In this book, author Louise K. Stein analyzes early modern opera as appreciated and produced by Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán (1629-87), Marqués de Heliche and del Carpio and a distinguished patron of the arts in Madrid, Rome, and Naples. It also reveals his lasting legacy in the Americas during a crucial period for the growth and development of opera and the history of singing.
"In a crucial period of opera's development as genre and business, a flamboyantly libertine Spanish aristocrat, voracious collector of books and antiquities, and famed connoisseur of visual art influenced operatic practices and productions for both Italian and Hispanic operas. This book advances our understanding of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century opera and cultural encounter, traversing opera's geography (Madrid, Rome, Naples, Lima, Mexico) by tracing the trajectory of Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán, marquis de Heliche and del Carpio (1629-1687), the first producer whose energetic patronage and legacy shaped opera in two worlds. Carpio's unusual temperament and aesthetic sensibility were essential to his celebrated success as a producer of musical plays and opera"--
Like the divine, divas, it seems, are omnipresent. From the sirens to Madonna, from castrati to Callas, from opera stage to drag shows to TV commercials, from George Eliot to writers of detective fiction, the diva has been worshipped, feared, maligned, parodied, and appropriated. The Diva's Mouth: Bodies, Voice, and Prima Donna Politics examines how and why, from the eighteenth century to the present, divas have been talked about with so much passion and written up, down, and over with so much ambiguity and contradiction. The book explores the myriad roles the diva plays in masculinist, feminist, and queer imaginations--in opera itself and in other fictions, films, and fantasies, including the divas' (and the authors') own. Finally, it examines how and why pop and "pomo" singers, like Madonna, Annie Lennox, and Diamanda Galas, in very explicit ways both flirt with and fling off the fantasy of the woman with a voice. In this very witty and highly readable book, the authors tell everything you always wanted to know and make you want to know even more about the diva.
A history of Renaissance music focused on the music itself and the social and institutional contexts that shaped musical genres and performance. This book provides a complete overview of music in the 15th and 16th Centuries. It explains the most significant features of the music and the distinguishing characteristics of Renaissance composers (in Europe and the New World). It includes a large integrated anthology of 94 musical examples, as well as illustrations of musical instruments, notation, and ensembles.
This is the first comprehensive history of seventeenth-ccntury Spanish theatrical music to be written in any language, and the first book-length study devoted to the music of the Spanish baroque in English. While particular aspects of the field have been explored before, no previous single study has succeeded in defining the place and function of music in the Spanish theatre of the Golden Age, and the nature of the extant repertory. This book explains the several musical-theatrical genres that flourished in seventeenth-century Spain, answers essential questions about their nature and development as court and public entertainments, and looks at the anomalous production of three operas in a period dominated by genres such as the semi-opera and the zarzuela. Based on a thorough study of the extant music, the plays, numerous historical documents, and descriptions from the period, the author builds a complete picture through a historical and contextual approach illustrated by musical and literary analysis. This book considerably advances our understanding of the culture of the baroque period in Spain, by making important statements about the nature of the Spanish musical baroque and its relation to European musical and theatrical developments. As such, it will be welcomed by musicologists, hispanists, students of Spanish culture, and historians of the arts and ideas.
This unique volume explores the relationship between music and crime in its various forms and expressions, bringing together two areas rarely discussed in the same contexts and combining them through the tools offered by cultural criminology. Contributors discuss a range of topics, from how songs and artists draw on criminality as inspiration to how musical expression fulfills unexpected functions such as building deviant subcultures, encouraging social movements, or carrying messages of protest. Comprised of contributions from an international cohort of scholars, the book is categorized into five parts: The Criminalization of Music; Music and Violence; Organised Crime and Music; Music, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity and Music as Resistance. Spanning a range of cultures and time periods, Crime and Music will be of interest to researchers in critical and cultural criminology, the history of music, anthropology, ethnology, and sociology.
The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - the so-called Golden Age of Polyphony - represent a time of great change and development in European music, with the flourishing of Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina, Byrd, Victoria, Monteverdi and Schütz among others. The thirty chapters of this book, contributed by established scholars on subjects within their fields of expertise, deal with polyphonic music - sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental - during this period. The volume offers chronological surveys of national musical cultures (in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and Spain); genre studies (Mass, motet, madrigal, chanson, instrumental music, opera); and is completed with essays on intellectual and cultural developments and concepts relevant to music (music theory, printing, the Protestant Reformation and the corresponding Catholic movement, humanism, concepts of 'Renaissance' and 'Baroque'). It thus provides a complete overview of the music and its context. Contributors: GARY TOMLINSON, JAMES HAAR, TIM CARTER, GIULIO ONGARO, NOEL O'REGAN, ALLAN ATLAS, ANTHONY CUMMINGS, RICHARD FREEDMAN, JEANICE BROOKS, DAVID TUNLEY, KATE VAN ORDEN, KRISTINE FORNEY, IAIN FENLON, KAROL BERGER, PETER BERGQUIST, DAVID CROOK, ROBIN LEAVER, CRAIG MONSON, TODD BORGERDING, LOUISE K. STEIN, GIUSEPPE GERBINO, ROGER BRAY, JONATHAN WAINWRIGHT, VICTOR COELHO, KEITH POLK
Proving fruitful in various applications throughout its two millennia of predominance, the rhetorical téchne appears to have entertained a particularly symbiotic interrelation with drama. With contributions from (among others) a Classicist, historical, linguistic, musicological, operatic, cultural and literary studies perspective, this publication offers interdisciplinary assessments of specific reciprocities between the system of rhetoric and dramatic works: tracing the longue durée of this nexus—highlighting its Ancient foundations, its various Early Modern formations, as well as certain configurations enduring to this day—enables describing shifting degrees of rhetoricity; approaching it from an interdisciplinary viewpoint facilitates focusing on the often sidelined rhetorical phenomena located beyond the textual plane, specifically memoria and actio; tackling this interchange from various viewpoints and with diverse emphases, a long-lasting and highly prolific cross-fertilization between drama and rhetoric is rendered visible. In tendering a balanced panorama of both detailed case studies and descriptive overviews, this volume also points toward terrain yet to be charted in the scholarship to come. The volume was prepared in co-operation with the ERC Advanced Grant Project Early Modern European Drama and the Cultural Net (DramaNet).
Everyone is familiar with the words diva or prima donna, which have come to mean a (usually) outrageous operatic soprano, but there was a time when the star of the show was more often a contralto, or a soprano singing in today's mezzo-soprano range. This performer was referred to as an alto. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the male and female leading roles were likely to be sung by emasculated males, the alto castrati, although there were many great female altos during this period as well. The music for these fantastic artists, written by such composers as Porpora, Vinci, Hasse, and even Handel, has been largely forgotten. At the beginning of the 19th century, as the castrati died out, their roles were often assumed by female altos referred to as musici. New repertoire continued to be written for them by Rossini and others, but gradually, this musical tradition and technique was lost. Now, however, because of the talent and industry of such gifted artists as Marilyn Horne, Cecilia Bartoli, and Joyce DiDonato, and the sudden ease with which the performance of these forgotten works can be obtained, there is a resurgence of interest in the performance and preservation of this lost art. Alto: The Voice of Bel Canto examines the careers of nearly 320 great alto singers, including the great castrati, from the dawn of opera in 1597 to the present. The music of the composers who wrote for the alto voice is discussed along with musical examples and suggestions for listening. The exploration of the greatest altos’ careers and techniques offers inspiration for aspiring young singers as well as absorbing reading for the music lover who wants to know more about the fascinating world of opera.
