Operatic Stage Research Articles

The Many Voices of Sissieretta Jones: Opera and the Sonic Necromancy of the Black Phonographic Archive

Abstract: Sissieretta Jones (1868-1933) is perhaps best remembered as one of the first Black opera singers, despite having never performed on the operatic stage. Exploring race and phonography as interlinking technologies of perception underlying and structuring the ability of audiences to perceive black performers, this essay analyzes the multiple Joneses produced through her archive—in reviews, promotional photographs and illustrations, and the absence of her phonographically recorded voice. Through this exploration, I argue that we must resist the drive to embalm the remains of performance in order to move toward a more multiple analysis of Black archives.

Unraveling The Musical Tapestry Of Tazul Tajuddin’s Opera Puteri Saadong Through Freytag’s Pyramid

In the heart of Kanazawa, Japan, on May 3, 2016, the Kanazawa Opera House was the stage for an operatic spectacle that transcended cultural boundaries and took the audience on a profound emotional odyssey. Tazul Tajuddin’s “Opera Puteri Saadong” skillfully weaved together Malaysian and Western influences, creating a musical narrative that resonated with both heartache and desire. This article delves into the performance of the “Opera Puteri Saadong”, focusing specifically on its musical elements within the perspective of Freytag’s five-act structure. Through an exploration of the opera’s music, including its emotional depth, character development, dramatic tension, cultural influences, and vocal performance, this analysis seeks to uncover how the music enhances the storytelling and conveys the central themes of the narrative in each act. Outlining a moment of tragedy for the main character, Freytag’s pyramid was determined as the analytical approach to analyse the opera performance due to its emphasis on tragic narrative, which is applicable to the dramatic arc of the legendary story of Puteri Saadong. By examining a range of musical techniques and dramatic effects demonstrated throughout the opera, this paper also intends to provide insight into the significance of incorporating materials of Malaysian folk music and contemporary Western art music in bringing the tale of Puteri Saadong to life on the operatic stage. From the tender intimacy of a love scene to the epic grandeur of a battle sequence, this intercultural music enhances the overall impact of the opera, conveying its central themes of love, betrayal, resilience, and transformation with depth and resonance, engaging the audience with its unique blend of Malaysian and Western cultural impact.

REARRANGED: An opera singer’s facial cancer and life transposed Kathleen Watt

In lyrical prose, with musical allusions, clinical references, and a bit of comic relief, Rearranged follows Kathleen Watt's plunge from the operatic stage into the netherworld of hospital life—its indigenous creatures, its peculiar language, its signposts of the mysterious human condition—through the devastation of cancer, and out the other side. Kathleen was a New York opera singer at mid-career, with a steady, lucrative chorus job at the Metropolitan Opera and solo gigs elsewhere, anticipating her best year ever. Instead, a vicious bone cancer blew her plans to smithereens, along with her face. She had to let everything go. Bit by bit, through a brutal alchemy of lethal toxins, titanium screws, and infinite kindness, she discovered new arrangements for old pieces, in a life catastrophically transposed. Not only a heart-wrenching medical odyssey but also, ultimately, a joyous personal journey of transformation.

Lyric Lear

William Shakespeare’s plays are one of the main sources of inspiration for the international opera scene. Over the centuries, some 350 opera composers have adapted one of his plays. Yet few of these works have been successful enough to enter the world repertoire of the most performed scores. King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s longest and most complex plays. Significantly, Aribert Reimann’s version, created in 1978, is the only one, out of the twenty other operas adapted from King Lear and composed between 1817 and 2000, to have entered the aforementioned world repertoire. The aim of this article is to find out how Reimann and his librettist Claus H. Henneberg managed to do it and, more generally, what this opera says about operatic adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. We will thus pay particular attention to the way Reimann and Henneberg tackled four major structuring issues. The first concerns the total length of the work and the cuts to be made in the original text. Then, we will look at the way the German pair dealt with the complex and polymorphous nature of Shakespeare’s characters, before tackling the question of enunciation on the operatic stage and its specificities in terms of action. Last, since opera is a global art form, we will wonder whether a libretto is a drama set to music or a drama written for music, and see how Reimann and Henneberg answered this question.

Singers and managers: women and the operatic stage in late nineteenth-century America

ABSTRACT Most scholars of American history are completely unaware that opera – in particular opera performed in English – was an extraordinarily successful style of popular entertainment in the United States during the nineteenth century. In this article, we will investigate both the activities of the most important and successful English-language companies of the time as well as the confident, ambitious, skilled, and determined women who managed them. In the process, readers will learn about an almost completely overlooked element of American popular culture of the second half of the century and gain new insight into changing gender roles in the United States during this period.

Production as Criticism: Staging Wartime Rape in the Opera Canon

Abstract This article explores contemporary representations of wartime sexual violence on the operatic stage. Rape and the threat of rape loom over many operas in the canon, but even those operas that do not thematise rape may have sexual violence introduced to them in performance. Through analysis of four twenty-first century productions, I consider how the idea of sexual violence works in these wartime stories. Staging the implicit or explicit sexual violence in canonic operas can, in the best cases, allow for nuanced commentary on the subject in our cultural moment. But putting sexual violence on stage is controversial and can pose real risks to audience members. Instead of dismissing the proliferation of depictions of rape in wartime opera productions as mere scandalmongering, I explore specific representations through a feminist ethical framework, and ask: What do we risk and what might we gain by putting rape on stage in these operas?

‘Qu’il est loin mon pays’: Staging (Be)longing in Massenet’s Sapho

ABSTRACT At first glance, Jules Massenet's opera Sapho (1897) might appear to water down its source material, substituting the searing social commentary of Alphonse Daudet's novel (1884) with idealised tropes of the Midi. This article, however, seeks to complicate this reading, arguing that Sapho moves beyond the regionalism of its operatic predecessors, while entirely reimagining Daudet's novel for a new medium. It highlights how the themes of nostalgia and belonging are established in Henri Cain and Arthur Bernède's libretto, reiterated by Léon Carvalho's staging, and intensified in Massenet's score, thereby nuancing and enriching our understanding of adaptation for the operatic stage.

Music, Pantomime & Freedom in Enlightenment France by Hedy Law (review)

Reviewed by: Music, Pantomime & Freedom in Enlightenment France by Hedy Law Annalise Smith Music, Pantomime & Freedom in Enlightenment France. By Hedy Law. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2020. [xvii, 265 p. ISBN 9781783275601 (hardcover), $95; ISBN 978178749374 (e-book), price varies.] Music examples, bibliography, index. Hedy Law's Music, Pantomime & Freedom in Enlightenment France stems from a single question: Why did Jean-Georges Noverre refer to pantomime ballet as "an offspring of liberty?" (p. 4). Law more than answers this question in her monograph, providing the reader with an in-depth exploration of how composers incorporated pantomime ballet into their operatic works in eighteenth-century France, and the various ways in which pantomime was seen to both reflect and cultivate ideas of moral liberty during the Enlightenment. Drawing on a multitude of primary sources, Law [End Page 599] traces pantomime from the early eighteenth century up to the French Revolution, bringing necessary attention to a medium of dance that is often overlooked in discussions of French opera. This exploration allows Law to address some of the best-known composers of eighteenth-century French opera—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Antonio Salieri—while also bringing attention to less well-known works that nevertheless indicate the depth to which pantomime was embedded in eighteenth-century operatic practices. Pantomime is most frequently interpreted as a type of dance in which performers adopt more naturalistic movements in order to express emotion and dramatic action, as opposed to the more decorative steps of traditional ballet. Individual scenes or dances that utilized pantomime appeared at the Opéra de Paris in the 1740s, while fully independent pantomime ballets, often called ballet d'action, emerged in the 1770s (though these works were always performed alongside another work). Law frequently touches on pantomime as a type of dance and its shifting hierarchical relationship with more traditional forms of ballet. A significant portion of her argument and discussion, however, is bound up in pantomime as a style of acting. As Law notes, in the seventeenth century, pantomime was not a genre of performance but a type of performer. Though pantomime was often associated with lower forms of drama in the early eighteenth century, by the middle of the century it had gained traction as a serious genre, one in which the traditions of ancient Rome might be revived. We can thus consider pantomime an element of the dramatic reform taking place throughout Europe at this time, one that was increasingly integral to both spoken plays and opera. The fame of English actor David Garrick stemmed in no small part from his skill at pantomime, with the actor viewed as the inheritor of the Roman tradition. Not coincidentally, his performances in Paris in the mid-1760s served as a model for how French actors, even those at the Opéra, could embrace pantomime as an expressive tool. In the beginning chapters of her monograph, Law addresses how pantomime first manifested in operatic dance. Rousseau's Le devin du village serves as an example of how dance could be used to communicate a complete dramatic idea without relying on sung text to convey the plot (albeit with some reliance on a printed libretto). Yet Law's focus on pantomime as a style of acting means that many of the examples she discusses—particularly in the operas of Gluck and Salieri—are not dance pieces at all but instead relatively short moments of instrumental music in the middle of arias or recitatives in which the performer engages in pantomime acting. Law convincingly argues that these short moments were conceived of by the composer as an opportunity for pantomime, pointing to actions suggested by the lyrics, certain figurations in the music that suggested motions such as sudden pauses or expressive gestures, or even specific directions in the score that directed the actor to move in a certain way. Collectively, these moments highlight the degree to which expressive acting was increasingly seen as a requirement of good drama on the operatic stage. While pantomime embodied a general shift toward naturalistic movement and acting, it was not just this turn in dramatic practice that led some writers to promote it as a "dance...

The Body Behind the Curtain: Performing Disability in Zemlinsky'sDer Zwerg

AbstractLike many modernist engagements with the theme of outsider identity, Alexander Zemlinsky's 1921 operaDer Zwerg(The Dwarf) finds its dramatic nexus in the disabled body. In opera, such bodies are not only (historically) texted but also (presently) performed, with modern stagings offering a form of mediation between the historical and contemporary. With reference to two productions ofDer Zwerg, this article unpicks aspects of the representation and performance of disability on the operatic stage. I first explore disability's simultaneous exaggeration and disappearance as a result of the problematic practice of ‘disability mimicry’. The effects of this practice and its proximity to issues of authenticity and embodiment are only made more tangible in the context of live performance, where attempts to embody disability's physicality are often sensationalised and unconvincing at best. However, disability can be, and is, represented in myriad ways. While disability mimicry can engender modes of perceiving disability from a voyeuristic perspective, these productions in fact make use of processes of ‘enfreakment’ to present disability through modes of theatrical production and aesthetic choice. This raises pertinent questions about why and by what means the disabled body is mobilised (or not) on the operatic stage, highlighting, moreover, disability's tendency to indicate meaning in registers beyond the body.

Quel Plaisir! Quel Plaisir? – On Bodies in Performance

Let's start with where opera happens: the opera house. For the 2022/23 season, Opernhaus Dortmund, known for its fine instinct for rare gems on the operatic stage, decided to mount Jacques François Fromental Halévy's La Juive. Having been introduced to this grand opéra as a first-year musicology student, I was excited to see the premiere of Sybrand van der Werf's production on a Sunday night in November 2022 – while preparing this review. As it turns out, the performance transferred me straight into the core arguments of each of the three books under consideration here: the intense co-presence unfolding between the performer and audience, generated as in Clemens Risi's account by a briefly indisposed singer; the inclusion of visual codes evoking SM erotic play on stage, which also informs Axel Englund's investigation; and finally, the production of a hypermedia spectacle, which is Tereza Havelková's central concern. A single performance demonstrated the relevance and applicability of each of Risi's, Englund's and Havelková's studies.

Faust: versions avec dialogues by Charles Gounod

Reviewed by: Faust: versions avec dialogues by Charles Gounod Mary Jean Speare Charles Gounod. Faust: versions avec dialogues. Edited by Paul Prévost. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2020. (L'Opéra français) [2 volumes (clxix, 1089 pp.) Front matter in Fr., Eng., and Ger.: preface, p. vii–viii; introduction, p. ix–lxxxviii; libretto in Fr., p. lxxxix–clxv, score, p. 1–738; appendices in Fr., p. 741–971; crit. rep. in Fr., p. 973–1080; table of scenes in Fr., p. 1080–1084; facsimiles, p. 1085–1089. Cloth. BA 8714-01. ISMN 979-0-006-56325-8. $1,780.] One of the most celebrated and performed works of the French operatic stage is Faust, by Charles Gounod (1818–1893) to a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, but the work that is performed today, which is sung throughout, is quite different from the work that was first performed on 19 March 1859 at the Théâtre-Lyrique. Charles Gounod—Faust (versions dialogues) is the sixth work to appear in a new series, L'Opéra français, published by Bärenreiter, Paul Prévost, editor. Charles Gounod—Faust (version opéra), with recitatives and added ballet, which the editor Paul Prévost identifies as the third version of the work, appeared in the series in two volumes in 2016 to be followed by the versions with spoken dialogue (which Prévost labels versions one and two) in 2020. Prévost has provided scholars and performers a rare opportunity to study a work with the complete spoken dialogue (parlé) included in the score. This fact is significant because most nineteenth-century scores only include part of the spoken dialogue with cues (répliques) indicating the last few words of the dialogue leading to musical numbers. Prévost's introduction is a fascinating essay that explains the history of the work from genesis through reception history and that documents the changes it went through. At the outset (p. ix), Prévost explains that the first version was submitted to the Théâtre-Lyrique in 1858 and after many revisions up to and after the March 1859 premiere, the second version is reflected in the first piano-vocal score, which appeared in June 1859. He goes on to state that unfortunately a complete first version is not possible because some sources could not be located (p. ix). Finally, it is important to note that, according to Prévost, the exact form that Faust took in the premiere on 19 March 1859 is unclear, but that it was probably somewhere between the first and second versions (p. xviii). The edition contains the expected detailed critical notes and a thorough discussion of all the sources and appendixes containing fragments, some of which were discovered as late as September 2019 (see p. xxxiv). One of the most tantalizing fragments is from Marguerite's lost mad scene in prison after she has killed her child (pp. 925–31). The text is intact and is given in the libretto (p. clviii), but only part of the music remains, mostly in the string parts with a few fragments of Marguerite's melody. Prévost explains that the complete number, which had [End Page 591] been removed from the autograph, appeared in 1979 in a sale catalog, misidentified as being from Gounod's Le Tribut de Zamora and that its location is unknown (p. 988). In the course of the opera, we see Marguerite's yearning for Faust at the spinning wheel ("Il ne revient pas"), her torment at the hands of Méphistophélès in the church scene and the terrible moment when her dying brother Valentin curses her. Without a solo number for Marguerite in the prison scene before the arrival of Faust, the plot seems incomplete. Faust arrives at the scene and wakes Marguerite ("Ah! C'est le voix du bien aimée!"), but there has been no significant expression of her grief. Thanks to this edition, with the string parts that exist, it might be possible to compose a believable substitute number for this important scene. Prévost's discussion of the work and its sources (such as in the lengthy introduction) is translated...

Unfinished Poetry

Unfinished Poetry

Napoleonic Commemoration on the Operatic Stage

Abstract The retour des cendres, the commemorative return of Napoleon's remains in 1840, represented an important gesture of Napoleonic restoration in the July Monarchy, along with the creation of monuments, paintings, histories, plays, and encomiums to the defeated emperor. The monarchy's commemoration expanded to the stage of the Paris Opéra in 1841 with the appearance of La reine de Chypre, the five-act grand opera by Fromental Halévy and Henri de Saint-Georges, which reverberated with sonic, visual, literary, and political allusions to the Napoleonic legend and overt references to the ceremonial return of the emperor's ashes, including its use of the grandes trompettes from Napoléon's cortege and Invalides service. In its historical reframing of Catarina Cornaro's early fifteenth-century rise to power in Cyprus and defiance of Venetian tyranny, the nostalgic portrayal of exiled French chevaliers, particularly the dying king Lusignan, evoked France's fallen hero as it joined in the dynamic reshaping of imperial memory. Le retour des cendres, le rapatriement commémoratif de la dépouille de Napoléon en 1840, faisait partie d'un ensemble de gestes de restauration napoléonienne pendant la monarchie de Juillet : monuments, peintures, œuvres d'histoire, pièces de théâtre et panégyriques à l'empereur vaincu. La commémoration du règne impérial par la monarchie atteint la scène de l'Opéra de Paris en 1841, avec le début de La reine de Chypre, le grand opéra en cinq actes de Fromental Halévy et Henri de Saint-Georges. L'opéra fait résonner des allusions sonores, visuelles, littéraires et politiques à la légende napoléonienne et des références manifestes au retour des cendres, y compris l'utilisation des grandes trompettes du cortège de Napoléon et de la cérémonie d'inhumation aux Invalides. Dans son remodelage historique de la montée au pouvoir en Chypre de Catarina Cornaro au début du XVe siècle et de son mépris de la tyrannie vénitienne, le portrait nostalgique des chevaliers français exilés, en particulier le roi mourant Lusignan, évoque le héros déchu de la France tout en renouvelant la mémoire impériale.

Grand Illusion: Phantasmagoria in Nineteenth-Century Opera, by Gabriela Cruz

<i>Grand Illusion: Phantasmagoria in Nineteenth-Century Opera</i>, by Gabriela Cruz

Instrumental Music in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples: Politics, Patronage and Artistic Culture, by Anthony R. DelDonna

<i>Instrumental Music in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples: Politics, Patronage and Artistic Culture</i>, by Anthony R. DelDonna

Performing Maternal Suffering on the Operatic Stage: The Case of Marguerite in Gounod's Faust

Performing Maternal Suffering on the Operatic StageThe Case of Marguerite in Gounod's Faust Molly C. Doran (bio) Among the numerous adaptations of Goethe's Faust, Gounod's opera stands out for how it highlights the complex emotional journey of the story's heroine, Marguerite. The demanding role combines challenging music with a traumatic story line that, when taken seriously, invites meaningful, psychologically driven treatment on the stage.1 Throughout the plot, Marguerite faces circumstances that set her apart from many of her counterparts in other nineteenth-century operas: she experiences social ostracization after becoming pregnant out of wedlock, and she ultimately kills her infant in an act of extreme desperation and possible insanity. Much of the opera's music and libretto, however, aestheticize and idealize Marguerite's trauma while effectively silencing the maternity-related aspects of her suffering. Furthermore, traditional staging decisions depict neither Marguerite's pregnancy nor her act of infanticide. By omitting visual reminders of Marguerite's pregnancy and violent experience with motherhood, I suggest that directors from the nineteenth century onward have effectively sanitized her maternal trauma. And in excising the aria "Il ne revient pas" (act 4, scene 1), in which Marguerite expresses her pain and isolation after Faust abandons her, they have suppressed her voice and perspective. Conversely, various twenty-first-century productions of Faust have moved in the opposite direction, foregrounding stark depictions of Marguerite's pregnancy and infanticide. While some of these productions present Marguerite's maternity and consequent trauma in an empathetic manner that highlights both her troubled [End Page 74] psyche specifically and women's traumatic histories more broadly, others rely on her painful motherhood for shock value and, to quote Micaela Baranello, "trade on women's bodies for symbolic currency."2 I argue that although many stagings of Faust have eschewed direct representations of Marguerite's maternal suffering, there is scope for operatic productions to explore and bear witness to both individual and collective trauma in relation to the female experience. I examine how the traditional avoidance of Marguerite's traumatic motherhood fails to acknowledge the realities of abandoned mothers in Gounod's own time, when debates about infanticide, abortion, and women's morality held central importance in French legal and political discourses. This still-relevant history provides a rich context for approaching stagings of Marguerite's narrative. In viewing Faust as a work that expresses collective or cultural trauma—in addition to Marguerite's individual maternal trauma—I also expand on theories developed in trauma studies by scholars such as Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, and Elizabeth Butler Breese.3 Cultural trauma, according to these scholars, comes to exist when a "collective" becomes conscious of an enormous harm enacted on them that has persistently altered their communal identity. The collective then responds to, processes, and maintains the memory of that harm through a variety of means, including storytelling and music.4 Although Faust does not necessarily meet all of Alexander's criteria for "cultural trauma processes," I nonetheless find it useful to consider the opera's potential for expressing the transformation of individual trauma into the collective trauma that women have long experienced around maternity. I contend that contemporary performances of Faust have the potential to become—to borrow from Butler Breese—sites where that trauma is reconstructed and expressed.5 By considering maternity through the lens of trauma theory, I join a burgeoning line of humanities scholars who are challenging traditional conceptions of motherhood. To quote Laura Lazzari and Nathalie Ségeral, "voices of traumatic or non-traditional motherhood experiences are only beginning to be heard."6 [End Page 75] As Lazzari and Ségeral's groundbreaking volume demonstrates, applying trauma studies to motherhood allows for the inclusion of marginalized maternal narratives across contemporary literature, film, and the arts. In the world of clinical research on maternity, too, the effects of trauma on women's experiences with maternity and motherhood is an increasingly popular topic.7 Faust serves as a rich operatic case study for considering historical and contemporary understandings of women's reproductive trauma, and its performance raises ethical questions about opera's representation of maternity. Infanticide and Female Madness in Nineteenth-Century France Marguerite...

Letter from the Editors

Letter from the Editors Lisa Barg, Vanessa Blais-Tremblay, and Kimberly White We are honored and delighted to assume the editorship of Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture. We are indebted to Emily Wilbourne for her inspiring leadership, work, and vision during her tenure as editor in chief, and we thank her for her expert guidance and consul over the past year. We also thank the selection committee, Suzanne G. Cusick, Olivia Bloechl, and Yun Emily Wang, for their encouragement and support. Our collective represents diversity in music research and language, as well as in professional and institutional affiliation, bringing together scholars working in traditional and nontraditional positions in Anglophone and Francophone academic spheres. As an editorial collective, we are committed to continuing the important critical and feminist work of the journal under the inspiring editorial leadership of Suzanne Cusick, Ellie Hisama, and Emily Wilbourne. We will prioritize inclusivity and diversity on all fronts. In addition to seeking out submissions on a wide variety of topics and across disciplinary and methodological perspectives, we strive to encourage and support early career scholars alongside established scholars. We also are excited to continue organizing special issues led by guest editors. The articles in this issue engage productively and imaginatively with themes of race, sexuality, and motherhood in a wide range of temporal and geographic fields. Francesca Inglese explores the role of women—particularly mothers—in klopse practices in post-apartheid Cape Town; Annie Kim considers how Camilla Williams used the disruptive potential of the phonograph to resound Black female subjectivity in her performance of Porgy and Bess; and Camille Rogers opens a conversation about comedy, sentimentality, and sexual violence in Così fan tutte. We are thrilled to be joined by Erin Johnson-Williams and Michelle Meinhart, who have coedited a partial special issue on sound studies and maternity. These [End Page vii] four articles delve into sound and birth during COVID-19; musical interventions in gestational labor; soundscapes of settler-colonial medicine; and stagings of maternal suffering on the operatic stage. Women & Music warmly welcomes innovative work, in both traditional and alternative formats and from diverse disciplinary perspectives, that focuses on gender and sexuality. We look forward to reading your submissions and thank you all in advance for considering Women & Music as a home for your work. [End Page viii] Copyright © 2022 Suzanne G. Cusick

Pozůstalost Františka Škroupa (1801–1862) v Národním muzeu v Praze (Ke 160. výročí úmrtí)

The Czech composer and conductor František Škroup was one of the most important musicians active in Bohemia in the second quarter of the 19th century. For 30 years from 1827, he was a conductor at the Estates Theatre in Prague, the leading operatic stage in Bohemia (and from 1837 to 1858 the chief conductor), and he conducted the most important Prague concerts. He spent the last two years of his life in Rotterdam, where he took part in the inception of the newly established German opera. He had a major influence over the public’s developing musical tastes at the time, but now Škroup has unjustly become a nearly forgotten figure. He is remembered by the Czech public mostly as the composer of the song “Kde domov můj?” (Where My Home Is) from the farce Fidlovačka. Already in the 19th century, it spontaneously became the unofficial hymn of the Czech nation, and after the dissolution of the Habsburg monarchy and the founding of Czechoslovakia as an independent state in 1918, it became the official national anthem. After Škroup’s death in 1862, the intention of his widow Karolina had been to donate his estate to the National Museum, but in 1863 she only sent the museum the autograph scores of two of Škroup’s key works: the singspiel Dráteník and the farce Fidlovačka. The National Museum obtained the estate in 1921 as an inheritance from Božena Škroupová (1847–1928), who bequeathed its contents to the museum under the condition that she would use some items until her death, whereafter they would be handed over to the National Museum, which she made her sole heir. This very extensive collection is of quite extraordinary cultural value: it contains tangible artefacts (furniture), a wealth of iconographical material, the personal documents of several members of the family of František Škroup – Karolina Škroupová, and their daughters Karolina and Božena, family correspondence. Škroup’s compositions including autograph scores, handwritten copies, and printed editions, plenty of printed material mostly from the period after Škroup’s death, and books. The artefacts and iconographical material were kept at the Department of Historical Archaeology, books and printed or manuscript writings were kept at the literary archive of the National Museum, and music was kept in the music collection that was formerly part of the National Museum Library. When the National Museum’s literature archives were transferred to the Literary Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature, this collection was retained at the National Museum and was registered among the collections at the Music Department in 1954. It is certain that sheet music was turned over to the museum in 1921 and furniture at the beginning of 1929; most of the books had been turned over already in 1921. In most cases it is not possible to determine reliably when written materials were handed over. Inventory numbers or shelf marks have been found for most of the items from the will, and the library still needs to be identified. So far, the writings in the estate are still entered in the systematic records under acquisition number 4/54. The discovery of the will is very beneficial for the further processing of the estate because we are now aware of internal connections and are able to organise the material well.The National Museum has definitely fulfilled the stipulation in Božena Škroupová’s will “that the objects be preserved reverently for future generations” – the objects are properly stored, processed, available to scholarly researchers, and on display in exhibits; most of the furniture is on display in an exhibit at the History Museum in Vrchotovy Janovice.

The Changing Face of Opera in America: Musical Theatre on the American Operatic Stage

To address the opera industry’s ongoing struggle to maintain self-sustaining business models, more and more major opera companies turn to musical theater to build audiences and revenue. This article identifies challenges successfully met by several specific opera companies, discusses opportunities for programming music theater on the operatic stage, including effects on the casting process, and looks toward a promising future that is inclusive of both opera and musical theater in one canon or repertoire.

Operatic Albanians and singing Turks in the age of enlightenment and revolution

ABSTRACT This article considers Albanian subjects in European operas of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, discussed in the context of the broader phenomenon of operas about Ottoman Turkish subjects and also with regard to more general European cultural perspectives on Albania and the Ottoman empire. The principal operas discussed include Antonio Vivaldi’s Scanderbeg, performed in Florence in 1718; a completely different treatment of that subject, Scanderberg composed by François Francoeur and François Rebel for Paris in 1735 and revived in 1763; Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte, with its mock-Albanians, composed for Vienna in 1790; and Albert Lortzing’s Ali Pascha von Janina, performed in Münster in 1828. The article discusses how issues of Ottoman despotism on the operatic stage intersected with musical and dramatic representations of the subject peoples of the Ottoman empire, especially the Albanians. The eighteenth-century Skanderbeg operas are particularly interesting for reflecting on the ways that Albanians were distinguished from Turks and the ways in which they resembled Turks on the operatic stage. This study of operas about Ottoman Albanians further contributes to understanding the complexity of perspectives on the Ottoman empire in the Enlightenment.