A History of Opera

by ABBATE, CAROLYN

• ISBN13: 9780393057218
• ISBN10: 0393057216
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-11-26
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Why does opera continue to attract new audiences at a time when the stream of original works that was once its lifeblood has dried to a trickle? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their modern retelling of the history of opera, examining its evolution over several centuries and its continued appeal to generations of audiences. Integral to this nuanced and engaging narrative is the ongoing exploration of the tensions that have sustained opera over four hundred years: between words and music, character and singer, the surreal and the believable. As this pair of experts argue, though the genre's most popular and enduring works were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to change the viewer-physically, emotionally, and intellectually-with its enduring power.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. ix
Preface and acknowledgements	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Opera's first centennial	p. 36
Opera seria	p. 68
Discipline	p. 91
Opera buffa and Mozart's line of beauty	p. 117
Singing and speaking before 1800	p. 145
The German problem	p. 167
Rossini and transition	p. 188
The tenor comes of age	p. 215
Young Verdi	p. 241
Grand Opera	p. 261
Young Wagner	p. 290
Opéra comique, the crucible	p. 315
Old Wagner	p. 341
Verdi - older still	p. 373
Realism and clamour	p. 397
Turning point	p. 425
Modern	p. 456
Speech	p. 488
We are alone in the forest	p. 516
References	p. 549
Bibliography	p. 568
Index	p. 579
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