The Oxford Handbook of Opera (Oxford Handbooks)

What IS opera? Contributors to The Oxford Handbook of Opera respond to this deceptively simple question with a rich and compelling exploration of opera's adaption to changing artistic and political currents. Fifty of the world's most respected scholars cast opera as a fluid entity that continuously reinvents itself in a reflection of its patrons, audience, and creators. The synergy of power, performance, and identity recurs thematically throughout the volume's major topics: Words, Music, and Meaning; Performance and Production; Opera and Society; and Transmission and Reception. Individual essays engage with repertoire from Monteverdi, Mozart, and Meyerbeer to Strauss, Henze, and Adams in studies of composition, national identity, transmission, reception, sources, media, iconography, humanism, the art of collecting, theory, analysis, commerce, singers, directors, criticism, editions, politics, staging, race, and gender. The title of the penultimate section, Opera on the Edge, suggests the uncertainty of opera's future: is opera headed toward catastrophe or have social and musical developments of the last hundred years stimulated something new and exciting, and, well, operatic? In an epilogue to the volume, a contemporary opera composer speaks candidly about opera composition today. The Oxford Handbook of Opera is an essential companion to scholars, educators, advanced students, performers, and knowledgeable listeners: those who simply love opera. The,Oxford,Handbook,of,Opera List of Figures 2 List of Music Examples 7 List of Tables 9 List of Contributors 10 Acknowledgments 25 A Note about Translations and Music Examples 27 Introduction 28 PART I. WHAT IS OPERA? 40 1 What Is Opera? 40 2 Genre 59 3 Musical Theater(s) 80 4 Operatorio? 101 5 The Concept of Opera 121 PART II. WORDS, MUSIC, AND MEANING 166 The Libretto and the Score 166 6 Oft-Told Tales 166 7 The Language of National Style 186 8 Musical Dramaturgy 209 9 Versification 236 10 The German Libretto of the Early Nineteenth Century 264 11 Analysis 283 Humanism, Verisimilitude, and Voice 312 12 Opera between the Ancients and the Moderns 312 13 Verisimilitude 337 14 Voice 361 15 Characterization 378 16 Meaning 395 PART III: PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTION 416 17 Divas and Divos 416 18 Castrato Acts 439 19 Rehearsal Practices 465 20 Acting 487 21 The Chorus 506 22 The Orchestra 527 23 Dance 559 24 Production Aesthetics and Materials 583 25 Costumes 606 26 Regietheater/Director’s Theater 639 27 Historically Informed Performance 666 PART IV: OPERA AND SOCIETY 688 28 Opera Composition and Cultural Environment 688 29 Patronage 709 30 Audiences 729 31 Autographs, Memorabilia, and the Aesthetics of Collecting 751 32 Politics 775 33 Religion 801 34 Race and Racism 825 35 Gender 848 36 Exoticism 871 37 Censorship 894 PART V: TRANSMISSION AND RECEPTION 920 38 How Opera Traveled 920 39 The Operatic Canon 941 40 Critics 962 41 Soundings Offstage 983 42 Visual Media 1007 43 Operatic Images 1028 44 Sources 1059 45 Reconstructions 1082 46 Editing Opera 1108 47 Writing the History of Opera 1131 PART VI: OPERA ON THE EDGE 1147 48 1900–1945 1147 49 After the Canon 1165 EPILOGUE 1190 50 Composing Opera 1190 Index of Musical Works 1211 General Index 1238 ## Abstract The Oxford Handbook of Opera offers a series of trenchant essays on the most important and compelling issues confronting those who think and write about opera. The handbook emphasizes not only operas themselves, but such broad concerns of the discipline as genre, voice, national style, performance, censorship, staging, film, editions, and aesthetics. In doing so, the volume captures the breadth, direction, and tone of opera studies, and most especially its methodologies. The handbook organizes fifty contributions into eight large divisions: Foundations, The Libretto, Production, Performance, Opera and Society, Criticizing Opera, Transmission and Reception, and a postlude about contemporary opera and the future of opera. Each section is designed to reflect the systematic and humanistic concerns of scholars as they juxtapose historical and critical approaches to the issues. The postlude is concerned with the multiplicity of ideas about opera in the culture of atonality and technology, opera absent what the Italians call vocalità, opera in an age that wants to remake the repertoire in its own image, and the opera of the future. The Oxford Handbook of Opera emphasizes criticism and analysis, but also the complex relationship between scholarship and performance as well as the emotionally-charged dynamic between opera and its audience. 'the Oxford Handbook Of Opera' Captures The Highly Charged Dynamic Between Opera And Its Audience, Bringing The Complexities Of Scholarship And The Excitement Of Performance Into The Mainstream Conversation. Fifty Essays Address An Extensive Range Of Topics. What Is Opera? -- Words, Music, And Meaning. The Libretto And The Score ; Humanism, Versimilitude, And Voice -- Performance And Production -- Opera And Society -- Transmission And Reception -- Opera On The Edge. Edited By Helen M. Greenwald. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.