Opera in Paris from the Empire to the Commune

Opera in Paris from the Empire to the Commune

Author: Mark Everist

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-12-10

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 1351661019

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Studies in the history of French nineteenth-century stage music have blossomed in the last decade, encouraging a revision of the view of the primacy of Austro-German music during the period and rebalancing the scholarly field away from instrumental music (key to the Austro-German hegemony) and towards music for the stage. This change of emphasis is having an impact on the world of opera production, with new productions of works not heard since the nineteenth century taking their place in the modern repertory. This awakening of enthusiasm has come at something of a price. Selling French opera as little more than an important precursor to Verdi or Wagner has entailed a focus on works produced exclusively for the Paris Opéra at the expense of the vast range of other types of stage music produced in the capital: opéra comique, opérette, comédie-vaudeville and mélodrame, for example. The first part of this book therefore seeks to reintroduce a number of norms to the study of stage music in Paris: to re-establish contexts and conventions that still remain obscure. The second and third parts acknowledge Paris as an importer and exporter of opera, and its focus moves towards the music of its closest neighbours, the Italian-speaking states, and of its most problematic partners, the German-speaking states, especially the music of Weber and Wagner. Prefaced by an introduction that develops the volume’s overriding intellectual drivers of cultural exchange, genre and institution, this collection brings together twelve of the author’s previously published articles and essays, fully updated for this volume and translated into English for the first time.


New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera

New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera

Author: Charlotte Bentley

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-12-06

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0226823091

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A history of nineteenth-century New Orleans and the people who made it a vital, if unexpected, part of an emerging operatic world. New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859 explores the thriving operatic life of New Orleans in the first half of the nineteenth century, drawing out the transatlantic connections that animated it. By focusing on a variety of individuals, their extended webs of human contacts, and the materials that they moved along with them, this book pieces together what it took to bring opera to New Orleans and the ways in which the city’s operatic life shaped contemporary perceptions of global interconnection. The early chapters explore the process of bringing opera to the stage, taking a detailed look at the management of New Orleans’s Francophone theater, the Théâtre d’Orléans, as well as the performers who came to the city and the reception they received. But opera’s significance was not confined to the theater, and later chapters of the book examine how opera permeated everyday life in New Orleans, through popular sheet music, novels, magazines and visual culture, and dancing in its many ballrooms. Just as New Orleans helped to create transatlantic opera, opera in turn helped to create the city of New Orleans.


Charles Garnier's Paris Opéra

Charles Garnier's Paris Opéra

Author: Christopher Curtis Mead

Publisher: MIT Press (MA)

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13:

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By making systematic use of the mostly unpublished Opera Archive, Mead fills in the missing links to previous investigations and unlocks the significance of this seminal masterpiece.


The Empire at the Opéra

The Empire at the Opéra

Author: Mark Everist

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-01-21

Total Pages: 61

ISBN-13: 1108904726

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Although nineteenth-century legislation had tried to ensure a precise separation between genre and institution for Parisian music in the theatre, it had inadvertently laid out a field on which the politics of genre could be played out as agents and actors of all types deployed various forms of artistic power. During the Second Empire, from 1854 until 1870, the state took over day-to-day control of the Opéra in ways that were without precedent. Every element of the Opéra's activity was subjugated to the exigency of Empire; the selection or artists, works and more general questions of artistic policy were handed over to politicians. The Opéra effectively became a branch of government. The result was a stagnation of the Opéra's repertory, and beneficiaries were the composers of larger-scale works for competing organisations: the Opéra Comique and the Théâtre Lyrique.


The Operatic State

The Operatic State

Author: Ruth Bereson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-09-02

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1134469942

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The Operatic State examines the cultural, financial, and political investments that have gone into the maintenance of opera and opera houses in Europe, the USA and Australia. It analyses opera's nearly immutable form throughout wars, revolutions, and vast social changes throughout the world. Bereson argues that by legitimising the power of the state through universally recognised ceremonial ritual, opera enjoys a privileged status across three continents, often to the detriment of popular and indigenous art forms.


The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon

The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon

Author: Cormac Newark

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-08-20

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 0197510558

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Opera has always been a vital and complex mixture of commercial and aesthetic concerns, of bourgeois politics and elite privilege. In its long heyday in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it came to occupy a special place not only among the arts but in urban planning, too this is, perhaps surprisingly, often still the case. The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon examines how opera has become the concrete edifice it was never meant to be, by tracing its evolution from a market entirely driven by novelty to one of the most canonic art forms still in existence. Throughout the book, a lively assembly of musicologists, historians, and industry professionals tackle key questions of opera's past, present, and future. Why did its canon evolve so differently from that of concert music? Why do its top ten titles, all more than a century old, now account for nearly a quarter of all performances worldwide? Why is this system of production becoming still more top-heavy, even while the repertory seemingly expands, notably to include early music? Topics range from the seventeenth century to the present day, from Russia to England and continental Europe to the Americas. To reflect the contested nature of many of them, each is addressed in paired chapters. These complement each other in different ways: by treating the same geographical location in different periods, by providing different national or regional perspectives on the same period, or by thinking through similar conceptual issues in contrasting or changing contexts. Posing its questions in fresh, provocative terms, The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon challenges scholarly assumptions in music and cultural history, and reinvigorates the dialogue with an industry that is, despite everything, still growing.


Paris Reborn

Paris Reborn

Author: Stephane Kirkland

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1250021669

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Stephane Kirkland gives an engrossing account of Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and one of the greatest transformations of a major city in modern history Traditionally known as a dirty, congested, and dangerous city, 19th Century Paris, France was transformed in an extraordinary period from 1848 to 1870, when the government launched a huge campaign to build streets, squares, parks, churches, and public buildings. The Louvre Palace was expanded, Notre-Dame Cathedral was restored and the French masterpiece of the Second Empire, the Opéra Garnier, was built. A very large part of what we see when we visit Paris today originates from this short span of twenty-two years. The vision for the new Nineteenth Century Paris belonged to Napoleon III, who had led a long and difficult climb to absolute power. But his plans faltered until he brought in a civil servant, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, to take charge of the implementation. Heedless of controversy, at tremendous cost, Haussmann pressed ahead with the giant undertaking until, in 1870, his political enemies brought him down, just months before the collapse of the whole regime brought about the end of an era. Paris Reborn is a must-read for anyone who ever wondered how Paris, the city universally admired as a standard of urban beauty, became what it is.


Historical Dictionary of Opera

Historical Dictionary of Opera

Author: Scott L. Balthazar

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2013-07-05

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 0810879433

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Opera has been around ever since the late 16th century, and it is still going strong in the sense that operas are performed around the world at present, and known by infinitely more persons than just those who attend performances. On the other hand, it has enjoyed periods in the past when more operas were produced to greater acclaim. Those periods inevitably have pride of place in this Historical Dictionary of Opera, as do exceptional singers, and others who combine to fashion the opera, whether or not they appear on stage. But this volume looks even further afield, considering the cities which were and still are opera centers, literary works which were turned into librettos, and types of pieces and genres. While some of the former can be found on the web or in other sources, most of the latter cannot and it is impossible to have the whole picture without them. Indeed, this book has an amazingly broad scope. The dictionary section, with about 340 entries, covers the topics mentioned above but obviously focuses most on composers, not just the likes of Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, but others who are scarcely remembered but made notable contributions. Of course, there are the divas, but others singers as well, and some of the most familiar operas, Don Giovanni, Tosca and more. Technical terms also abound, and reference to different genres, from antimasque to zarzuela. Since opera has been around so long, the chronology is rather lengthy, since it has a lot of ground to cover, and the introduction sets the scene for the rest. This book should not be an end but rather a beginning, so it has a substantial bibliography for readers seeking more specific or specialized works. It is an excellent access point for readers interested in opera.