Overview
At first glance, modernism and opera may seem like strange bedfellows-the former hostile to sentiment, the latter wearing its heart on its sleeve. And yet these apparent opposites attract: many operas are aesthetically avant-garde, politically subversive, and socially transgressive. From the proto-modernist strains of Richard Wagner's Parsifal through the twenty-first-century modernism of Kaija Saariaho's L'amour de loin, the duet between modernism and opera, at turns harmonious and dissonant, has been one of the central artistic events of modernity. Despite this centrality, scholars of modernist literature only rarely venture into opera, and music scholars generally return the favor by leaving literature to one side. But opera, that grand cauldron of the arts, demands that scholars, too, share the stage with one another. In Modernism and Opera, Richard Begam and Matthew Wilson Smith bring together musicologists, literary critics, and theater scholars for the first time in a mutual endeavor to trace certain key moments in the history of modernism and opera. This innovative volume includes essays from some of the most notable scholars in their fields and covers works as diverse as Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, Berg's Wozzeck, Janacek's Makropulos Case, Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts, Strauss's Arabella, Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Britten's Gloriana, and Messiaen's Saint Francois d'Assise. A collaborative study of the ultimate collaborative art form, Modernism and Opera reveals how modernism and opera illuminate each other and, more generally, the culture of the twentieth century. It also addresses a number of issues crucial for understanding the relation between modernism and opera, focusing in particular on intermediality (how modernism integrates music, literature, and drama into opera) and anti-theatricality (how opera responds to modernism's apparent antipathy to theatricality). This captivating book-the first of its kind-will appeal to scholars of literature, music, theater, and modernity as well as to sophisticated opera lovers everywhere.
Full Product Details
Author: Richard Begam (University of Wisconsin - Madison) ,
Matthew Wilson Smith (Associate Professor, Stanford University)
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 3.00cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.658kg
ISBN: 9781421420622
ISBN 10: 1421420627
Pages: 392
Publication Date: 27 December 2016
Audience:
College/higher education
,
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
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
The often-vexed societal reception of modernism and opera is foreboding testimony to the necessity for this book, which is the first collection of its kind... Essential. * Choice * Modernism and Opera suggests that the lessons of early modernism have been available to those who would listen. The collection draws not only on `New Modernist Studies,' but also on the older `New Musicology.' -- Robert Lawson-Peebles, University of Exeter * Modern Language Review *
The often-vexed societal reception of modernism and opera is foreboding testimony to the necessity for this book, which is the first collection of its kind... Essential. Choice
The often-vexed societal reception of modernism and opera is foreboding testimony to the necessity for this book, which is the first collection of its kind... Essential. * Choice *
Author Information
Richard Begam is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Samuel Beckett and the End of Modernity and the coeditor of Modernism and Colonialism: British and Irish Literature, 1899-1939. Matthew Wilson Smith is an associate professor of German studies and theater and performance studies at Stanford University. He is the author of The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace and the editor of Georg Buchner: The Major Works.
