Music in the Present Tense PDF

Author: Emanuele Senici

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-11-13

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 022666354X

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In the early 1800s, Rossini’s operas permeated Italy, from the opera house to myriad arrangements heard in public and private. But after Rossini stopped composing, a sharp decline in popularity drove most of his works out of the repertory. In the past half century, they have made a spectacular return to operatic stages worldwide, but this recent fame has not been accompanied by a comparable critical reevaluation. Emanuele Senici’s new book provides a fresh look at the motives behind the Rossinian furore and its aftermath by examining the composer’s works in the historical context in which they were conceived, performed, seen, heard, and discussed. Situating the operas firmly within the social practices, cultural formations, ideological currents, and political events of early nineteenth-century Italy, Senici reveals Rossini’s dramaturgy as a radically new and specifically Italian reaction to the epoch-making changes witnessed in Europe at the time. The first book-length study of Rossini’s Italian operas to appear in English, Music in the Present Tense exposes new ways to explore nineteenth-century music and addresses crucial issues in the history of modernity, such as trauma, repetition, and the healing power of theatricality.

Italian Opera in English

Italian Opera in English PDF

Author: John Graziano

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 1135552304

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First Published in 1994. This is volume 3 of a 16-volume series providing comprehensive set of works from a full century of musical theatre in the United States of America. The work in this volume represents Italian opera in English though the works have British origins and strong French influences. This volume discusses various operatic interpretations of the Cinderella story, from its French operatic debut in 1810 to the most famous operas from Perrault and Rossini.

Puccini's Turandot

Puccini's Turandot PDF

Author: William Ashbrook

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-12-25

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1400866677

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Unfinished at Puccini's death in 1924, Turandot was not only his most ambitious work, but it became the last Italian opera to enter the international repertory. In this colorful study two renowned music scholars demonstrate that this work, despite the modern climate in which it was written, was a fitting finale for the centuries-old Great Tradition of Italian opera. Here they provide concrete instances of how a listener might encounter the dramatic and musical structures of Turandot in light of the Italian melodramma, and firmly establish Puccini's last work within the tradition of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. In a summary of the sounds, sights, and symbolism of Turandot, the authors touch on earlier treatments of the subject, outline the conception, birth, and reception of the work, and analyze its coordinated dramatic and musical design. Showing how the evolution of the libretto documents Puccini's reversion to large musical forms typical of the Great Tradition in the late nineteenth century, they give particular attention to his use of contrasting Romantic, modernist, and two kinds of orientalist coloration in the general musical structure. They suggest that Puccini's inability to complete the opera resulted mainly from inadequate dramatic buildup for Turandot's last-minute change of heart combined with an overly successful treatment of the secondary character.

Reader's Guide to Music

Reader's Guide to Music PDF

Author: Murray Steib

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-02

Total Pages: 928

ISBN-13: 1135942625

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The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).

National Traditions in Nineteenth-Century Opera, Volume I

National Traditions in Nineteenth-Century Opera, Volume I PDF

Author: Steven Huebner

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1351915851

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This volume covers opera in Italy, France, England and the Americas during the long nineteenth century (1789-1914). The book is divided into four sections that are thematically, rather than geographically, conceived: Places-essays centering on contexts for operatic culture; Genres and Styles-studies dealing with the question of how operas in this period were put together; Critical Studies of individual works, exemplifying particular critical trends; and Performance.