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Focusing on the age of Giselle at the Paris Opera (from the 1830s through the 1840s), this book looks at the structural and thematic relationship between ballet and opera. It argues that an understanding of both the genres - and of nineteenth-century theater-going culture in general - may be gained by examining them within the same framework.

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Considers the nature of operatic performance and the acoustic images of performance present in operas from Monteverdi to Ravel. This book argues that operatic works are indelibly bound to the contingency of live singing, playing, and staging. It explores a spectrum of attitudes towards musical performance.

(Hardback)

Features essays that give insights on Verdian analysis and criticism, and does so in a way that responds both to an opera-goer's love of musical drama and to a scholar's concern for critical trends. This title explores works like Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La forza del destino, and Falstaff from a variety of angles.

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An exploration of Jacques Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann". It investigates the political climate of the 1870's that influenced the composer's vision and the reception of his last work. Drawing upon insights, it considers how the opera's music and libretto took shape within a literary and theatrical tradition.

(Paperback)

The book offers deep-seated explanations for opera's enduring fascination in European elite culture and suggests some of the profound difficulties that have unsettled this fascination since the time of Wagner.

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One of the foremost composers of the French Baroque operatic tradition, Rameau is often cited for his struggle to steer lyric tragedy away from its strict Lullian form, inspired by spoken tragedy, and toward a more expressive musical style. In this fresh exploration of Rameau's compositional aesthetic, Charles Dill depicts a much more complicated f

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Well-known for leading audiences to a new appreciation of Verdi as a subtle and elaborate musical thinker, Pierluigi Petrobelli here turns his attention to the intriguing question of how musical theater works. In this collection of lively, penetrating essays, Petrobelli analyzes specific operas, mainly by Verdi, in terms of historical context, musi

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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 despite the modern climate in which the work was written, it was a fitting finale for the centuries-old Great Tradition of Italian opera.

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Explores the relationship between aesthetics and anti-Semitism in two controversial landmarks in German culture. This book argues that Richard Wagner's opera cycle "Der Ring des Nibelungen" and Fritz Lang's 1920s film "Die Nibelungen" exploits contrasts between good and bad aesthetics to address the question of what is German and what is not.

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It has long been argued that opera is all about sex. This work explores the impact of this sexual obsession, and of the power relations that come with it, on the music, words, and staging of opera. It combines readings of specific scenes with efforts to situate these musical moments within the observed historical contexts.

(Hardback)

Offers a view of opera buffa in the theatrical world of late-eighteenth-century Vienna. This book attributes opera buffa's success to its ability to provide 'sheer' pleasure and hence explores how the genre functioned as entertainment. It shows how the arias and ensembles convey a multifaceted picture of the repertory's social values and habits.

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Who 'speaks' to us in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", in Wagner's operas, in a Mahler symphony This title opens nineteenth-century operas and instrumental works to new interpretations as the author explores the voices projected by music.

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Grover-Friedlander argues that filmed operas such as Zeffirelli's Otello and Friedrich's Falstaff show the impossibility of a direct transformation of the operatic into the cinematic.

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That Wagner conceived of himself creatively as both man and woman is central to an understanding of his life and art. So argues Jean-Jacques Nattiez in this richly insightful work, where he draws from semiology, music criticism, and psychoanalysis to explore such topics as Wagner's theories of music drama, his anti-Semitism, and his psyche. Wagner