Manon Gropius had three parents. She was the daughter of Alma Mahler (the widow of Gustav Mahler) and her second husband, Walter Gropius (the architect and founder of the Bauhaus school), and also was the stepdaughter of Alma's third husband, Franz Werfel. Manon's World explores the life and death of a child at the center of a broken love triangle. Not just a narrative biography, Manon's World is a medical history of the polio that killed Manon and an intimate cultural history of the aspirations projected on her, as seen by the Nobel Prize-winner Elias Canette who devoted two chapter of his memoirs to his encounters with Manon. In the same spirit, the composer Alban Berg dedicated his Violin Concerto to her. Reidel reveals a complex image of a young woman who desired to be an actress and artist in her own right despite being her mother’s intended protégé, an inspiration to her father who rarely saw her, and her stepfather Franz Werfel. -- Adapted from dust jacket.
A new biography of Alma Mahler (1879-1964), revealing a woman determined to wield power in a world that denied her agency History has long vilified Alma Mahler. Critics accused her of distracting Gustav Mahler from his work, and her passionate love affairs shocked her peers. Drawing on Alma's vivid, sensual, and overlooked diaries, biographer Cate Haste recounts the untold and far more sympathetic story of this ambitious and talented woman. Though she dreamed of being the first woman to compose a famous opera, Alma was stifled by traditional social values. Eventually, she put her own dreams aside and wielded power and influence the only way she could, by supporting the art of more famous men. She worked alongside them and gained credit as their muse, commanding their love and demanding their respect. Passionate Spirit restores vibrant humanity to a woman time turned into a caricature, providing an important correction to a history where systemic sexism has long erased women of talent.
The heir of ash and fire bows to no one. A new threat rises in the third book in the #1 bestselling Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. Celaena Sardothien has survived deadly contests and shattering heartbreak, but now she must travel to a new land to confront her darkest truth. That truth could change her life-and her future-forever. Meanwhile, monstrous forces are gathering on the horizon, intent on enslaving her world. To defeat them, Celaena will need the strength not only to fight the evil that is about to be unleashed but also to harness her inner demons. If she is to win this battle, she must find the courage to face her destiny-and burn brighter than ever before. The third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass series continues Celaena's epic journey from woman to warrior.
Poems tall or short or wide— All are infinite inside. In Gilles Tibo’s wonder-filled tribute to poetry, poems bloom in fields, fly on the wings of birds, and float on the foam of the sea. They are written in the dark of night, in the light of happiness, and in the warmth of the writer’s heart. Each poem is illustrated with Manon Gauthier’s whimsical paper collage art, which is both child-like and sophisticated. Rhymed or unrhymed, regular or irregular, the verses bring not just poems but the very concept of poetry to the level of a child, making them accessible to all. If all the world is a poem, then anyone can be a poet!
Puccini's operas are among the most popular and widely performed in the world, yet few books have examined his body of work from an analytical perspective. This volume remedies that lack in lively prose accessible to scholars and opera enthusiasts alike.
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur. Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (The Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty! Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism. Manon Lescaut, an opéra-comique in three acts with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was premiered at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 23 February 1856. The plot is derived from the novella Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731) by Abbé Antoine-François Prévost d’Exiles. Scribe followed his usual practice in arranging novels for the stage, retaining the names of characters, the central incidents of the plot, and effective moments which are used as coups de théâtre. He adapted the novel freely, cutting down the role of Des Grieux, reducing Manon’s various adventures to a single one involving the Marquis d’Hérigny, and inventing new characters and relationships. But he remained true to the novel, emphasizing to the same degree Manon’s unwavering devotion to Des Grieux, her search for pleasure and dependence on luxury. Auber, who was 74 when he wrote the score, worked with undiminished energy. The ravishing overture immediately captures the pathos of Manon and her story—the fateful relationship with the Marquis, the giddy verve and gaiety of her world of opportunism and pleasure. The dark side of the story is also reflected, and suggests that friendship and devotion remain the only enduring values. There is an abrupt generic shift in Act 3 from the elegant world of opéra-comique to the more lyrically charged drame-lyrique, increasingly typical of Auber’s late style. Indeed, the last scene, devoted to the death of Manon and the despair of Des Grieux, is a unique passage in Auber’s operas, and provided the composer with the opportunity of writing a type of dramatic symphony, powerfully expressive in its simple grandeur and real emotion. The cast included the famous virtuoso soprano Marie-Josephe Cabel (Manon), the tenor Jules Puget (Des Grieux) and the legendary baritone Jean-Baptist Faure (Le marquis d’Hérigny). Despite a positive reaction to the première, the opera did not survive in the Parisian repertoire beyond 63 performances, but there was resurgence of interest in this work in the late 20th century. This edition reproduces the vocal score published in Paris by Maison Boieldieu (1856).
Set in France and Louisiana in the early 18th century, the story follows the hero, the Chevalier des Grieux, and his lover, Manon Lescaut. Des Grieux comes from a noble and landed family, but forfeits his hereditary wealth and incurs the disappointment of his father by running away with Manon. In Paris, the young lovers enjoy a blissful cohabitation, while Des Grieux struggles to satisfy Manon's taste for luxury. He scrounges together money by borrowing from his unwaveringly loyal friend Tiberge and by cheating gamblers. On several occasions, Des Grieux's wealth evaporates (by theft, in a house fire, etc.), prompting Manon to leave him for a richer man because she cannot stand the thought of living in penury. The two lovers finally end up in New Orleans, to which Manon has been deported as a prostitute, where they pretend to be married and live in idyllic peace for a while. But when Des Grieux reveals their unmarried state to the Governor and asks to be wed with Manon, the Governor's nephew sets his sights on winning Manon's hand. In despair, Des Grieux challenges the Governor's nephew to a duel and knocks him unconscious. Thinking he had killed the man and fearing retribution, the couple flee New Orleans and venture into the wilderness of Louisiana, hoping to reach an English settlement. Manon dies of exposure and exhaustion the following morning and, after burying his beloved, Des Grieux is eventually taken back to France by Tiberge.
