OPERA LIBRETTI OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: Essays on the Libretto as Enlightenment Text
| Author: | Gay-White, Pamela | |
| Year: | 2015 | |
| Pages: | 252 | |
| ISBN: | 1-4955-0300-3 978-1-4955-0300-9 | |
| Price: | $199.95 + shipping | |
| (Click the PayPal button to buy) | ||
This work of essays explores and interrogates the libretto’s role as revolutionary genre during the Enlightenment and mise en abime of linguistic liberation, while focusing on specific ways its evolution reflected Enlightenment thought on the nature of music, text, and the individual. Especially, welcome are explorations of texts by Diderot and Rousseau, as well as topics addressing readership of libretti, influence on musical performance, and theoretical strategies challenging conventional concepts of representation.
Reviews
“Indeed, scholars today may well know more about the circumstances surrounding an opera’s creation than did many of the people involved with the original work. Yet it remains a challenge – one this book goes a long way toward meeting to experience an opera as it would have been experienced by its earliest audiences, not only aurally and visually but also within the context of social and political life.”
-Alfred E. Lemmon,
Musicologist and Head of Research,
Williams Research Center of The Historic New Orleans Collection
-Alfred E. Lemmon,
Musicologist and Head of Research,
Williams Research Center of The Historic New Orleans Collection
Table of Contents
Foreword by Alfred E. Lemmon
Acknowledgements / Introduction
CHAPTER 1:
Forsaking all ‘Others’: Marriage and the Birth of Comedy in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Platée
By Marcie Ray
CHAPTER 2:
Rousseau and the Operatic Sentimental
By Pamela Gay-White
Introduction
Le Devin du Village
Pygmalion
Daphnis et Chloé
CHAPTER 3:
The Pasha Does Not Sing: Enlightenment Themes and Their Musical Treatment in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail
By Laurel Zeiss
Our Truly German Emperor is Now Establishing a German Opera
“Too many notes, too Rich for our Ears:” Musical Extravagance
Aufklárung: The Music of Self-Determination and Transformation
“The Subject is Turkish:” Orientalism and Otherness
“A Person in a Violent Rage oversteps all Bounds of Order… He no Longer Knows Himself:” “Turkish” Music and Unreason.
“Bound to Make an Effect:” Pragmatic Aesthetics and the Final Scenes
CHAPTER 4:
Beaumarchais’ “Tarare”:
Courtly Art and Radical Enlightenment
By Daren Hodson
Introduction
The Preface- Eudemonistic Aesthetics
The Prologue – Materialism, Pleasure and Happiness
A Eudemonistic Politics
Conclusion
CHAPTER 5:
Il matrimonio segreto: Marriage Options in Venetian Comic Opera
By Andrienne Ward
CHAPTER 6:
“La Tosca” or The Perfect Anti-18th Century Libretto
By Susan Vandiver Nicassio
The Plot and the Characters
A Nineteenth-Century Homage to Enlightenment Opera?
Love and Relationships
Rescue Operas
Dramme Giocose, or Cheerful Dramas
Final Scene
The End
APPENDIX
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
Acknowledgements / Introduction
CHAPTER 1:
Forsaking all ‘Others’: Marriage and the Birth of Comedy in Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Platée
By Marcie Ray
CHAPTER 2:
Rousseau and the Operatic Sentimental
By Pamela Gay-White
Introduction
Le Devin du Village
Pygmalion
Daphnis et Chloé
CHAPTER 3:
The Pasha Does Not Sing: Enlightenment Themes and Their Musical Treatment in Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail
By Laurel Zeiss
Our Truly German Emperor is Now Establishing a German Opera
“Too many notes, too Rich for our Ears:” Musical Extravagance
Aufklárung: The Music of Self-Determination and Transformation
“The Subject is Turkish:” Orientalism and Otherness
“A Person in a Violent Rage oversteps all Bounds of Order… He no Longer Knows Himself:” “Turkish” Music and Unreason.
“Bound to Make an Effect:” Pragmatic Aesthetics and the Final Scenes
CHAPTER 4:
Beaumarchais’ “Tarare”:
Courtly Art and Radical Enlightenment
By Daren Hodson
Introduction
The Preface- Eudemonistic Aesthetics
The Prologue – Materialism, Pleasure and Happiness
A Eudemonistic Politics
Conclusion
CHAPTER 5:
Il matrimonio segreto: Marriage Options in Venetian Comic Opera
By Andrienne Ward
CHAPTER 6:
“La Tosca” or The Perfect Anti-18th Century Libretto
By Susan Vandiver Nicassio
The Plot and the Characters
A Nineteenth-Century Homage to Enlightenment Opera?
Love and Relationships
Rescue Operas
Dramme Giocose, or Cheerful Dramas
Final Scene
The End
APPENDIX
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX