Overview

Opera has always been a vital and complex mixture of commercial and aesthetic concerns, of bourgeois politics and elite privilege. In its long heyday in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it came to occupy a special place not only among the arts but in urban planning, too DL this is, perhaps surprisingly, often still the case. The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon examines how opera has become the concrete edifice it was never meant to be, by tracing its evolution from a market entirely driven by novelty to one of the most canonic art forms still in existence.Throughout the book, a lively assembly of musicologists, historians, and industry professionals tackle key questions of opera's past, present, and future. Why did its canon evolve so differently from that of concert music? Why do its top ten titles, all more than a century old, now account for nearly a quarter of all performances worldwide? Why is this system of production becoming still more top-heavy, even while the repertory seemingly expands, notably to include early music?Topics range from the seventeenth century to the present day, from Russia to England and continental Europe to the Americas. To reflect the contested nature of many of them, each is addressed in paired chapters. These complement each other in different ways: by treating the same geographical location in different periods, by providing different national or regional perspectives on the same period, or by thinking through similar conceptual issues in contrasting or changing contexts. Posing its questions in fresh, provocative terms, The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon challenges scholarly assumptions in music and cultural history, and reinvigorates the dialogue with an industry that is, despite everything, still growing.

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9780190224202

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Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. * W. Baker, Northern Illinois University, CHOICE * ...this astutely researched and organised study...is especially welcome. * Benjamin Ivry, OperaNow *

...this astutely researched and organised study...is especially welcome. * Benjamin Ivry, OperaNow *

Author Information

Cormac Newark is Head of Research at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. He writes mainly on nineteenth-century French and Italian opera and literature, and is the author of Opera in the Novel from Balzac to Proust. He has published articles in journals including 19th-Century Music, the Cambridge Opera Journal, The Opera Quarterly, and the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. William Weber is Professor of History, Emeritus at California State University, Long Beach. He has contributed to the Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music (OUP, 2011) and is the author of several books, including The Rise of Musical Classics in 18th-Century England (OUP, 1992) and The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming from Haydn to Brahms.

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