Overview
What IS opera? Contributors to The Oxford Handbook of Opera respond to this deceptively simple question with a rich and compelling exploration of opera's adaption to changing artistic and political currents. Fifty of the world's most respected scholars cast opera as a fluid entity that continuously reinvents itself in a reflection of its patrons, audience, and creators. The synergy of power, performance, and identity recurs thematically throughout the volume's major topics: Words, Music, and Meaning; Performance and Production; Opera and Society; and Transmission and Reception. Individual essays engage with repertoire from Monteverdi, Mozart, and Meyerbeer to Strauss, Henze, and Adams in studies of composition, national identity, transmission, reception, sources, media, iconography, humanism, the art of collecting, theory, analysis, commerce, singers, directors, criticism, editions, politics, staging, race, and gender. The title of the penultimate section, Opera on the Edge, suggests the uncertainty of opera's future: is opera headed toward catastrophe or have social and musical developments of the last hundred years stimulated something new and exciting, and, well, operatic? In an epilogue to the volume, a contemporary opera composer speaks candidly about opera composition today. The Oxford Handbook of Opera is an essential companion to scholars, educators, advanced students, performers, and knowledgeable listeners: those who simply love opera.
Full Product Details
Author: Helen M. Greenwald (Professor of Music History and Musicology, Professor of Music History and Musicology, New England Conservatory)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 24.90cm
, Height: 6.10cm
, Length: 17.80cm
Weight: 1.928kg
ISBN: 9780195335538
ISBN 10: 0195335538
Pages: 1218
Publication Date: 20 November 2014
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
[I]f one wishes to engage broadly and in-depth with this infuriating but addictive art form . . . [t]here are many hours of fascinating reading therein. --Australian Book Review
It will provide a lot of background and history of the genre to readers ... deserve a place in specialist music libraries. * Stella Thebridge, Reference Reviews * Greenwald and her large cast are to be congratulated on having produced a major contribution to opera scholarship. No single theme or thesis is propounded; rather, the book convers and exceptionally wide range of issues intelligently investigated. * Daniel Snowman, Opera * The best writers here are erudite, witty, thoughtful, a little weird. They can analyse and explain but they are are still prepared to surrender to the impact of a greedy, usually overtly emotional art form * Anna Picard, The Times Literary Supplement *
Author Information
Helen M. Greenwald teaches at the New England Conservatory in Boston. She is the author of numerous articles on vocal music from the 18th -20th centuries and program notes for major arts organizations, such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, and the Metropolitan Opera. She is the editor of the critical edition of Verdi's Attila (Ricordi and the University of Chicago Press, 2012) and co-editor of the critical edition of Rossini's Zelmira (Fondazione Rossini, 2005).
