Grand illusion : phantasmagoria in nineteenth-century opera / Gabriela Cruz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cruz, Gabriela Gomes da, 1965- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Opera--19th century.

Opera.

Opera--Production and direction--History--19th century.

Opera--Production and direction.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xx, 290 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]

Summary:

"Grand Illusion is a new history of grand opera as an art of illusion facilitated by the introduction of gaslight illumination at the Académie Royale de Musique (Paris) in the 1820s. It contends that gaslight and the technologies of illusion used in the theater after the 1820s spurred the development of a new lyrical art, attentive to the conditions of darkness and radiance, and inspired by the model of phantasmagoria. Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno have used the concept of phantasmagoria to arrive at a philosophical understanding of modern life as total spectacle, in which the appearance of things supplants their reality. The book argues that the Académie became an early laboratory for this historical process of commodification, for the transformation of opera into an audio-visual spectacle delivering dream-like images. It shows that this transformation began in Paris and then defined opera after the mid-century. In the hands of Giacomo Meyerbeer (Robert le Diable, L'Africaine), Richard Wagner (Der fliegende Holländer, Lohengrin and Tristan und Isolde) and Giuseppe Verdi (Aida), opera became an expanded form of phantasmagoria"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Opera and Beauty

2. Gaslight and Phantasmagoria at the Opera

3. The Diorama, Apparitions, and Dream Image in Robert le diable

4. The Phantom Ship in Der fliegende Hollander and L'Africaine

5. The Poetics of Sensation in L'Africaine and Tristan und Isolde

6. Aida, Egyptomania, and the After-life of Grand Opera.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-271) and index.

ISBN:

9780190915056

0190915056

OCLC:

1133663411