Overview

"A new and groundbreaking approach to the history of grand opera, Grand Illusion: Phantasmagoria in Nineteenth-Century Opera explores the illusion and illumination behind the form's rise to cultural eminence. Renowned opera scholar Gabriela Cruz argues that grand opera worked to awaken memory and feeling in a way never before experienced in the opera house, asserting that the concept of ""spectacle"" was the defining cultural apparatus of the art form after the 1820s. Parisian audiences at the Académie Royale de Musique were struck by the novelty and power of grand opera upon the introduction of gaslight illumination, a technological innovation that quickly influenced productions across the Western operatic world. With this innovation, grand opera transformed into an audio-visual spectacle, delivering dream-like images and evoking the ghosts of its audiences' past. Through case studies of operas by Giacomo Meyerbeer, Richard Wagner, and Giuseppe Verdi, Cruz demonstrates how these works became an increasingly sophisticated medium by which audiences could conjure up the past and be transported away from the breakdown of modern life. A historically informed narrative that traverses far and wide, from dingy popular theatres in post-revolutionary Paris, to nautical shows in London, and finally to Egyptian mummies, Grand Illusion provides a fresh departure from previous scholarship, highlighting the often-neglected visual side of grand opera."

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9780190915056

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Reviews

Cruz provides an extraordinary in-depth treatment of a singular aspect of opera. -- C.A. Traupman-Carr, Moravian College, CHOICE Boldly bringing together the history of opera and technology, Cruz demonstrates that gaslight did not merely facilitate operatic production but actually contributed to the musical and theatrical reconception of opera itself. History, in the spirit of phantasmagoria, is often a matter of conjuring some of the forgotten ghosts of the past. -- New York Review of Books By exploring the emergence of a new phantasmagorical sensibility in French opera in the 1820s, and tracking its influence through the century, Gabriela Cruz offers a rethinking of grand opera as a cultural force that transcends the usual historiographical and national boundaries. Cruz puts Meyerbeer in conversation with Wagner and with Verdi, and demonstrates how a new theatrical visuality transformed the experience of opera in the nineteenth century. This is an exciting and beautifully written study that invites us to celebrate grand opera's transforming power. -- Sarah Hibberd, University of Bristol A technology that was already malleable to infinite metaphorical transformations, phantasmagoria traverses this book in the way of a prismatic device, allowing the reader to see and hear the unseen and unheard, and to keep a steady focus on the intersecting multiplicity of influences and reactions, of illusions and disillusions. The author canvasses with unparalleled proficiency the voices of journalists and philosophers, of inventors and composers. The result is a phantasmagoria itself: a rich account that alternates revelatory appearances and ghostly presences on a stage that expands from the theatres to the cities of the European nineteenth century. -- Alessandra Campana, Music and Film and Media Studies, Tufts University

A technology that was already malleable to infinite metaphorical transformations, phantasmagoria traverses this book in the way of a prismatic device, allowing the reader to see and hear the unseen and unheard, and to keep a steady focus on the intersecting multiplicity of influences and reactions, of illusions and disillusions. The author canvasses with unparalleled proficiency the voices of journalists and philosophers, of inventors and composers. The result is a phantasmagoria itself: a rich account that alternates revelatory appearances and ghostly presences on a stage that expands from the theatres to the cities of the European nineteenth century. * Alessandra Campana, Music and Film and Media Studies, Tufts University * By exploring the emergence of a new phantasmagorical sensibility in French opera in the 1820s, and tracking its influence through the century, Gabriela Cruz offers a rethinking of grand opera as a cultural force that transcends the usual historiographical and national boundaries. Cruz puts Meyerbeer in conversation with Wagner and with Verdi, and demonstrates how a new theatrical visuality transformed the experience of opera in the nineteenth century. This is an exciting and beautifully written study that invites us to celebrate grand opera's transforming power. * Sarah Hibberd, University of Bristol *

Author Information

Gabriela Cruz is a musicologist specializing in opera and musical theater in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She teaches courses on nineteenth-century music, opera, and the music of the Iberian peninsula at the University of Michigan.

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