No musical partnership has enjoyed greater success during its time span than that of Gilbert and Sullivan in the later 19th century. No fewer than a dozen Savoy operas are still regularly performed. The operas present audiences with splendidly rich and satirical evocations of Victorian England and its society: the prime subject matter of this ......
A powerful memoir from one of the world's most successful orchestral conductors, whose life story, talent and dedication to music is an inspiration to read. The book documents an insider's view of the complex relationships between an opera house, its orchestra, the conductor and singers.
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 ......
One of the most innovative composers of his generation, Mikel Rouse is known for a trilogy of operas that includes Dennis Cleveland and a gift for superimposing pop vernaculars onto avant-garde music. This memoir channels Rouse's high energy personality into an exuberant account of the precarity and pleasures of artistic creation. Raconteur and ......
Avidly Reads Opera is a love letter to the music and those who love it, complete with playlists, a crowdsourced tip sheet from ultra-fans to newbies, and stories of the turbulent, genre-busting, and often hilarious history of opera and its audiences.
Scholars devoted to analysis of Richard Wagner's operas and music-dramas have long noted his numerous comparisons between their characters and plots in his letters, essays, and recorded remarks. Yet no one has previously attempted to assess their implications for our systematic understanding of his art. Following Heise's allegorical interpretation ......
How Wagner's Three Canonical Operas (The Flying Dutchman, Tannhaeuser, and Lohengrin) Paved the Way to his Mature Music Dramas
Scholars of Richard Wagner's works have long noted his numerous comparisons between their characters and plots in his letters, essays, and recorded remarks. Yet no one has previously attempted to assess their implications for our understanding of his art systematically. Paul Heise's quest to grasp the allegorical unity underlying Wagner's ......
Community and Artistry in Nineteenth-Century California and Beyond
In the mid-nineteenth century, Chinese opera theater arrived as one of the significant performing art forms in California. Nancy Yunhwa Rao excavates and contextualizes the important history of Chinese Opera Theater, bringing to light the ways it became woven into the financial, political, social, and family life in California and beyond. ......
One of the most innovative composers of his generation, Mikel Rouse is known for a trilogy of operas that includes Dennis Cleveland and a gift for superimposing pop vernaculars onto avant-garde music. This memoir channels Rouse's high energy personality into an exuberant account of the precarity and pleasures of artistic creation. Raconteur and ......