This book concerns the life and theatrical career of the great native-born English composer and musician of the eighteenth century, Thomas Augustine Arne (1710-1778), best known today as the composer of "Rule, Britannia." It will appeal to those interested in the mid-to-late eighteenth-century London and Dublin theatre, opera, and music scenes.
This book provides a musicological investigation into operas that include children. Just over 100 works have been selected here for an in-depth discussion of the composer, the children, and the productions, and around 250 relevant works from around the world are also referenced. Four composers to have most significantly proliferated the medium are discussed in even greater detail: César Cui, Benjamin Britten, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Peter Maxwell Davies. Since opera began, it has been inextricably linked to society, by reflecting and shaping our culture through music and narrative, and, as a result, children have been involved. Despite the contribution they played, for several centuries, their importance was overlooked. By tracing the development of children’s participation in opera, this book uncovers the changing attitudes of composers towards them, and how this was reflected in the wider society. From the early productions of the seventeenth century, to those of the twenty-first century, the operatic children’s role has undergone a fundamental change. It almost seems that contemporary composers of operas view the inclusion of children in some way as ubiquitous. The rise of the children’s opera chorus and the explosion of children’s-only productions attest to the changing view of the value they can bring to the art. Some of the children to have characterised these roles are discussed in this book in order to redress the disproportionate lack of acknowledgement they often received for their performances.
The thrust of these five volumes is contained in their title, London Opera Observ’d. It takes its cue from the numerous texts and volumes which — during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — used the concept of ‘spying’ or ‘observing’ by a narrator, or rambler, as a means of establishing a discourse on aspects of London life. The material in this five-volume reset edition examines opera not simply as a genre of performance, but as a wider topic of comment and debate. The stories that surrounded the Italian opera singers illuminate contemporary British attitudes towards performance, sexuality and national identity. The collection includes only complete, published material organised chronologically so as to accurately retain the contexts in which the original readers encountered them — placing an emphasis on rare texts that have not been reproduced in modern editions. The aim of this collection is not to provide a history of opera in England but to facilitate the writing of them or to assist those wishing to study topics within the field. Headnotes and footnotes establish the publication information and provide an introduction to the piece, its author, and the events surrounding it or which caused its publication. The notes concentrate on attempting to identify those figures mentioned within the texts. The approach is one of presentation, not interpretation, ensuring that the collection occupies a position that is neutral rather than polemical.
The thrust of these five volumes is contained in their title, London Opera Observ’d. It takes its cue from the numerous texts and volumes which — during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — used the concept of ‘spying’ or ‘observing’ by a narrator, or rambler, as a means of establishing a discourse on aspects of London life. The material in this five-volume reset edition examines opera not simply as a genre of performance, but as a wider topic of comment and debate. The stories that surrounded the Italian opera singers illuminate contemporary British attitudes towards performance, sexuality and national identity. The collection includes only complete, published material organised chronologically so as to accurately retain the contexts in which the original readers encountered them — placing an emphasis on rare texts that have not been reproduced in modern editions. The aim of this collection is not to provide a history of opera in England but to facilitate the writing of them or to assist those wishing to study topics within the field. Headnotes and footnotes establish the publication information and provide an introduction to the piece, its author, and the events surrounding it or which caused its publication. The notes concentrate on attempting to identify those figures mentioned within the texts. The approach is one of presentation, not interpretation, ensuring that the collection occupies a position that is neutral rather than polemical.
"This compendium reflects the latest international research into the many and various uses of music in relation to Shakespeare's plays and poems, the contributors' lines of enquiry extending from the Bard's own time to the present day. The coverage is global in its scope, and includes studies of Shakespeare-related music in countries as diverse as China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, and the Soviet Union, as well as the more familiar Anglophone musical and theatrical traditions of the UK and USA. The range of genres surveyed by the book's team of distinguished authors embraces music for theatre, opera, ballet, musicals, the concert hall, and film, in addition to Shakespeare's ongoing afterlives in folk music, jazz, and popular music. The authors take a range of diverse approaches: some investigate the evidence for performative practices in the Early Modern and later eras, while others offer detailed analyses of representative case studies, situating these firmly in their cultural contexts, or reflecting on the political and sociological ramifications of the music. As a whole, the volume provides a wide-ranging compendium of cutting-edge scholarship engaging with an extraordinarily rich body of music without parallel in the history of the global arts"--
This study examines Thomas Arne’s solo cantatas and Italian odes from musical, literary and social perspectives. Arne composed these works between 1740 and 1774. As such, they provide a means of evaluating the evolving aspects of his musical style throughout his compositional career. The Italian odes have been little-studied, but provide an important gloss on Charles Burney’s comments on Arne’s inability to set the Italian language. Study of the cantata texts that Arne set reveals that they are often pastiches which make use of the words of William Congreve, Alexander Pope, Christopher Smart and others. The resulting process of adaptation and recombination re-contextualizes the borrowed material, resulting in differing emphases and changed meanings. Arne was restricted in his career opportunities because of his Catholic faith. The cantata genre provided Arne with an important creative outlet in the hedonistic atmosphere of the concerts of London’s pleasure gardens.
Scheherazade’s Children gathers together leading scholars to explore the reverberations of the tales of the Arabian Nights across a startlingly wide and transnational range of cultural endeavors. The contributors, drawn from a wide array of disciplines, extend their inquiries into the book’s metamorphoses on stage and screen as well as in literature—from India to Japan, from Sanskrit mythology to British pantomime, from Baroque opera to puppet shows. Their highly original research illuminates little-known manifestations of the Nights, and provides unexpected contexts for understanding the book’s complex history. Polemical issues are thereby given unprecedented and enlightening interpretations. Organized under the rubrics of Translating, Engaging, and Staging, these essays view the Nights corpus as a uniquely accretive cultural bundle that absorbs the works upon which it has exerted influence. In this view, the Arabian Nights is a dynamic, living and breathing cross-cultural phenomenon that has left its mark on fields as disparate as the European novel and early Indian cinema. While scholarly, the writers’ approach is also lively and entertaining, and the book is richly illustrated with unusual materials to deliver a sparkling and highly original exploration of the Arabian Nights’ radiating influence on world literature, performance, and culture.
Provides a pioneering interdisciplinary overview of the literature and music of nine centuriesOffers research essays by literary specialists and musicologists that provides access to the best current interdisciplinary scholarship on connections between literature and musicIncludes five historical sections from the Middle Ages to the present, with editorial introductions to enhance understanding of relationships between literature and music in each periodCharts and extends work in this expanding interdisciplinary field to provide an essential resource for researchers with an interest in literature and other mediaBringing together seventy-one newly commissioned original chapters by literary specialists and musicologists, this book presents the most recent interdisciplinary research into literature and music. In five parts, the chapters cover the Middle Ages to the present. The volume introduction and methodology chapters define key concepts for investigating the interdependence of these two art forms and a concluding chapter looks to the future of this interdisciplinary field. An editorial introduction to each historical part explains the main features of the relationships between literature and music in the period and outlines recent developments in scholarship. Contributions represent a multiplicity of approaches: theoretical, contextual and close reading. Case studies reach beyond literature and music to engage with related fields including philosophy, history of science, theatre, broadcast media and popular culture.This trailblazing companion charts and extends the work in this expanding interdisciplinary field and is an essential resource for researchers with an interest in literature and other media.
