Books in the Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera series

After more than three centuries of silence, the voice of Francesco Cavalli is being heard loud and clear on the operatic stages of the world. In the face of such burgeoning interest, this collection of essays considers the Cavalli revival from various points of view. Following an introductory section, reflecting back on four decades of Cavalli performances by some of the conductors responsible for the revival of interest in the composer, the collection is divided into four further parts: The Manuscript Scores; Giasone: Production and Interpretation; Making Librettos; and Cavalli Beyond Venice.

English Dramatick Opera, 1661-1706 is the first comprehensive examination of the distinctively English form known as "dramatick opera", which appeared on the London stage in the mid-1670s and lasted until its displacement by Italian through-composed opera in the first decade of the eighteenth century.

The operatic culture of late eighteenth-century Naples represents the fullest expression of a matrix of creators, practitioners, theorists, patrons, and entrepreneurs linking aristocratic, public and religious spheres of contemporary society. This title provides a study of operatic culture from 1775-1800.

English Dramatick Opera, 1661-1706 is the first comprehensive examination of the distinctively English form known as "dramatick opera", which appeared on the London stage in the mid-1670s and lasted until its displacement by Italian through-composed opera in the first decade of the eighteenth century.

Nineteenth-century French grand opera was a musical and cultural phenomenon with a widespread transnational presence in Europe. Primary attention has been on the Parisian context for which most of the works were originally written. By contrast, this volume takes account of a larger geographical and historical context, bringing into focus the Europe-wide impact of the genre. The book presents case studies including analyses of grand opera in small-town Germany and Switzerland, adaptations, and Portuguese and Russian grand operas after the French model. Its overarching aim is to reveal how grand operas became part of musical, cultural and political life in various European settings.

The genre of mélodrame à grand spectacle that emerged in the boulevard theatres of Paris in the 1790s - and which was quickly exported abroad - expressed the moral struggle between good and evil through a drama of heightened emotions. Physical gesture, mise en scène and music were as important in communicating meaning and passion as spoken dialogue. The premise of this volume is the idea that the melodramatic aesthetic is central to our understanding of nineteenth-century music drama, broadly defined as spoken plays with music, operas and other hybrid genres that combine music with text and/or image. This relationship is examined closely, and its evolution in the twentieth century in selected operas, musicals and films is understood as an extension of this nineteenth-century aesthetic. The book therefore develops our understanding of opera in the context of melodrama''s broader influence on musical culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book will appeal to those interested in film studies, drama, theatre and modern languages as well as music and opera.

The representation of non-Western cultures in opera has long been a focus of critical inquiry, however, the diverse relationships between opera and First Nations and indigenous cultures have received less attention. Opera Indigene addresses the changing historical depictions of indigenous cultures in opera and the more contemporary hybridizations of the form by indigenous and First Nations artists. Drawing upon postcolonial theory, ethnomusicology, cultural geography and critical discourses on nationalism and multiculturalism, the collection brings together experts on opera and music in Canada, the Americas and Australia.

Philip Glass and Robert Wilson's most celebrated collaboration, the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, had its premiere at the Avignon Festival in 1976. The book features essays from those that focus on the human scale and agencies involved in productions to the mechanical and post-human character of the opera's expressive substance.

With its first public live performance in Paris on 11 February 1896, Oscar Wilde''s Salomé took on female embodied form that signalled the start of ''her'' phenomenal journey through the history of the arts in the twentieth century. This volume explores Salome''s appropriation and reincarnation across the arts - not just Wilde''s heroine, nor Richard Strauss''s - but Salome as a cultural icon in fin-de-siècle society, whose appeal for ever new interpretations of the biblical story still endures today. Using Salome as a common starting point, each chapter suggests new ways in which performing bodies reveal alternative stories, narratives and perspectives and offer a range and breadth of source material and theoretical approaches. The first chapter draws on the field of comparative literature to investigate the inter-artistic interpretations of Salome in a period that straddles the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the Modernist era. This chapter sets the tone for the rest of the volume, which develops specific case studies dealing with censorship, reception, authorial reputation, appropriation, embodiment and performance. As well as the Viennese premiere of Wilde''s play, embodied performances of Salome from the period before the First World War are considered, offering insight into the role and agency of performers in the production and complex negotiation of meaning inherent in the role of Salome. By examining important productions of Strauss''s Salome since 1945, and more recent film interpretations of Wilde''s play, the last chapters explore performance as a cultural practice that reinscribes and continuously reinvents the ideas, icons, symbols and gestures that shape both the performance itself, its reception and its cultural meaning.

Music continues to be immensely influential in key developments of theatrical practices. In this study of musicality in the theatre, David Roesner offers a revised view of the nature of the relationship between music and theatre. The theoretical scope of the book is developed from a wide range of case studies.

Francesco Cavalli is credited with inventing the opera genre as we know it. Readying Cavalli's Operas for the Stage considers, from various points of view, the current renaissance that Cavalli's works are enjoying. This collection of essays explores the multiple issues involved when transforming an operatic manuscript into a performance.

Jeongwon Joe examines the role of opera as soundtrack by exploring the distinct effects opera produces in film, and what elements set opera apart from other types of soundtrack music, such as jazz or symphony. The author explores why opera tends to accompany poignant, pivotal scenes; she argues that when soundtracks employ opera excerpts.

Adopting and transforming the Romantic fascination with mountains, modernism in the German-speaking lands claimed the Alps as a space both of resistance and of escape. This book investigates operatic representations of the high mountains in German modernism.

The genre of melodrame a grand spectacle that emerged in the boulevard theatres of Paris in the 1790s - and which was quickly exported abroad - expressed the moral struggle between good and evil through a drama of heightened emotions. This volume may appeal to those interested in film studies, drama, and theatre as well as music and opera.

Beginning from the passion musical theatre performances arouse and their ubiquity in London's West End and on Broadway, this book explores the ways in which musical theatre reaches out to and involves its audiences. It investigates how pleasure is stimulated by vocal, musical and spectacular performances.

The representation of non-Western cultures in opera has long been a focus of critical inquiry. This title addresses the historical depictions of indigenous cultures in opera and the contemporary hybridizations of the form by indigenous and First Nations artists.

The present volume, devoted solely to the composer¿s operas, reflects this scholarly activity. It brings together a substantial group of essays by an international team of scholars on a wide range of aspects of Rameaüs operas.