The politics of opera : a history from Monteverdi to Mozart / Mitchell Cohen.
Description: xxxii, 477 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmISBN:- 9780691175027
- 0691175020
- 782.109 23
- ML3918. O64C65 2017
Item type | Current library | Class number | Status | Notes | Date due | Barcode | Item reservations | |
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Book-Circulating | Fischer Hall Library Main shelves | ML3918. O64C65 2017 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | Donated by Prof Fernandez-Armesto, Spring 2022 | B014403 |
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ML390.S8 2003 The lives and times of the great composers / | ML3917. E85 Singing the news of death : execution ballads in Europe 1500-1900 / | ML3917. G7C68 2021 The ballad-singer in Georgian and Victorian London / | ML3918. O64C65 2017 The politics of opera : a history from Monteverdi to Mozart / | ML3918. P67 Popular culture and society. 2nd ed. | ML3920. S82 2010 Where music helps : | ML3930. B2R4 Johann Sabastian Bach |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Who rules? -- Reigning voices -- Intermedio (I) -- Laws and laurels -- Orpheus's ways -- Intermedio (II) -- A prince decides on Naxos (III) -- The political scenario of Monteverdi's Venice -- Revealing Ulysses -- Intermedio (IV) -- Spectacles -- Agitations and absolutes -- In the winds: the decades of Pernucio and Telemachus -- Un court intermède -- Vertical, horizontal -- Nature and its discontents -- From Elysium to Utica -- Zwischenspiel (I) -- From Crete to Rome -- Masters and servants -- Zwischenspiel (II) -- Gaits of history -- Looking for enlightenment -- Tamino's wonder -- Sarastro's sabbatical: this is not a finale -- Appendix: "backstage."
The Politics of Opera" takes readers on a fascinating journey into the entwined development of opera and politics, from the Renaissance through the turn of the nineteenth century. What political backdrops have shaped opera? How has opera conveyed the political ideas of its times? Delving into European history and thought and an array of music by such greats as Lully, Rameau, and Mozart, Mitchell Cohen reveals how politics--through story lines, symbols, harmonies, and musical motifs--has played an operatic role both robust and sotto voce. Cohen begins with opera's emergence under Medici absolutism in Florence during the late Renaissance--where debates by humanists, including Galileo's father, led to the first operas in the late sixteenth century. Taking readers to Mantua and Venice, where composer Claudio Monteverdi flourished, Cohen examines how early operatic works like Orfeo used mythology to reflect on governance and policy issues of the day, such as state jurisdictions and immigration. Cohen explores France in the ages of Louis XIV and the Enlightenment and Vienna before and during the French Revolution, where the deceptive lightness of Mozart's masterpieces touched on the havoc of misrule and hidden abuses of power. Cohen also looks at smaller works, including a one-act opera written and composed by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.