Curtain, Gong, Steam

Curtain, Gong, Steam

Author: Gundula Kreuzer

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2018-05-18

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0520966554

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In this innovative book, Gundula Kreuzer argues for the foundational role of technologies in the conception, production, and study of nineteenth-century opera. She shows how composers increasingly incorporated novel audiovisual effects in their works and how the uses and meanings of the required apparatuses changed through the twentieth century, sometimes still resonating in stagings, performance art, and popular culture today. Focusing on devices (which she dubs “Wagnerian technologies”) intended to amalgamate opera’s various media while veiling their mechanics, Kreuzer offers a practical counternarrative to Wagner’s idealist theories of total illusionism. At the same time, Curtain, Gong, Steam’s multifaceted exploration of the three titular technologies repositions Wagner as catalyst more than inventor in the history of operatic production. With its broad chronological and geographical scope, this book deepens our understanding of the material and mechanical conditions of historical operatic practice as well as of individual works, both well known and obscure.


Foul Lady Fortune

Foul Lady Fortune

Author: Chloe Gong

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-09-27

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 1665905603

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From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights and Our Violent Ends comes the “equal parts intoxicating and dazzling” (Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Gilded Wolves) first book in a captivating new duology following an ill-matched pair of spies posing as a married couple to investigate a series of brutal murders in 1930s Shanghai. It’s 1931 in Shanghai, and the stage is set for a new decade of intrigue. Four years ago, Rosalind Lang was brought back from the brink of death, but the strange experiment that saved her also stopped her from sleeping and aging—and allows her to heal from any wound. In short, Rosalind cannot die. Now, desperate for redemption for her traitorous past, she uses her abilities as an assassin for her country. Code name: Fortune. But when the Japanese Imperial Army begins its invasion march, Rosalind’s mission pivots. A series of murders is causing unrest in Shanghai, and the Japanese are under suspicion. Rosalind’s new orders are to infiltrate foreign society and identify the culprits behind the terror plot before more of her people are killed. To reduce suspicion, however, she must pose as the wife of another Nationalist spy, Orion Hong, and though Rosalind finds Orion’s cavalier attitude and playboy demeanor infuriating, she is willing to work with him for the greater good. But Orion has an agenda of his own, and Rosalind has secrets that she wants to keep buried. As they both attempt to unravel the conspiracy, the two spies soon find that there are deeper and more horrifying layers to this mystery than they ever imagined.


Monteverdi's Last Operas: A Venetian Trilogy

Monteverdi's Last Operas: A Venetian Trilogy

Author: Ellen Rosand

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2007-12-03

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 9780520933279

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Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was the first important composer of opera. This innovative study by one of the foremost experts on Monteverdi and seventeenth-century opera examines the composer's celebrated final works—Il ritorno d'Ulisse (1640) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642)—from a new perspective. Ellen Rosand considers these works as not merely a pair but constituents of a trio, a Venetian trilogy that, Rosand argues, properly includes a third opera, Le nozze d'Enea (1641). Although its music has not survived, its chronological placement between the other two operas opens new prospects for better understanding all three, both in their specifically Venetian context and as the creations of an old master. A thorough review of manuscript and printed sources of Ritorno and Poppea, in conjunction with those of their erstwhile silent companion, offers new possibilities for resolving the questions of authenticity that have swirled around Monteverdi's last operas since their discovery in the late nineteenth century. Le nozze d'Enea also helps to explain the striking differences between the other two, casting new light on their contrasting moral ethos: the conflict between a world of emotional propriety and restraint and one of hedonistic abandon.


The Tortilla Curtain

The Tortilla Curtain

Author: T. Coraghessan Boyle

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0143119079

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The lives of two different couples--wealthy Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, and Candido and America Rincon, a pair of Mexican illegals--suddenly collide, in a story that unfolds from the shifting viewpoints of the various characters.


Grand Illusion

Grand Illusion

Author: Gabriela Cruz

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0190915056

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A new and groundbreaking historical narrative, Grand Illusion: Phantasmagoria in Nineteenth-Century Opera explores how technical innovations in Paris transformed the grand opera into a transcendent, dream-like audio-visual spectacle.


Curtain Call

Curtain Call

Author: Lennox Seales

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 145209554X

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When we sit back and reflect on significant events, evoke memories of people in our past, assess important aspects of our current lives, and how one man could have played such a transformative role in the journey of so many through life, it is not surprising, in this moment of calm reflection, that we find ourselves inspired to memorialize his remarkable achievements born of a compelling yearning, an insatiable appetite, an incurable drive to live his dreams. Such was a man named Franklyn Vincent Ellison Seales, the natural born son of Francis Seales, a merchant seaman and government employee of Portuguese, English, Scottish and African ancestry and Olive Seales, nee Allen, a homemaker of Portuguese and native Carib Indian stock. He was the youngest of that family of five: three girls and two boys born on 15 July 1952 in the small village of Calliaqua, St Vincent and the Grenadines. We celebrate that he was the first native of the island to graduate from the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City that led him to appear on the Silver screen in Hollywood.


Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow

Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow

Author: Karol Berger

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2007-10-02

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0520250915

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Uses the works of Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven to support the claims that it was only in the later eighteenth century that music began to take the flow of time from the past to the future seriously.


Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Newbery Honor Book)

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Newbery Honor Book)

Author: Grace Lin

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0316052604

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A Time Magazine 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time selection!​ A Reader’s Digest Best Children’s Book of All Time​! This stunning fantasy inspired by Chinese folklore is a companion novel to Starry River of the Sky and the New York Times bestselling and National Book Award finalist When the Sea Turned to Silver In the valley of Fruitless mountain, a young girl named Minli lives in a ramshackle hut with her parents. In the evenings, her father regales her with old folktales of the Jade Dragon and the Old Man on the Moon, who knows the answers to all of life's questions. Inspired by these stories, Minli sets off on an extraordinary journey to find the Old Man on the Moon to ask him how she can change her family's fortune. She encounters an assorted cast of characters and magical creatures along the way, including a dragon who accompanies her on her quest for the ultimate answer. Grace Lin, author of the beloved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat returns with a wondrous story of adventure, faith, and friendship. A fantasy crossed with Chinese folklore, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a timeless story reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz and Kelly Barnhill's The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Her beautiful illustrations, printed in full-color, accompany the text throughout. Once again, she has created a charming, engaging book for young readers.


Feed

Feed

Author: M. T. Anderson

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Published: 2010-05-11

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0763651559

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Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains. Winner of the LA Times Book Prize. For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play around with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who knows something about what it’s like to live without the feed-and about resisting its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a brave new world - and a hilarious new lingo - sure to appeal to anyone who appreciates smart satire, futuristic fiction laced with humor, or any story featuring skin lesions as a fashion statement.