scholarly journals Italians Abroad: Verdi's La traviata and the 1906 Milan Exposition

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 237-272
Author(s):  
Ditlev Rindom

AbstractThis article examines the relationship between Milan's 1906 Exposition and a celebrated revival of Verdi's La traviata (1853). An event of national and international importance, the Exposition was notable for its focus on Italy's global presence, and in particular Italy's relationship with Latin America. The Traviata production, meanwhile, comprised the first Italian staging of Verdi's opera in period costume, performed at La Scala by a quintessentially modern, celebrity ensemble to mark the Exposition's opening. This article explores the parallels between the Exposition and the production, to investigate the complex, shifting position of Milan (and Italy) within the transatlantic cultural and operatic networks of the time; and more broadly, to examine the role of operatic staging in shaping understandings of global space within the mobile operatic canon of the early twentieth century.

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


Author(s):  
Marius Daraškevičius

The article discusses the causes of emergence and spreading of a still room (Lith. vaistinėlė, Pol. apteczka), the purpose of the room, the location in the house planning structure, relations to other premises, its equipment, as well as the role of a still room in everyday culture. An examination of the case of a single room, the still room, in a noblemen’s home is also aimed at illustrating the changes in home planning in the late eighteenth – early twentieth century: how they adapted to the changing hygiene standards, perception of personal space, involvement of the manor owners in community treatment, and changes in dining and hospitality culture. Keywords: still room, household medicine cabinet, manor house, interior, sczlachta culture, education, dining culture, modernisation, Lithuania.


2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-69
Author(s):  
Kathryn E. Bandy

This article presents the study of two stelae from Edfu dating to the early Eighteenth Dynasty that represent members of the same extended family of lector-priests from Edfu (Oriental Institute E11455 and Princeton Y1993-151). The texts of both stelae were published in the early twentieth century; however, neither stela has been comprehensively published. The two stelae present the opportunity to revisit the family’s genealogy and chronological position. The study also considers dating criteria for late Second Intermediate period and early Eighteenth Dynasty stelae and assesses the contemporary positioning and role of lector-priests. Finally, it briefly addresses the influence of documentary scribal culture on monumental inscriptions vis-a?-vis the late Second Intermediate period–early New Kingdom Tell Edfu Ostraca.


2021 ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Yakov Shemyakin

The article substantiates the thesis that modern Native American cultures of Latin America reveal all the main features of "borderland" as a special state of the socio-cultural system (the dominant of diversity while preserving the unity sui generis, embodied in the very process of interaction of heterogeneous traditions, structuring linguistic reality in accordance with this dominant, the predominance of localism in the framework of the relationship between the universal and local dimensions of the life of Latin American societies, the key role of archaism in the system of interaction with the heritage of the 1st "axial time», first of all, with Christianity, and with the realities of the "second axial time" - the era of modernization. The author concludes that modern Indian cultures are isomorphic in their structure to the "borderline" Latin American civilization, considered as a "coalition of cultures" (K. Levi-Strauss), which differ significantly from each other, but are united at the deepest level by an extremely contradictory relationship of its participants.


Author(s):  
Paul Gillingham

Unrevolutionary Mexico addresses how the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) turned into a capitalist dictatorship of exceptional resilience. While soldiers seized power across the rest of Latin America, in modern Mexico the civilians of a single party moved punctiliously in and out of office for seventy-one years. The book uses the histories of the states of Guerrero and Veracruz as entry points to explore the origins and consolidation of this unique authoritarian state on both provincial and national levels. An empirically rich reconstruction of over sixty years of modernization and revolution (1880-1945) revises prevailing ideas of a pacified Mexico and establishes the 1940s as a decade of faltering governments and enduring violence. The book then assesses the pivotal changes of the mid-twentieth century, when a new generation of lawyers, bureaucrats and businessmen joined with surviving revolutionaries to form the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, which held uninterrupted power until 2000. Thematic chapters analyse elections, development, corruption and high and low culture in the period. The central role of military and private violence is explored in two further chapters that measure the weight of hidden coercion in keeping the party in power. In conclusion, the combination of provincial and national histories reveals Mexico as a place where soldiers prevented coups, a single party lost its own rigged elections, corruption fostered legitimacy, violence was concealed but decisive, and ambitious cultural control co-existed with a critical press and a disbelieving public. In conclusion, the book demonstrates how this strange dictatorship thrived not despite but because of its contradictions.


Author(s):  
Ivan Tychyna

The article is devoted to the history study of the formation and functioning of district societies «Prosvita»in Volyn between the two world wars. The formation of the public-educational organization in Volyn was in 1918 and functioned up to the end of the 30s of the twentieth century in the region, until it was banned by the Polish authorities. The article analyzes the main directions of the educational work of the society, national cultural work on the background of development and changes in socio-political relations. The role of the Ukrainian intellectuals in the preservation and development of culture and education in Volyn voivodeship between the two world wars was revealed. The author highlighted the achievements and untapped opportunities of the district Prosvita in Volyn, the difficulties and problems, which the society faced and followed the relationship between Prosvita and the Polish state administration in Volyn voivodeship. Keywords: Prosvita, Volyn, Volyn voivodeship, Galicia, Polish authorities, Ukrainian schooling, publishing, reading libraries, repressions, de-nationalization


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document