Author: Dorothea Link
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252053656
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 459
Book Description
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 profiles for the principal singers from the music composed expressly for them. In addition, Link contextualizes the singers within the company in order to expose the court opera's casting practices. Authoritative and insightful, The Italian Opera Singers in Mozart's Vienna offers a singular look at a musical milieu and a key to addressing the performance-practice problem of how to cast the Mozart roles today.
Author: Dorothea Link
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252053656
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 459
Book Description
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 profiles for the principal singers from the music composed expressly for them. In addition, Link contextualizes the singers within the company in order to expose the court opera's casting practices. Authoritative and insightful, The Italian Opera Singers in Mozart's Vienna offers a singular look at a musical milieu and a key to addressing the performance-practice problem of how to cast the Mozart roles today.
Author: Mary Hunter
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822750
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
Mozart's comic operas are among the masterworks of Western civilization, and yet the musical environment in which Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte wrote these now-popular operas has received little critical attention. In this richly detailed book, Mary Hunter offers a sweeping, synthetic view of opera buffa in the lively theatrical world of late-eighteenth-century Vienna. Opera buffa (Italian-language comic opera) persistently entertained audiences at a time when Joseph was striving for a German national theater. Hunter attributes opera buffa's success to its ability to provide "sheer" pleasure and hence explores how the genre functioned as entertainment. She argues that opera buffa, like mainstream film today, projects a social world both recognizable and distinct from reality. It raises important issues while containing them in the "merely entertaining" frame of the occasion, as well as presenting them as a series of easily identifiable dramatic and musical conventions. Exploring nearly eighty comic operas, Hunter shows how the arias and ensembles convey a multifaceted picture of the repertory's social values and habits. In a concluding chapter, she discusses Cos" fan tutte as a work profoundly concerned with the conventions of its repertory and with the larger idea of convention itself and reveals the ways Mozart and da Ponte pointedly converse with their immediate contemporaries.
Author: Sir Nicholas Kenyon
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571268692
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Why is Mozart the best known and most popular of all the great Western classical composers? As the 250th anniversary of his birth approaches, his reputation stands higher than ever before. This lively new Pocket Guide assesses what Mozart means to us today, and explores why his music is so enduringly valued by listeners. The Guide aims to tell the general reader and listener in concise form all they need to know in order to listen to and enjoy Mozart's music - it will introduce a new generation of concert-goers and record-listeners to all his key works in forms from opera to symphony, concerto to song. In a crisp, sharp style, with extensive recommendations of good performances and recordings, Nicholas Kenyon shows how Mozart has turned a different face to every age that has performed his music and has communicated with unique. Separating the Mozart myth and the Mozart industry from the realities of his superb music, the book also asks key questions: How did Mozart compose? What did he look like? What did he think? How should we perform his music today? There will also be a brief calendar of Mozart's life, a musical glossary and a who's who of key figures in his life.
Author: Mary Du Mont
Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group
ISBN: 9780313304132
Category : Da Ponte, Lorenzo
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
This reference guide provides access to almost 1,000 books, book chapters, articles, and dissertations about the three Mozart-Da Ponte operas, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi fan tutte. Mozart and Da Ponte collaborated on these operas between 1786 and 1791. The literature detailed in this volume includes material published from Mozart's death to the present. Following an introduction to the operas, the bibliography section lists the literature by works in general and by each of the three operas. A discography groups entries by opera and original recording date. This guide will appeal to music and opera scholars. As an essential research tool, sections are cross-referenced throughout. Separate author, title, and subject indexes complete the volume.
Author: Simon Keefe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316850838
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The vibrant intellectual, social and political climate of mid eighteenth-century Europe presented opportunities and challenges for artists and musicians alike. This book focuses on Mozart the man and musician as he responds to different aspects of that world. It reveals his views on music, aesthetics and other matters; on places in Austria and across Europe that shaped his life; on career contexts and environments, including patronage, activities as an impresario, publishing, theatrical culture and financial matters; on engagement with performers and performance, focusing on Mozart's experiences as a practicing musician; and on reception and legacy from his own time through to the present day. Probing diverse Mozartian contexts in a variety of ways, the contributors reflect the vitality of existing scholarship and point towards areas primed for further study. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars of late eighteenth-century music and for Mozart aficionados and music lovers in general.
Author: West Riding Professor of Music Julian Rushton
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0195182642
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 327
Book Description
A concise biography of a musical genius combines a well-researched life of Mozard the composer with an introduction to his many works, in a study of one of the few musicians in history to have written undisputed masterpieces in every genre of his time.
Author: JohnA. Rice
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351567888
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 580
Book Description
The study of opera in the second half of the eighteenth century has flourished during the last several decades, and our knowledge of the operas written during that period and of their aesthetic, social, and political context has vastly increased. This volume explores opera and operatic life of the years 1750-1800 through a selection of articles intended to represent the last few decades of scholarship in all its excitement and variety.
Author: Laura Williams Macy
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195337654
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 649
Book Description
Covering over 1500 singers from the birth of opera to the present day, this marvelous volume will be an essential resource for all serious opera lovers and an indispensable companion to the enormously successful Grove Book of Operas. The most comprehensive guide to opera singers ever produced, this volume offers an alphabetically arranged collection of authoritative biographies that range from Marion Anderson (the first African American to perform at the Met) to Benedict Zak (the classical tenor and close friend and colleague of Mozart). Readers will find fascinating articles on such opera stars as Maria Callas and Enrico Caruso, Ezio Pinza and Fyodor Chaliapin, Lotte Lehmann and Jenny Lind, Lily Pons and Luciano Pavarotti. The profiles offer basic information such as birth date, vocal style, first debut, most memorable roles, and much more. But these articles often go well beyond basic biographical information to offer colorful portraits of the singer's personality and vocal style, plus astute evaluations of their place in operatic history and many other intriguing observations. Many entries also include suggestions for further reading, so that anyone interested in a particular performer can explore their life and career in more depth. In addition, there are indexes of singers by voice type and by opera role premiers. The articles are mostly drawn from the acclaimed Grove Music Online and have been fully revised, and the book is further supplemented by more than 40 specially commissioned articles on contemporary singers. A superb new guide from the first name in opera reference, The Grove Book of Opera Singers is a lively and authoritative work, beautifully illustrated with color and black-and-white pictures. It is an essential volume--and the perfect gift--for opera lovers everywhere.
Author: Otto Jahn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108064841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 463
Book Description
The 1882 three-volume English translation of the 1867 second edition of a landmark biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91).
Author: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Musicians
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
