Review: The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handel's Operatic Stage, by Suzanne Aspden

Abstract

Book Review| April 01 2016 Review: The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handel's Operatic Stage, by Suzanne Aspden The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handel's Operatic Stage, by Suzanne Aspden. Cambridge Studies in Opera. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xv, 291 pp. Nathan Link Nathan Link NATHAN LINK is NEH Associate Professor of Music at Centre College. His research explores opera's unique methods of storytelling, and his monograph on Handel's operas is nearing completion. He coedited the collection Word, Image, and Song (University of Rochester Press, 2013), and his writings have appeared in Opera Quarterly, the Journal of the American Library Association, and the Göttinger Händel Beiträge. In 2015 he received the Governor's Award for the top arts educator in Kentucky. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2016) 69 (1): 241–247. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2016.69.1.241 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Nathan Link; Review: The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handel's Operatic Stage, by Suzanne Aspden. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2016; 69 (1): 241–247. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2016.69.1.241 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search The Rival Sirens: Performance and Identity on Handel's Operatic Stage is an ambitious investigation into the construction of opera singers’ public and private personae in early eighteenth-century London. Suzanne Aspden explores the well-known but often misunderstood rivalry between sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni during their time together at the Royal Academy of Music, investigating the complex mechanism by which performers influenced the processes of operatic composition, production, and reception. In the course of the book's five chapters she offers provocative interpretations of each of Handel's five operas composed for the two singers—Alessandro (1726), Admeto (1727), Riccardo primo (1727), Siroe (1728), and Tolomeo (1728). At the same time, she analyzes the ways in which perceptions of the singers, both on and off the stage, were affected by circumstances ranging from practical exigencies, to the social construction of gender, to emerging philosophies of human subjectivity. At the heart of the... You do not currently have access to this content.