The Melodramatic Moment : Music and Theatrical Culture, 1790-1820 / Katherine G Hambridge, Jonathan Hicks.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Chandler, James.

Hambridge, Katherine, editor.

Hicks, Jonathan, 1984- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Melodrama--History and criticism.

Melodrama.

Music--19th century--History and criticism.

Music.

Music--18th century--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (295 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

We seem to see melodrama everywhere we look-from the soliloquies of devastation in a Dickens novel to the abject monstrosity of Frankenstein's creation, and from Louise Brooks's exaggerated acting in Pandora's Box to the vicissitudes endlessly reshaping the life of a brooding Don Draper. This anthology proposes to address the sometimes bewilderingly broad understandings of melodrama by insisting on the historical specificity of its genesis on the stage in late-eighteenth-century Europe. Melodrama emerged during this time in the metropolitan centers of London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin through stage adaptations of classical subjects and gothic novels, and they became famous for their use of passionate expression and spectacular scenery. Yet, as contributors to this volume emphasize, early melodramas also placed sound at center stage, through their distinctive-and often disconcerting-alternations between speech and music. This book draws out the melo of melodrama, showing the crucial dimensions of sound and music for a genre that permeates our dramatic, literary, and cinematic sensibilities today. A richly interdisciplinary anthology, The Melodramatic Moment will open up new dialogues between musicology and literary and theater studies.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Historical Newspapers and Journals Cited

Foreword / Chandler, James

Chapter 1. The Melodramatic Moment / Hambridge, Katherine / Hicks, Jonathan

Chapter 2. Forms and Themes of Early Melodrama / Lockhart, Ellen

Chapter 3. Continental Trouble: The Nationality of Melodrama and the National Stage in Early Nineteenth- Century Britain / Saglia, Diego

Chapter 4. Between the Sacred and the Profane: French Biblical Melodrama in Vienna c. 1800 / Babić, Barbara

Chapter 5. Scenography, Spéculomanie, and Spectacle: Pixerécourt's La citerne (1809) / Hibberd, Sarah

Chapter 6. Compositional Gestures: Music and Movement in Lenardo und Blandine (1779) / Betzwieser, Thomas

Chapter 7. Music and Subterranean Space in La citerne (1809) / Hesselager, Jens

Chapter 8. The First English Melodrama: Thomas Holcroft's Translation of Pixerécourt / Taylor, George

Chapter 9. Benevolent Machinery: Techniques of Sympathy in Early German Melodrama / Head, Matthew

Chapter 10. Vienna, 18 October 1814: Urban Space and Public Memory in the Napoleonic "Occasional Melodrama" / Mathew, Nicholas

Afterword: Looking Back at Rousseau's Pygmalion / Waeber, Jacqueline

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Non-Latin script record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

ISBN:

9780226563091

022656309X

OCLC:

1046977575