Awards
- Winner of <DIV>Received the Robert M. Stevenson Award from the American Musicological Society (AMS), 2011. Received the Pauline Alderman Award for Outstanding S 2009
- Winner of <DIV>Received the Robert M. Stevenson Award from the American Musicological Society (AMS), 2011. Received the Pauline Alderman Award for Outstanding S 2011
Overview
On September 29, 1927, Cuban soprano Rita Montaner walked onto the stage of Havana's Teatro Regina, her features obscured under a mask of blackened glycerin and her body clad in the tight pants, boots, and riding jacket of a coachman. Standing alongside a gilded carriage and a live horse, the blackfaced, cross-dressed actress sang the premiere of Eliseo Grenet's tango-congo, ""Ay Mama Ines."" The crowd went wild. Montaner's performance cemented ""Ay Mama Ines"" as one of the classics in the Cuban repertoire, but more importantly, the premiere heralded the birth of the Cuban zarzuela, a new genre of music theater that over the next fifteen years transformed popular entertainment on the island. Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana's Lyric Stage marks the first comprehensive study of the Cuban zarzuela, a Spanish-language light opera with spoken dialogue that originated in Spain but flourished in Havana during the early twentieth century. Created by musicians and managers to fill a growing demand for family entertainment, the zarzuela evidenced the emerging economic and cultural power of Cuba's white female bourgeoisie to influence the entertainment industry.Susan Thomas explores zarzuela's function as a pedagogical tool, through which composers, librettists, and business managers hoped to control their troupes and audiences by presenting desirable and problematic images of both feminine and masculine identities. Zarzuela was, Thomas explains, ""anti-feminist but pro-feminine, its plots focusing on female protagonists and its musical scores showcasing the female voice."" Focusing on character types such as the mulata, the negrito, and the ingenue, Thomas uncovers the zarzuela's richly textured relationship to social constructs of race, class, and especially gender.
Full Product Details
Author: Susan Thomas
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Imprint: University of Illinois Press
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.540kg
ISBN: 9780252033315
ISBN 10: 0252033310
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 11 November 2008
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of stock
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.
Reviews
No other author addresses the Cuban zarzuela in such a distinctive manner. Susan Thomas offers revelatory musical and cultural analyses in a captivating narrative replete with unexpected twists and illuminating conclusions. Her interviews with performers are invaluable to the historical record and her methodology provides a model for others to follow. What a powerful contribution to the fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, gender studies, theater studies, and Latin American studies! Janet Sturman, author of Zarzuela: Spanish Operetta, American Stage
Author Information
Susan Thomas is a professor of musicology and Director of the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.
