Opera for the People

Opera for the People

Author: Katherine K. Preston

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-10-11

Total Pages: 649

ISBN-13: 0190690119

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Opera for the People is an in-depth examination of a forgotten chapter in American social and cultural history: the love affair that middle-class Americans had with continental opera (translated into English) in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Author Katherine Preston reveals how-contrary to the existing historiography on the American musical culture of this period-English-language opera not only flourished in the United States during this time, but found its success significantly bolstered by the support of women impresarios, prima-donnas, managers, and philanthropists who provided financial backing to opera companies. This rich and compelling study details the lives and professional activities of several important players in American postbellum opera, including manager Effie Ober, philanthropist Jeannette Thurber, and performers/artistic directors Caroline Richings, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, Clara Louise Kellogg, and "the people's prima donna" Emma Abbott. Drawing from an impressive range of primary sources, including contemporaneous music and theater periodicals, playbills, memoirs, librettos, scores, and reviews and commentary on the performances in digitized newspapers, Preston tells the story of how these and other women influenced the activities of some of the more than one hundred opera companies touring the United States during the second half of the 19th century, performing opera in English for a diverse range of audiences. Countering a pervasive and misguided historical understanding of opera reception in the United States-unduly influenced by modern attitudes about the genre as elite, exclusive, expensive, and of interest only to a niche market-Opera for the People demonstrates the important (and hitherto unsuspected) place of opera in the rich cornucopia of late-century American musical theatre, which would eventually lead to the emergence of American musical comedy.


The Musical Life of Nineteenth-Century Belfast

The Musical Life of Nineteenth-Century Belfast

Author: Roy Johnston

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1351542109

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Roy Johnston and Declan Plummer provide a refreshing portrait of Belfast in the nineteenth century. Before his death Roy Johnston, had written a full draft, based on an impressive array of contemporary sources, with deep and detailed attention especially to contemporary newspapers. With the deft and sensitive contribution of Declan Plummer the finished book offers a telling view of Belfast?s thriving musical life. Largely without the participation and example of local aristocracy, nobility and gentry, Belfast?s musical society was formed largely by the townspeople themselves in the eighteenth century and by several instrumental and choral societies in the nineteenth century. As the town grew in size and developed an industrial character, its townspeople identified increasingly with the large industrial towns and cities of the British mainland. Efforts to place themselves on the principal touring circuit of the great nineteenth-century concert artists led them to build a concert hall not in emulation of Dublin but of the British industrial towns. Belfast audiences had experienced English opera in the eighteenth century, and in due course in the nineteenth century they found themselves receiving the touring opera companies, in theatres newly built to accommodate them. Through an energetic groundwork revision of contemporary sources, Johnston and Plummer reveal a picture of sustained vitality and development that justifies Belfast?s prominent place the history of nineteenth-century musical culture in Ireland and more broadly in the British Isles.


Colorado's Healthcare Heritage

Colorado's Healthcare Heritage

Author: Thomas J. Sherlock

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 643

ISBN-13: 1475980256

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In the early days on the Colorado frontier, women took care of family and neighbors because accepting that "we're all in this together" was the only realistic survival strategy-on the high plains, along the Front Range, in the mountain towns, and on the Western Slope. As dangerous occupations became fundamental to Colorado's economy, if they were injured or got sick there was no one to care for the young men who worked as miners, steel workers, cowboys, and railroad construction workers in remote parts of Colorado. So physicians, surgeons, nurses, Catholic Sisters, Reform and Orthodox Jews, Protestants, and other humanitarians established hospitals and-when Colorado became a mecca for people with tuberculosis-sanatoriums. Those pioneers and the communities they served created our community-based humanitarian healthcare tradition. These stories about our Wild West heritage honor the legacy of our 19th-century healthcare pioneers and will inspire and entertain 21st-century readers. Because we can be inspired only if we understand the facts-and because facts are more likely to be understood when presented in context-this chronology includes national and international developments that establish an indispensable frame of reference for understanding how our pioneers created the local-community-based healthcare system that we've inherited.


Herman Klein and the Gramophone

Herman Klein and the Gramophone

Author: Hermann Klein

Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 640

ISBN-13: 9780931340185

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(Amadeus). From Klein's comments on early recordings that remain available today, the reader can get a glimpse of what legendary singers such as Patti and Lind sounded like more than a century ago. The essays of Herman Klein that appeared in The Gramophone from 1924 until 1934 are indispensable sources of information on the singers of the Golden Age.


Music Preferred

Music Preferred

Author: Lorraine Byrne Bodley

Publisher: Hollitzer Wissenschaftsverlag

Published: 2018-05-28

Total Pages: 920

ISBN-13: 399012403X

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The contributions to this Festschrift, honouring the distinguished Irish musicologist Harry White on his sixtieth birthday, have wide repercussions and span a broad timeframe. But for all its variety, this volume is built around two axes: on the one hand, attention is focussed on the history of music and literature in Ireland and the British Isles, and on the other, topics of the German and Austrian musical past. In both cases it reflects the particular interest of a scholar, whose playful, sometimes unconventional way of approaching his subject is so refreshing and time and again leads to innovative, surprising insights. It also reflects a scholar, who – for all the broadening of his perspectives that has taken place over the years – has always adhered to the strands of his scholarly preoccupations that have become dear to him: the music of the 'Austro-Italian Baroque', and Irish musical culture first and foremost. An international cast of authors announces the sustaining influence of Harry White's wide-ranging research. Professor Dr Thomas Hochradner Chair of the Department of Musicology University of Music and Dramatic Arts Mozarteum Salzburg


“Take Me to Spain”: Australian Imaginings of Spain through Music and Dance

“Take Me to Spain”: Australian Imaginings of Spain through Music and Dance

Author: John Whiteoak

Publisher: Lyrebird Press lyrebirdpress.music.unimelb.edu.au

Published: 2019-10-01

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0734037937

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Australians have been transported to an imaginary Spain from at least the 1830s, when cachuchas were first danced on the Sydney stage. In Take Me to Spain John Whiteoak explores the rich tapestry of Australians’ fascination with all thing Spanish, from the voluptuous sensuality of Lola Montez to operas featuring señoritas, toreadors and Gypsies, and from evocative silent and later Spain-themed Hollywood movies to the dazzlingly creative artistry of the flamenco dancers and guitarists who toured Australia in the 1960s and ’70s. Examining the diverse ways that Spanish music and dance have been mediated or hybridised to cater for Australian popular taste, this landmark study reveals how Hispanic traditions have become integral to the cultural history of the nation.