Early Opera Research Articles

Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism and National Culture: Public Culture in Hamburg 1700-1933 by Peter Uwe Hohendahl (review)

MLR, 100.2, 2005 575 One issue that is left open is the very nature of political drama. The implicit defi? nition that it is 'politically committed' (p. 2) is not broad enough to bear the range of examples on offer.Elsewhere, the suggestion that the personal is the political requires more development if it is to expand the reader's understanding. A more detailed in? vestigation of form as political would have been welcome. That said, the virtues of this study?its undergraduate-friendly introductions to a wide range of prominent and more obscure works, the helpful contextual passages, the detailed endnotes?maintain the value of the book as an extremely useful accompaniment for students and those interested in the shape and manifestations of German drama in the last two decades. University College Dublin David Barnett Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism and National Culture: Public Culture in Hamburg iyoo1933 . Ed. by Peter Uwe Hohendahl. (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 69) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2003. 231pp. ?36. ISBN 90-420-1185-8. In a famous 1964 lecture, Percy Ernst Schramm suggested that Hamburg was a unique case in German history: an island of republican virtue that did not share in the absolutist and authoritarian traditions of the rest of Germany. According to Schramm, the city's mercantile vitality gave Hamburg's citizens an international perspective and generated a fierce determination to preserve the city's independence and to maintain the rights of the citizenry to active participation in government. The same attitudes, he suggested, were reflected in a unique cultural scene that was characterized by pri? vate initiatives and by a cosmopolitan and non-national outlook. Finally, an important implication of Schramm's argument was the assumption that the foundations laid in the early modern period sustained Hamburg's liberal traditions and its cosmopolitan culture through both the Second and Third Reichs. This stimulating collection ofessays re-examines the Hamburg myth. Mary Lindemann emphasizes the limitations of political participation in the eighteenth century. Jost Hermand and Katherine Aaslestad document the subtle transformation of com? munal republicanism around 1800. In response to the French Revolution, and to the propagandistic activities of Jacobin enthusiasts locally, the urban elite increasingly came to see the mass of the citizenry as a threat. At the same time new economic opportunities and unprecedented prosperity both appeared to threaten the old com? munity spirit and led to the emergence of a new self-consciously cosmopolitan elite that established itself in grand neo-classical villas along the Elbe (Julia Berger). What effectdid this have on Hamburg's culture? Even in the eighteenth century the pattern is mixed. Both the early opera (David Yearsley) and thejournalistic enterprise Der Patriot in the 1720s (Herbert Rowland) benefited from the active engagement in them of elements of the governing elite and from a sense that they fulfilled a political task rather than being purely commercial ventures. Yet the cultural market was a fickle one. The absence ofofficialSenate sponsorship led to the failure of Lessing's National Theatre project (John McCarthy). Klopstock, by contrast, struck a chord with an au? dience that recognized him as a major public figure (Meredith Lee) and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach flourished in an environment that fostered a commercial dimension to his position as the city's music director (Annette Richards). The shifts around 1800, it is suggested, had cultural implications too. Both Heine (Bernd Kortlander) and Brahms (Celia Applegate) were frustrated in their aspirations to establish themselves in Hamburg, though in the case of Brahms Celia Applegate suggests that the city's lively musical scene cannot be judged by its inability to sustain the career ambitions 576 Reviews of a great composer. Hans Rudolf Vaget provides a fascinating counterpoint to the implication of cultural decline in the nineteenth century in his study of Thomas Mann's development from a negative view of Hamburg's modernity in Buddenbrooks to an appreciation of its liberal Hanseatentum (as the birthplace of Hans Castorp) in The Magic Mountain. Finally JenniferJenkins explores another aspect of Hamburg's modernity around 1900, showing how Frederick Law Olmsted's New York Central Park influenced the development of the innovatory Winterhude Stadtpark. The old Burgerrepublik...

Eastern naturalness versus western artificiality: Rimsky Korsakov's influence on Manoles Kalomoires' early operas

In this article the writer investigates the relations between perceptions of the East and the West in nineteenth century Greece, their connection to national identity, to the language question and to political tendencies. The composer Manoles Kalomoires was influenced by a group of progressive intellectuals striving to liberate Greek literature and language from its dependence on Ancient Greek legacy, a dependence motivated by Western idealists (who saw in the Greek Revolution of 1821 a renaissance of Ancient Greece). Most were educated in the West, but promoted an oriental image of Greeks. Kalomoires' musical expression of this image was inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade and the Golden Cockerel. In 1909-910 he wrote an unfinished opera, Mavrianos and the King, on the model of the Golden Cockerel. He later used this music in his best known opera, The Mother's Ring (1917). In the present article the similarities in the three works are for the first time shown. An essential influence from Rimsky-Korsakov's work is the contrast between the world of freedom, nature and fantasy and that of oppression.

Performance and Literature in the Commedia Dell'Arte (review)

Reviewed by: Performance and Literature in the Commedia Dell’arte Erith Jaffe-Berg Performance and Literature in the Commedia Dell’arte. By Robert Henke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; pp. 263. $70.00 cloth. Recent studies of Commedia dell'Arte published by Italian theatre historians such as Ferruccio Marotti and Roberto Tessari have reflected the difficulty in connecting the theatre genre to "low culture" as opposed to "high culture." Their studies have shown that not only did dell'Arte actors sing in the emerging early opera of the late sixteenth century, but they often performed fully-scripted pastorals and tragedies as well as showcased their work before aristocratic audiences at court as well as for plebian audiences in the piazza. Robert Henke's work is important in adding to the examination of mutual influences of high and low culture. It addresses the question of literacy and orality in Commedia dell'Arte performances, deftly arguing for a creative "contamination" between literary and verbally transmitted materials. In his thoroughly researched and finely wrought study, Henke draws from a broad array of cultural materials to present the early-modern Commedia dell'Arte actor as an author and subject not only in stage performances but also in a variety of popular literature, including zanni texts, letters written to and from actors, as well as poems and eulogies in which actors are mentioned. Many of these texts are analyzed here in English for the first time, and therefore offer a handy resource for teachers and students of Commedia dell'Arte alike. Furthermore, with the exception of an important book by Tim Fitzpatrick (The Relationship of Oral and Literate Performance Processes in the Commedia dell'Arte: Beyond the Improvisation / Memorization, 1995), which is mostly focused on performance and the question of improvisation, Henke's work addresses a largely neglected area of study in Commedia dell'Arte—the relation between orality and literature—making it essential reading for scholars of both Commedia dell'Arte and Renaissance theatre. The book is organized into eleven chapters. The first two serve as a discussion of Henke's strategy and an overview of aspects of Commedia dell'Arte's system of characters and improvisational techniques. Chapter 3, "Residual Orality in Early Modern Italy and the Commedia dell'Arte" initiates the book's central focus by outlining aspects of oral culture that were still evident in the early-modern context. In this sometimes dense chapter Henke argues the Italian peninsula's "residually oral culture" in the late-sixteenth century created the basis for techniques culled from oral tradition. He then elaborates on the techniques by providing interesting examples that are more linguistically based than those presented in other chapters. For example, he emphasizes that the use of phonemic sound sequences (patterns of similar or dissimilar sounds) and stressed metrical units or sentences were useful as mnemonic devices in players' performances. By constant references to Commedia dell'Arte characters, however, Henke prevents the examination from becoming too technically discouraging to non-linguistics experts. By the same token, in this chapter Henke emphasizes how residual orality shaped rhetorical stylistics in the composition of speech. He exemplifies how repetition, the hallmark of extemporized speech, resulted in the stylistic mark of "copiousness," or "verbal amplification by means of extended variation" (33). At the same time, Henke reminds us that actors were themselves often highly literate cultural consumers who availed themselves of pamphlets, published collections of jokes, and books on etiquette. In the next three chapters Henke turns his attention to the buffoon and lover characters. Chapter 4 studies the Venetian buffoni, proto-Commedia dell' Arte actor-writers whose work informed that of the late sixteenth-century zanni. Chapter 5 discusses the work of early male Commedia dell'Arte actors and chapter 6 addresses that of early actresses such as Isabella Andreini but also Vincenza Armani, equally famous in her day but less discussed in theatre history texts. [End Page 539] Particularly interesting is chapter 7, "Zanni texts, 1576-1588," which highlights the work of Simone da Bologna, who tends to get less attention than other well known members of the Gelosi troupe. Henke closely studies the Lacrimoso Lamento, an oration written for Simone and published in...

A History of Russian Music: From 'Kamarinskaya' to 'Babi Yar' by Francis s> Maes Arnold J. Pomerans , Erica Pomerans (review)

334 SEER, 8 I, 2, 2003 from the 'otherworld'to Nabokov's view of this world, follows Nabokov into exile, switchesback to his Russian predecessors,and finallytraces his literary contemporariesup to his more recent successors.Although this collection will probably be used selectively by most readers, it would be a pity merely to browse through it, because the reader who can keep up with its pace will be rewardedwith a much more complex insight into the workshopof one of the greatestwritersof the twentiethcentury. Wozfson College S. FRANK University ofOxford Maes, Francis. A Historyof RussianMusic. From'Kamarinskaya' to 'BabiYar'. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA and London, 2002. xiv + 427 PP.Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography.Index. [29.95. IT is a rareand happy event worthy of celebrationwhen a new scholarlybook trulyanswersa long feltneed. Such isthe casewith the translationinto English of FrancisMaes's excellent Geschiedenis vandeRussisclze muziek:VanKamarinskaja totBabiJfar(Nijmegen, I996). The last English-languagesurveyof the historyof Russian music was made by RichardAnthony Leonardas long ago as I957; hisworkislong out of print and, indeed, completely overtakenby modern musicalscholarship.In the field of Russian music since that time no one has done more than Richard Taruskin,and, doubtless, many people have wished that he himself might fill this gap (see, for instance, SEER, 76, I998, 2, P. 342). In the event Maes's book is a very Taruskinianwork, and none the worse for that. The author refers to him extensively and occasionally adopts the vigorously polemical tone of Taruskin'sown writing; he likewise shows a similar enthusiasm for tracing borrowings and other forms of inter-textuality. Strong though Taruskin'sinfluence is, it would be wrong to regardMaes's monograph in the way that many viewed Stravinskii'sFirebird: as a bird from a distinguished predecessor's(inthis case Rimskii-Korsakov's)egg. FrancisMaes, a practising musician himself, brings an individual, sometimes perhaps eccentric, but alwaysstimulatingflavourto his subject.The translationis on the whole very good with only occasional glimpsesof itsorigin. The book's range is from Glinka's Kamarinskaia, the acorn from which Chaikovskiiconsidered all Russian music to have grown, to Shostakovich's Thirteenth ('Babiiiar')Symphony, which, incidentally,Maes considersto be, like the Fourteenth,more of a song cycle than a symphony (p. 360). Many of the fourteen chapters are given colourful, even fancifultitles. Each is divided into subsectionswith individualnames. Afteran introductorychapterdevoted to questions of nationalism and orientalism, the firstmain chapter is entitled "'I'm Finished with Russian Music": Mikhail Glinka', beginning with a whirlwind review of earlier Russian music. Maes does not stint words in describingthe plots of the operas and balletshe discusses,but these discursive passages are interspersed with a plethora of detailed, sometimes technical, musicological insights. REVIEWS 335 The middle chaptersaredevoted to thefeudsand battlesof mid-nineteenthcentury Russian music; here the author refutes the received view (largely created by Stasov) of the Mighty Handful as a progressivegroup fighting the forces of conservativism. He points out that Balakirev,for example, despite his advocacy of programme music, continued to reflect the symphonic approach of the German tradition (p. 67). In Chapters 3 to 6, instead of a work by work account, Maes attempts to show the options open to different composers and to analyse their themes. Amongst the topics covered here are orientalism,harmonicexplorations,realism,andvocal lyricism.A particularly attractive aspect of this section and, indeed, of the book as a whole, is the author's skill in pointing out influence, borrowings and, in general, intertextuality . Here, to give but one example, Balakirev'sFirstSymphony is seen to anticipatethelate symphoniesof Sibelius(p. 69). In hislateryearsBalakirev is memorablydescribedas having 'become his own epigone' (p. I68). A section of Chapter 5, entitled 'Chaikovsky'sPersonal Path', anticipates some treatment of his early operas in the immediately following chapters, '"Truth in the Realm of the Pseudo":Russian Opera' and '"The MusicianHuman ": Pyotr Chaikovsky'.In the latter, after a review of the still unclear circumstancesof the composer's death, Maes, amongst other things, notes an interesting relationship between Chaikovskii'sballets and his church music. With such splitting of composers between chapters here and elsewhere the comprehensiveindex proves invaluable. Chapter 9 ('Imaginationand Renewal: The SilverAge') treats'an amalgam of divergentmovements:neonationalism, symbolism...

Why early opera is Roman and not Greek

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the models of Greek tragedy and Aristotelian theory were appealed to repeatedly, first to invent the dramatic genre we call opera, and then in an effort to use theory to rid that genre of what were perceived to be its self-indulgent excesses. This essay argues that despite these theoretical claims, influences from classical Rome were so thoroughly ingrained in European librettists that it was the experience of the Latin that prevailed. Roman subject matter, dramatic structure, philosophical fashion and imperial performance-context produced a musical theatre that was in essence Roman rather than Greek.

Terror and Transcendence in the Operatic Prison, 1790–1815

Abstract Act 2, scene 1 of Beethoven's 1814 version of Fidelio and the recitative and aria for Amenaïïde from Rossini's Tancredi are the only prison scenes from the period 1790–1815 that are still a part of the performing repertory, but prison scenes were a common feature in operas from these decades. The revolutionary and post-revolutionary period was also a time in which ideas about incarceration were undergoing profound changes—changes that are reflected on the operatic stage. This essay examines the political and aesthetic meanings of the operatic prison scene, providing a broader context for the revisions that Beethoven made to Florestan's recitative and aria. The famous oboe melody that introduces the final section of this scene marks both a turning point in the drama and a self-reflexive moment in the history of opera, in which the dramaturgy of the prison intersects with the philosophy of musical idealism. In this sense, the passage from terror to transcendence is not merely a common topos of prison scene plots; it is also a paradigm for composition, reception, and musico-dramatic meaning in early nineteenth-century opera.

Postmoderni problemi v evropskem glasbenem zgodovinopisju

Razprava se ukvarja s vprašanjem, kaj vse se lahko glasbeno zgodovinopisje nauči od postmodernega diskurza, ki se odvija okoli nas. Splošne zgodovinske implikacije koncepta »postmodernizma« kot izboljšave in napredka glede na »modernizem« se kažejo kot protislovje lastnemu sporočilu o nezaupljivosti do progresističnih meta-pripovedi. Opravljena je bila primerjava med negativnim odnosom do srednjeveške preteklosti, kakršnega je najti v okviru renesančnega humanizma (»razcepljena retrospekcija«), in postmodernimi diskurzi, ki naravnavajo isto optiko na zadnjih 200–250 let zahodne kulture. Upoštevanih je nekaj postmodernih pripovedi, ki zadevajo glasbo: antimodernizem, gibanje za baročno in zgodnjo glasbo, recepcija zgodnje opere in razprave o konceptu umetniškega dela, njegovi avtonomiji in avtorstvu. Razprava opozarja na nevarnost žrtvovanja Lyotardove definicije postmodernizma kot »nezaupanja meta-pripovedim« v korist nove meta-pripovedi, ki uvaja razdvojeno retrospekcijo, s katero se ločuje zavrnjena modernistična preteklost od »šele pred kratkim« doseženega preboja ali »morskih sprememb« v kulturoloških raziskavah.

Music drama on the concert stage: voice, character and performance in Judith Weir's The Consolations of Scholarship

Like several of her early operas, Judith Weir’s The Consolations of Scholarship (1985) lives on the concert stage: the work lasts only twenty-two minutes, there is just one singer, and there are no costumes or scenery. A similar economy and restraint characterizes Weir’s musical language from this period. The essay argues that The Consolations of Scholarship is as much ‘about’ the workings of the genre as it is ‘about’ the story it purports to tell. Indeed, Weir constructs music drama by emphasizing its artificiality, and her reworking of established conventions results in an unusually reflexive form of opera.

The Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783. Text Data Base and Index

Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783: Text Database and Index. By Mary Jane Corry, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Robert M. Keller. New York: University Music Editions, 1997. UMEl0ICD. $99. CD-ROM for Windows or DOS. Requires 18 MB hard-disk space, VGA monitor. Writing in December 1953 issue of Notes about Oscar Sonneck, the young American musical Columbus who determined upon returning to United States after twenty-five years in Europe to lay foundation for correct and adequate historical presentation of music in early America by an exhaustive investigation of primary sources, Otto Kinkeldey pointed out that the American pioneer in this musical field had a decidedly harder task than his European forerunners (Notes 11 [1953]: 26). Municipal and church records, when locatable, were terse on matters musical; biographies of musicians were few; music journals, for colonial period, were nonexistent. Indeed, Sonneck found only one that covered any appreciable period of time--the ordinary weekly and later daily newspapers. Kinkeldey continued: These, in their advertising columns or among their news items, would occasionally--very occasionally--print... a brief reference to something musical--the notice of a concert or theatrical p erformance with music, a music teacher's announcement of a school, a music dealer or publisher advertising his wares. The harvesting of these scattered grains was no inconsiderable task, and Sonneck spent two years combing through all available American newspapers published to 1800 (ibid., 27). But results of that harvest were rich, and are still consulted today: A Bibliography of Early Secular American Music (1905), Early Concert-Life in America (1907), and Early Opera in America (1915). Returning many decades later to same regular source that Sonneck consulted--early American newspapers--a small army of dedicated researchers emerges not with a scholarly monograph such as Sonneck's but with a stunningly vast array of primary-source material that surely will serve as basis for many monographs to come. item under review is remarkable product of an equally remarkable project. Over a period of five years, Mary Jane Corry (project director), Kate Van Winkle Keller (director of technology), Robert M. Keller (computer consultant), and fourteen other people--Linda Bierling, Susan Cifaldi, John Cuthbert, David Hildebrand, Barbara Lambert, Rosamond McGuinness, Sharon McKinley, Geoffrey Miller, Zaide Pixley, Susan Pregger, Arthur F. Schrader, Marilyn Smiley, John Wagner, and Edythe Walmer--read every issue they could locate of every newspaper published in colonial America (50,719 issues and 4,523 supplements of 162 newspaper titles), searching for references to music, dance, and theat er. They found 54,411 reports, advertisements, stories, ... announcements ...; allusions, metaphors, song lyrics, and other representations of performing (I quote from a flyer for CD-ROM), which they copied with painstaking care. These transcriptions were then keyed into a database and exhaustively indexed, producing a general index file of 235,676 records and a first-line index of every poem and lyric collected, containing 12,061 records. Thanks to marvels of electronic technology, all of this information, and more, is available on a single CD-ROM, and it is a wondrous tool, absolutely indispensable for anyone doing any serious research in performing arts of America's colonial period. Here is an example of what one can find in this labyrinth of research possibilities. It has long been known that fiddle was a special instrument of black male slaves in early America. This CD-ROM makes clear extent of these slaves' involvement with instrument. A search of database for negro or mulatto near fiddle or fiddler or violin (near, in this case, means within twenty words' distance of any of transcribed items; this default setting can be changed to anywhere between ten and thirty words' distance) brings up names of hundreds of slaves--almost all of them runaways identified as fiddlers--as they appear in advertisements placed by their owners. …

The Twentieth-Century Symphonies of Richard Strauss

In the oeuvre of Richard Strauss, the word symphony reads like a synonym for dead end. His first two efforts in the genre, the Symphonies in D Minor (1880) and F Minor (1884), marked the completion of his conservative apprenticeship, but not an emergence into maturity. That step required a change of direction and a new apprenticeship that Strauss embraced in spite of the considerable fame that the F Minor earned him in Germany and even in America.' His other two symphonies, the Symphonia domestica (1903) and Eine Alpensinfonie (1915), ended his mature work as an orchestral composer, belatedly, given the general recognition that his future lay in opera. The delay annoyed Strauss, who claimed while at work on the Alpensinfonie that he no longer enjoy[ed] writing symphonies.2 Still, he refused to drop the piece; over a period of sixteen years-by far the longest gestational period of any of his orchestral works-Strauss took it up again and again until by finishing it he put it to rest. Why did he persist? Why did he refuse to abandon a uniquely problematic work, thirty years after he had abandoned the genre itself? And why did he conclude his orchestral career as he had started it, with works labeled symphonies? Without their titles, of course, the Alpensinfonie and Symphonia domestica would not be subject to that question. Both works could easily have been called tone poems; obviously programmatic, they follow a sonata-based, Lisztian double-function plan and show little in style that would require a distinction as to genre.3 It is worth remembering, though, that Strauss was a stickler about nomenclature. The generic designations of the early operas range widely, from the terse Guntram in drei Aufziige, to Feuersnot (Singgedicht) to Salome (Musikdrama). Elektra is a Tragodie, Der Rosenkavalier a Komaidie; only with Ariadne auf Naxos did Strauss compose an Oper (and then he used the word with an obvious sense of detachment, in effect putting it in quotation marks). There is more than a taste for variety in these distinctions; Strauss's fussiness reflects a process of reasoning, or least of reasoned flirtation.4

Mother Hubbard's cupboard: early opera in Opera Grove

Mother Hubbard's cupboard: early opera in Opera Grove

The Role of Tonality in the Swiss Book of Annees de Pelerinage

In the Liszt centenary year 1986 Gy6rgy Kro6 published an article' in which he considered the significance of a remark made by Liszt in a letter of 1835 referring to his inner path (ligne interieure) as a composer. Against this background the author traced the genesis ofAlbum d'un voyageur [S (Searle) 156/R (Raabe) 8, henceforth referred to as Album], and its transformation into Annees de Pelerinage. Premiere Annee. Suisse [S 160/R I Oa, henceforth referred to as Annees I]. In a book on Liszt2 published in 1987, 1 made the observation that the composer used certain keys or tonalities in particular contexts, giving the examples of Ab as the key of love, and E as the key of religion, a conclusion reached after studying the religious works, and those with a programme. Later, in 1992, I wrote about Don Sanche3 from this aspect, observing that Liszt's use of these keys in the early opera (1825) corresponded to his use of them in his mature works, putting this forward as evidence that Liszt himself probably composed the music rather than his teachers, as has sometimes been suggested. To Ab and E I added B, which appears only once in the opera, as the music for a chorus and ballet depicting the asylum of peace and happiness where lovers live for ever. This corresponds to Liszt's later use of the key in association with paradise or heaven.

A Venetian Festa in Feuillet Notation

According to the English surgeon and traveller Samuel Sharp, Grossatesta was 'molto famoso' (very famous)2 in his own time and, according to the playwright Carlo Goldoni, 'il avoit beaucoup d'esprit, et etoit tres instruit'.3 In his Memoires Goldoni also says that Grossatesta's salon was frequented by the most highly acclaimed artists. When he himself attended it in 1733 to present the manuscript of a new drama (the Amalassunta,4 which he later burnt) he met the mezzo-soprano castrato Gaetano Majorano, known as Caffariello, and Count Prata, one of the directors of the Ducal theatre of Milan. After a brief excursus on Grossatesta's artistic life which led him to important Northern Italian cities, I will touch on his Neapolitan period and then discuss the manuscript of his Balletti. A ballerino, dancing master, choreographer and impresario of one of the major Italian theatres (the San Carlo of Naples) Grossatesta was born in Modena in or about 1700.5 The only information we have on his family concerns his brother, the abbe Antonio, 'a curious kind of political agent'6 to whom the Duke of Modena entrusted a number of diplomatic missions. Research to date has not shed light on Grossatesta's formative years. However, he does not appear to have belonged to one of the many families of dancers from which he might have acquired the first rudiments of the art of dancing. Early eighteenth century opera librettos which provide information on Grossatesta's balli are the principal source for an understanding of his artistic development. Besides the composer of the music, the author of the libretto and the scenographer, the librettos give the name of the choreographer and occasionally the

Meyerbeer'sIl crociato in Egitto: mélodrame, opera, orientalism

Il crociato in Egittowas the last in a series of Italian operas written by Giacomo Meyerbeer between 1817 and 1824. Although hisEmma di ResburgoandMargherita d'Anjouhad been successful in Venice and Milan, it wasIl crociatothat put Meyerbeer in the first rank of internationally renowned composers of Italian opera. The work's contemporary popularity makes it an important element in the history of early nineteenth-century Italian opera, and the abundant source material that survives for the opera permits a reconstruction of its early history. Furthermore, the publication in facsimile of a copyist's score from the première at La Fenice and the recording of the work by Opera Rara have encouraged a modern revaluation.

Effect of Tempo on Music Preferences of Children in Elementary and Middle School

This study was designed to examine the effect of tempo on preference responses of kindergarten to Grade 8 children. Listener age and gender were additional variables under consideration. In total, 996 subjects indicated preference opinions on pictographic Likert written response forms while listening to 15 excerpts of orchestral music from early Romantic opera. Two moderate and three fast musical examples were given the highest mean ratings. Spearman rank correlation indicated a positive significant relationship between tempo and preference (p < .01). Friedman analyses of variance revealed significant differences in mean preference ratings for music of differing tempos within Grades 3-8 (p < .01). Listener age was also indicated as a strong influence on overall preference ratings, with youngest children generally giving highest ratings. Results provide further support for the role of tempo and listener age in musical preference.

The Orchestra in Early Opera

Were I to apply the common definition of what constitutes an orchestra, my contribution to this symposium--a discussion of the role of the orchestra in early opera-would be limited to a single sentence. If an orchestra is understood as groups of string players playing the same part; as musicians coming together in a shared homogenous interpretation of a musical work; as an ensemble susceptible to the direction of a conductor where the individual musician is robbed of his or her

Creating Consumers in the 1930s: Irna Phillips and the Radio Soap Opera

The 1930s marked an important stage in the evolution of a mass consumer society in the United States. The current article examines the roles that Irna Phillips and the early radio soap opera played in that process. Through the daytime serial, Phillips developed a program format that appealed to American housewives, who were the likely purchasers of most household products. She adjusted story lines to meet the selling needs of her sponsors; she used soap opera characters as effective product spokespersons; and she designed program promotions to stimulate product sales. However, at the same time that her programs sold products contributing to social change, they also reinforced traditional expectations about the roles of women as housewives and mothers.

Maxwell Davies's ‘Resurrection’: Origins, Themes, Symbolism

Peter Maxwell Davies originally conceived the opera Resurrection in 1963, in response to the commercialism he encountered while studying in the United States. He regarded it as a sequel to Taverner, even before the completion of his first opera. Despite the intervention of two important chamber operas (The Martyrdom of St. Magnus and The Lighthouse), his decision to settle in the Orkney Islands, and the various changes in his compositional style – encouraged by his involvement with the writings ot George Mackay Brown – Maxwell Davies has retained the main elements of his inspiration. There appear to have been several attempts to complete the opera in response to the prospect of its reaching the stage, but the final impetus came from an increasing awareness, during the 1980s, of the corrosive effects of Thatcherism on British culture and society. Consequently, Resurrection became the focus of 25 years of endeavour, all the changes contributing to its ultimate fruition. It extends the philosophical and theological ideas adumbrated in Taverner, but explores these themes in the context of contemporary society, as opposed to the earlier opera's concern with events surrounding the English Reformation.

Aspects of early opera

Aspects of early opera

Reflections on Orientalism in Opera and Musical Theater

?Orientalism in opera?: such a large and many-faceted topic lends itself to a variety of approaches. Elsewhere I have begun exploring in some detail how the Orient is represented in one or another specific work.1 For present purposes, though, I would prefer to set the lens to a wider focus, and consider some general aspects of the problem of ?representing? or ?constructing? the Orient on the musical stage. I will take my examples from a number of works, mainly 19th-century and early 20th-century operas of patently serious intent, but making occasional reference to lighter works of other periods (Mozart; Rodgers and Hammerstein) that set some facet of the problem in relief.