Opera and sovereignty : transforming myths in eighteenth-century Italy / Martha Feldman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Feldman, Martha.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Opera--Italy--18th century.

Opera.

Mythology, Classical, in opera.

Opera--Social aspects--Italy--18th century.

Physical Description:

xxv, 545 p. : ill. (some col.).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Performed throughout Europe during the 1700's, Italian heroic opera, or opera seria, was the century's most significant musical art form, profoundly engaging such figures as Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. Opera and Sovereignty is the first book to address this genre as cultural history, arguing that eighteenth-century opera seria must be understood in light of the period's social and political upheavals. Taking an anthropological approach to European music that's as bold as it is unusual, Martha Feldman traces Italian opera's shift from a mythical assertion of sovereignty, with its festive forms and rituals, to a dramatic vehicle that increasingly questioned absolute ideals. She situates these transformations against the backdrop of eighteenth-century Italian culture to show how opera seria both reflected and affected the struggles of rulers to maintain sovereignty in the face of a growing public sphere. In so doing, Feldman explains why the form had such great international success and how audience experiences of the period differed from ours today. Ambitiously interdisciplinary, Opera and Sovereignty will appeal not only to scholars of music and anthropology, but also to those interested in theater, dance, and the history of the Enlightenment.

Contents:

Evenings at the opera. Opera seria, sovereignty, performance ; Ritual and event ; Magic and myth ; Public opinion ; Evolutions ; Crisis and involution

Arias : form, feeling, exchange. Ritornello form as rhetorical exchange ; The singer as Magus ; Rubbing into magic ; Frame

Programming nature, Parma, 1759 : first case study. Enter nature ; Remaking viewers ; Cruel Phaedra! : Ippolito ed Aricia ; Pastoral redemption, or The old order restored ; Appendix : decree on audience behavior, Parma, October 4, 1749

Festivity and time. Time and the calendar ; Festive realms, festive spaces ; Unbridling the Holy City ; Laughter, ridicule, critique ; Nature revisited ; Appendix : edict on abuses in the theater, Rome, January 4, 1749

Abandonments in a theater state, Naples, 1764 : second case study. Compounds of royalty ; The sack of the beggars and the gift of the king ; Didone abbandonata : agonism and exchange ; Apocalyptic endings

Myths of sovereignty. Of myth and the mythographer ; Themistocles, hero ; History as myth ; Sovereigns and two heroes ; The exemplary prince and the loyal son : Artaxerxes and Arbaces ; The conquering lover-king : Alexander the Great ; A hapless emperor : Hadrian ; Proud hero and imperial autocrat : Aetius and Valentinian III ; The king cometh ; Bataille's sovereigns : a postscript on identification

Bourgeois theatrics, Perugia, 1781: third case study. A theater for the middle class ; What class is our genre? : reworking Artaserse ; Whether purses or persons ; Toward the ideology of a bourgeoisie ; Appendix : Annibale Mariotti's speech to the Accademia del Teatro Civico del Verzaro, December 31, 1781

Morals and malcontents. Dedications to ladies ; Conversations and femiuomini ; Regarding the senses : continuity, accordance, truth ; The family of opera

Death of the sovereign, Venice, 1797: fourth case study. The death of time ; Opera in a democratic ascension ; Pratile, June 4 ; La morte di Mitridate ; Summer season : Caesar, Brutus, and Joan of Arc ; Moralizing the spectator.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226044545

0226044548

OCLC:

781300294