Popularity Of Opera Research Articles

The Rhetorical Feminine: Gender and Orient on the German Stage, 1647-1742 by Sarah Colvin (review)

MLRy 98.1,2003 233 disregarded. It has vanished from view to such an extent that the first task of the author of this book was to assemble a text corpus. As a preliminary, however, Caemmerer firsttraces the origins of bucolic literature in classical times with Theocritus and Virgil, their reception in the Renaissance, and the appearance of pastoral drama at the northern ltalian courts in the sixteenth cen? tury. The two prototypes that emerge at the court of Ferrara are Tasso's Aminta (1573) and Guarini's Pastor fido (first printed in 1590), works whose reception in the German-speaking world she then charts, though she also discusses the transmis? sion of pastoral literature via France. In assembling her corpus of German works, Caemmerer casts her net over the whole of the seventeenth century, and across both bourgeois learned circles and German court culture. Although pastoral dramas were usually performed as court entertainments, it was bourgeois scholars who firstmade the genre available in German. Caemmerer then presents a series of individual case studies, chosen to illuminate the contrasting uses to which the genre was put. The pastoral drama can be a panegyric of the ruler or a vehicle for criticism of him or of court life. It can be used as a Christian allegory, a political allegory, or an allegory of love. It can also be used to comment on and satirize bourgeois attitudes. Caemmerer examines works by such little-known authors as Hermann Heinrich Scher or August Augspurger, but also considers those by Dach, Stieler, Harsdorffer, Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig-Wolfenbuttel, Birken, Gryphius, and Hallmann. By the end ofthis study,the reader feels that an important body ofwork has taken on firmcontours and that along the way a picture of how German seventeenth-century literature adopted and transformed Romance literature has emerged. Exeter College, Oxford Helen Watanabe-O' Kelly The Rhetorical Feminine: Gender and Orient on the German Stage, 1647-1742. By Sarah Colvin. (Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs) Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1999. x + 332pp. ?48. ISBN 0-19-818636-3 (hbk). The concern with the preservation of order, or the implicit fearof the chaos that might be unleashed by uncontrolled passions, underlies the preoccupation with the Affekte and their relationship to reason in early modern culture. Dr Colvin's thorough and persuasive examination of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theatre approaches these issues from the perspective of gender studies, illustrating through an analysis of a wide range of texts that a 'masculinist, Christian-centred world-view' (p. 281) determines the depiction of female characters and representatives of the Orient, spe? cifically Turks, both groups that are characterized by their alterity and the potential threat they pose to the status quo. One of the strengths of this study is its comprehensiveness. It embraces tragedy and comedy, including reference to the works of Gryphius and Lohenstein, Hallmann, Haugwitz, Reuter, and Weise. As such it is able to highlight parallels between high or serious and low or comic drama, demonstrating that both seek to endorse the norms of a patriarchal, rigidly hierarchical Christian society. The presentation of standard female types, such as the assertive seductress, who manipulatesher sexuality to undermine male reason, or the ideal (because submissive) wife, is explored, as is the practice of cross-attribution. Just as the male ruler who becomes subject to corporeal love, traditionally regarded as feminine behaviour, reveals his inability to exercise power, so thefemmeforte,the female endowed with traditional masculine qualities, and the 'good Turk', who displays Occidental values, are shown to have a didactic impact. The study illuminates the rhetorical traditions that determine the depiction of female and Turkish characters. It traces their origins to medieval misogynist writing and the literary 234 Reviews treatment of Turks from the fifteenthcentury, explores their manipulationby successive dramatists, and illustrates that the persuasive force of a drama rests on the dramatists ' mastery of a sign-system based on a common understanding of, for example, mythology, metaphor and emblem, and the connotations of whiteness and blackness. The popularity of opera at this time is acknowledged by the focus on performances staged in Braunschweig and Hamburg, two centres of early German opera. While the norm-endorsing function of...

Briefe: Gesamtausgabe 1763–1803 by Johann Gottfried Herder (review)

234 Reviews treatment of Turks from the fifteenthcentury, explores their manipulationby successive dramatists, and illustrates that the persuasive force of a drama rests on the dramatists ' mastery of a sign-system based on a common understanding of, for example, mythology, metaphor and emblem, and the connotations of whiteness and blackness. The popularity of opera at this time is acknowledged by the focus on performances staged in Braunschweig and Hamburg, two centres of early German opera. While the norm-endorsing function of opera of this period is well established, the achievement of this study lies in its demonstration that the opera librettist, using his own idiom, employs the rhetorical traditions of spoken drama. An enterprising examination of examples from some of the few extant scores reveals parallels between musical and textual rhetoric. Arguably the discussion of opera could have encompassed analysis of a libretto by Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig; Feind's views on opera could possibly have been complemented by those of Menantes and Neumeister. But these are quibbles. The work offers a panoramic view of the German stage, shedding light on some lesser-known areas. In this respect it makes an important contribution to the early modern syllabus at a time when the choice of texts studied by undergraduates is often limited by the scarcity of appropriate secondary literature. Equally, it offersa lucid and stimulating argument with which specialists can profitably engage. University of Exeter Sara Smart Briefe: Gesamtausgabe 1763-1803. By Johann Gottfried Herder. Ed. by Gunter Arnold for the Stiftung Weimarer Klassik. Vol. xi: Kommentar zu den Banden 1?3, Weimar: Bohlau. 2001. 664 pp. ?99.90. ISBN 3-7400-1178-5. This latest volume in the comprehensive edition of Herder's letters, the firstten vol? umes of which have already been reviewedin this journal (MLR, 93 (1998), 1157-60), contains the editor's commentary on 636 of the letters, or roughly a quarter of the total. For two main reasons, the commentary is necessarily extensive. Firstly, since the letters of Herder's correspondents (some 2,500 of them survive) are not included in the edition, their content has to be conveyed through frequent quotations and paraphrases. And secondly, since Herder regularly discusses his own current writ? ings and those of other authors on literary,philological, historical, philosophical, and theological topics, his letters are full of scholarly references and literary allusions to works in several languages, all of which require editorial comment and bibliographical elucidation. To this formidable task Gunter Arnold brings great erudition and an intimate knowledge of Herder's works and the Herder scholarship of the last two centuries. His annotations of the correspondences with Hamann, Heyne, Lavater, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai are in these respects exemplary. Given the large extent of Herder's personal, learned, and official correspondence and the loss and dispersal of large sections of it, lost and hitherto unknown items continue to come to light. Sixteen of these are inserted at appropriate chronological points in the present commentary. They include letters already published in earlier volumes of the edition but now corrected against rediscovered originals, official notes to the Biickeburg authorities on ecclesiastical and educational matters, and a few more substantial items (pp. 486-88, 609-11, and 659-60) which throw new light on episodes in Herder's life and on his attitude to his professional responsibilities in Schaumburg-Lippe. The inclusion of successive versions of the same letters in differentvolumes does not, of course, make foreasy reference, particularly since most of Volume ix, through no fault of the editor, is already given over to reprinted letters corrected when the lost MLRy 98.1,2003 235 originals were unexpectedly rediscovered. Readers must also refer to keys to abbreviations in more than one volume, and to the index of names in Volume x in order to identify Herder's less famous correspondents and other individuals mentioned in his letters. The effortrequired to familiarize oneself with the complex layout of the edition is, however, eminently worthwhile. This splendid commentary at last makes all known letters of Herder's pre-Weimar years fully accessible, and Giinter Arnold is to be congratulated on bringing this monumental enterprise a large step nearer to its conclusion. All Herder...

PRIVATE LIVES OF PUBLIC WOMEN: PRIMA DONNAS IN MID-SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY VENICE

As OPERA spread throughout Italy during the mid seventeenth century, an increased demand arose for professional singers, particularly women. For the first time, women were able to pursue well-paid musical careers outside the homes and palaces of the wealthy nobility. The popularity of opera and the increasing competition among markets helped to foster these women's sense of power as they bargained to offer their services to the highest or most influential bidder. Indeed, although throughout much of Europe operatic casts featured a combination of women, castratos, 'natural-voiced' men and, sometimes, children, during the middle of the century much of the attention, and the highest salaries, were showered on the leading women.1 These decades saw the emergence of the prima donna. It is often difficult, however, to know precisely who performed in many of the operas during this period and, moreover, to gain insight into their careers as singers. We can sometimes learn the casts from lists in opera librettos (although such lists did not become common until the end of the century), from the examination of court and chapel records, and from the surviving correspondence of singers, patrons and other interested parties. The papers of the impresario Marco Faustini now housed in the Archivio di Stato in Venice have long provided scholars with the opportunity to study the often chatty letters of a number of mid-seventeenth-century singers who had ties with the Venetian theatre network; the letters frequently supply otherwise unknown data about the correspondents' and other performers' activities.2 Yet another source of information is the notarial archive of Venice. Its documents can provide us with proof of a given singer's presence in Venice (still the centre of opera

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY INTERNATIONAL OPERATIC INDUSTRY AND THE AMERICAN MUSICAL PRESS

The popularity of opera, and in particular Italian opera, in the United States is the result of almost two centuries of intensive activity in the field. The modest beginnings, set in motion by Manuel Garcia's family ensemble in New York during the 1820s, gradually expanded as the nineteenth century progressed. The genre, in fact, came to be rooted in the nation's cultural consciousness by the middle of the century. The 1850s were a period of great activity in the construction of American cities, and the musical press reports the planning, financing and erection of theatres suitable for performance; for example, the New York Academy of Music and the Boston Theatre in 1854, the Philadelphia Academy of Music in 1857. Since no native or immigrant American composer succeeded in the field of operatic composition during the nineteenth century, music historians have tended to leave aside mention of opera in their discussions of music in the United States. Close examination of the

Is the Growing Popularity of Opera in Britain Just Another 90s Media Myth? Market Research Provides the Answer

Is the Growing Popularity of Opera in Britain Just Another 90s Media Myth? Market Research Provides the Answer

Slovenski godalni kvartet

Slovenski godalni kvartet