Puccini
Author: Mary Jane Phillips-Matz
Publisher: UPNE
Published: 2002-10-03
Total Pages: 404
ISBN-13: 9781555535308
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis masterful biography provides the most authentic and revealing portrait to date of this major operatic composer
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Puccini
Author: Julian Budden
Publisher:
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 538
ISBN-13: 0195179749
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJulian Budden, one of the world's foremost scholars of Italian opera, here offers music lovers a major biography of Giacomo Puccini--a volume in the esteemed Master Musicians series. Blending astute musical analysis with a colorful account of Puccini's life, Budden providess an illuminating look at some of the most popular operas in the repertoire, including Manon Lescaut, La Boheme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot. Budden also paints an intriguing portrait of Puccini the man--talented but modest, a man who had friends from every walk of life: shopkeepers, priests, wealthy landowners, fellow artists.
Puccini
Author: Michele Girardi
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2000-08-15
Total Pages: 558
ISBN-13: 9780226297576
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPuccini'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.
Puccini's Turandot
Author: William Ashbrook
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2014-12-25
Total Pages: 204
ISBN-13: 1400866677
DOWNLOAD EBOOKUnfinished at Puccini's death in 1924, Turandot was not only his most ambitious work, but it became the last Italian opera to enter the international repertory. In this colorful study two renowned music scholars demonstrate that this work, despite the modern climate in which it was written, was a fitting finale for the centuries-old Great Tradition of Italian opera. Here they provide concrete instances of how a listener might encounter the dramatic and musical structures of Turandot in light of the Italian melodramma, and firmly establish Puccini's last work within the tradition of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. In a summary of the sounds, sights, and symbolism of Turandot, the authors touch on earlier treatments of the subject, outline the conception, birth, and reception of the work, and analyze its coordinated dramatic and musical design. Showing how the evolution of the libretto documents Puccini's reversion to large musical forms typical of the Great Tradition in the late nineteenth century, they give particular attention to his use of contrasting Romantic, modernist, and two kinds of orientalist coloration in the general musical structure. They suggest that Puccini's inability to complete the opera resulted mainly from inadequate dramatic buildup for Turandot's last-minute change of heart combined with an overly successful treatment of the secondary character.
Puccini and The Girl
Author: Annie Janeiro Randall
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 259
ISBN-13: 0226703894
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSet in the American West during the California Gold Rush, La fanciulla del West marked a significant departure from Giacomo Puccini's previous and best- known works. Puccini and the Girl is the first book to explore this important but often misunderstood opera that became the earliest work by a major European composer to receive an American premiere when it opened at New York's Metropolitan Opera House in 1910. Adapted from American playwright David Belasco's Broadway production, The Girl of the Golden West, Fanciulla was Puccini's most consciously modern work, and its Met debut received mixed reviews. Annie J. Randall and Rosalind Gray Davis base their account of its creation on previously unknown letters from Puccini to his main librettist, Carlo Zangarini. They mine musical materials, newspaper accounts, and rare photographs and illustrations to tell the full story of this controversial opera. Puccini and the Girl considers the production and reception of Puccini's "cowboy" opera in the light of contemporary criticism, providing both fascinating insight into its history and a look to the future as its centenary approaches. “Engrossing. . . . An eminently readable, ideally direct and information-packed book.”—William Fregosi, Opera Today
Giacomo Puccini
Author: Roger Flury
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2012-06-21
Total Pages: 937
ISBN-13: 0810883295
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOpera recordings have been with us since the creation of the first wax cylinders. Now at a time when the 25-year reign of the compact disc appears to be coming to an end is the moment to take stock of the history of recordings of arguably the most popular composer of operas, Giacomo Puccini. In Giacomo Puccini: A Discography, librarian and music historian Roger Flury looks at each opera chronologically from Le Villi to Turandot, followed by sections on Puccini's instrumental, chamber, orchestral, and solo vocal works. Details of each complete opera are listed by recording date, followed by excerpts in the order in which they occur in the opera. Recordings of each aria are listed alphabetically by the name of the artist. For ease of use, Flury establishes as the main criteria for inclusion those recordings assigned a commercial issue number and available for purchase. This book does not limit itself to mainstream recordings but includes as well 'unofficial' recordings taken from broadcasts or illegally recorded in theaters, ensuring that the audio recording history of Puccini is free of gaps. (Video and DVD issues, whether of staged performances or excerpts in concert, are not included unless they have been issued in a sound-only format.) This volume brings together information on nearly 10,000 recordings of Puccini's music. It provides a comprehensive overview of the recorded history of the composer's works and serves as a useful guide for the transfer of recordings from one format to another.
Giacomo Puccini and His World
Author: Arman Schwartz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-08-09
Total Pages: 360
ISBN-13: 0691172862
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGiacomo Puccini (1858–1924) is the world's most frequently performed operatic composer, yet he is only beginning to receive serious scholarly attention. In Giacomo Puccini and His World, an international roster of music specialists, several writing on Puccini for the first time, offers a variety of new critical perspectives on the composer and his works. Containing discussions of all of Puccini’s operas from Manon Lescaut (1893) to Turandot (1926), this volume aims to move beyond clichés of the composer as a Romantic epigone and to resituate him at the heart of early twentieth-century musical modernity. This collection’s essays explore Puccini’s engagement with spoken theater and operetta, and with new technologies like photography and cinema. Other essays consider the philosophical problems raised by "realist" opera, discuss the composer’s place in a variety of cosmopolitan formations, and reevaluate Puccini’s orientalism and his complex interactions with the Italian fascist state. A rich array of primary source material, including previously unpublished letters and documents, provides vital information on Puccini’s interactions with singers, conductors, and stage directors, and on the early reception of the verismo movement. Excerpts from Fausto Torrefranca’s notorious Giacomo Puccini and International Opera, perhaps the most vicious diatribe ever directed against the composer, appear here in English for the first time. The contributors are Micaela Baranello, Leon Botstein, Alessandra Campana, Delia Casadei, Ben Earle, Elaine Fitz Gibbon, Walter Frisch, Michele Girardi, Arthur Groos, Steven Huebner, Ellen Lockhart, Christopher Morris, Arman Schwartz, Emanuele Senici, and Alexandra Wilson.
Puccini Without Excuses
Author: William Berger
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2009-07-01
Total Pages: 482
ISBN-13: 0307542904
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPuccini is the most beloved composer of opera in the world: one quarter of all opera performances in the U.S. are of his operas, his music pervades movie soundtracks, and his plots have infiltrated our popular culture. But, although Puccini’s art still captivates audiences and the popularity of such works as Tosca, La Bohéme, and Madama Butterfly has never waned, he has long been a victim of critical snobbery and cultural marginalization. In this witty and informative guide for beginners and fans alike, William Berger sets the record straight, reclaiming Puccini as a serious artist. Combining his trademark irreverent humor with passionate enthusiasm, Berger strikes just the right balance of introductory information and thought-provoking analysis. He includes a biography, discussions of each opera, a glossary, fun facts and anecdotes, and above all keen insight into Puccini’s enduring power. For anyone who loves Puccini and for anyone who just wonders what all the fuss is about, Puccini Without Excuses is funny, challenging, and always a pleasure to read. INCLUDES: • Why Puccini’s art and its message of hope is crucial to our world today • How Anglo audiences often miss the mythic significance of his operas • The use of his music as shorthand in films, from A Room with a View to Fatal Attraction • A scene-by scene analysis of each opera • A guide to the wealth of available recordings, books, and videos
Giacomo Puccini: Tosca
Author: Mosco Carner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1985-09-05
Total Pages: 180
ISBN-13: 9780521296618
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA guide for opera goers to Tosca, which includes a synopsis of the plot and discussions on style.
Puccini
Author: Mosco Carner
Publisher:
Published: 1959
Total Pages: 546
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe life and works of Giacomo Puccini, composer of La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Turandot, and other universal operatic favorites, are here presented in detail for the first time in any language in a book unlikely ever to be superseded. A full-length recounting of Puccini's fascinating life, rich in previously unused materials, is followed by detailed analyses of each of his operas and other compositions. The author, a Viennese conductor and musicologist, has performed this monumental task with knowledge, grace, and insight. The biography brings to life a curious, somewhat ambiguous man whose greatly successful career was marked alternately by storms, tragedies, and triumphs, a genius who somehow missed the final greatness. His relations with his family, colleagues, librettists, singers, conductors--and his peculiar, convoluted relationship with his wife--have some of the very drama that has made his operas so enduringly popular. Puccini's letters are quoted extensively, many of them in English for the first time. The opera analyses, constantly evaluating the music in terms of drama and libretto, are unique in musical literature and in their completeness and illumination. They are, furthermore, judicious and soundly musical, for instead of accepting ready-made opinions (many of which are quoted), they go directly to the scores themselves.
