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Exploring the many dimensions of Giacomo Puccini's historical legacy and significance, this book situates the much-loved opera composer within the cultural, social, political, and aesthetic contexts of his time and demonstrates how political concerns shape the way we approach and interpret his works in the present day.
These essays by respected scholars examine representative operatic productions from diverse national schools and periods, together forming a comprehensive history of the staging techniques of opera over the centuries.
Giacomo Puccini is one of the most frequently performed and best loved of all operatic composers. In Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccini's Late Style, Andrew Davis takes on the subject of Puccini's last two works to better understand how the composer creates meaning through the juxtaposition of the conventional and the unfamiliar -- situating Puccini in past operatic traditions and modern European musical theater. Davis asserts that hearing Puccini's late works within the context of la solita forma allows listeners to interpret the composer's expressive strategies. He examines Puccini's compositional language, with insightful analyses of melody, orchestration, harmony, voice-leading, and rhythm and meter.
This masterful biography provides the most authentic and revealing portrait to date of this major operatic composer
Unfinished at Puccini's death in 1924, Turandot was not only his most ambitious work, but it became the last Italian opera to enter the international repertory. In this colorful study two renowned music scholars demonstrate that this work, despite the modern climate in which it was written, was a fitting finale for the centuries-old Great Tradition of Italian opera. Here they provide concrete instances of how a listener might encounter the dramatic and musical structures of Turandot in light of the Italian melodramma, and firmly establish Puccini's last work within the tradition of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. In a summary of the sounds, sights, and symbolism of Turandot, the authors touch on earlier treatments of the subject, outline the conception, birth, and reception of the work, and analyze its coordinated dramatic and musical design. Showing how the evolution of the libretto documents Puccini's reversion to large musical forms typical of the Great Tradition in the late nineteenth century, they give particular attention to his use of contrasting Romantic, modernist, and two kinds of orientalist coloration in the general musical structure. They suggest that Puccini's inability to complete the opera resulted mainly from inadequate dramatic buildup for Turandot's last-minute change of heart combined with an overly successful treatment of the secondary character.
"La bohème is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world. But how did it come to be so adored? Drawing on an extremely broad range of sources, Alexandra Wilson traces the opera's rise to global fame. Although the work has been subjected to many hostile critiques, it swiftly achieved popular success through stage performances, recordings and filmed versions. Wilson demonstrates how La bohème acquired even greater cultural influence as its music and dramatic themes began to be incorporated into pop songs, film soundtracks, musicals and more"--
A thematically organised overview of the musical, social and cultural contexts for the multi-faceted career of this pivotal British composer.
The vibrant intellectual, social and political climate of mid eighteenth-century Europe presented opportunities and challenges for artists and musicians alike. This book focuses on Mozart the man and musician as he responds to different aspects of that world. It reveals his views on music, aesthetics and other matters; on places in Austria and across Europe that shaped his life; on career contexts and environments, including patronage, activities as an impresario, publishing, theatrical culture and financial matters; on engagement with performers and performance, focusing on Mozart's experiences as a practicing musician; and on reception and legacy from his own time through to the present day. Probing diverse Mozartian contexts in a variety of ways, the contributors reflect the vitality of existing scholarship and point towards areas primed for further study. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars of late eighteenth-century music and for Mozart aficionados and music lovers in general.
A detailed investigation of the reception and cultural contexts of Puccini's music, this book offers a fresh view of this historically important but frequently overlooked composer. Wilson's study explores the ways in which Puccini's music and persona were held up as both the antidote to and the embodiment of the decadence widely felt to be afflicting late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy, a nation which although politically unified remained culturally divided. The book focuses upon two central, related questions that were debated throughout Puccini's career: his status as a national or international composer, and his status as a traditionalist or modernist. In addition, Wilson examines how Puccini's operas became caught up in a wide range of extra-musical controversies concerning such issues as gender and class. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of both the history of opera and of the wider artistic and intellectual life of turn-of-the-century Italy.
The life and works of Giacomo Puccini, composer of La Boheme, Madama Butterfly, Tosca, Turandot, and other universal operatic favorites, are here presented in detail for the first time in any language in a book unlikely ever to be superseded. A full-length recounting of Puccini's fascinating life, rich in previously unused materials, is followed by detailed analyses of each of his operas and other compositions. The author, a Viennese conductor and musicologist, has performed this monumental task with knowledge, grace, and insight. The biography brings to life a curious, somewhat ambiguous man whose greatly successful career was marked alternately by storms, tragedies, and triumphs, a genius who somehow missed the final greatness. His relations with his family, colleagues, librettists, singers, conductors--and his peculiar, convoluted relationship with his wife--have some of the very drama that has made his operas so enduringly popular. Puccini's letters are quoted extensively, many of them in English for the first time. The opera analyses, constantly evaluating the music in terms of drama and libretto, are unique in musical literature and in their completeness and illumination. They are, furthermore, judicious and soundly musical, for instead of accepting ready-made opinions (many of which are quoted), they go directly to the scores themselves.