Inclusive Publics and Modern Technologies: An Introduction to Three Essays on Early Twentieth-Century American Opera

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-176
Author(s):  
NAOMI ANDRÉ
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Paul Hindemith ◽  
Giacomo Puccini ◽  
Ernst Krenek ◽  
American Opera ◽  
Marc Blitzstein ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
A Site

The three essays brought together in this cluster are immersed in themes that characterize “Americanness” in the twentieth century. They provide a microcosm of critical issues that define opera in the United States during these first decades when the nation helped shape the creation of opera rather than principally being a site for importing European works. Although most of the composers discussed in these articles were born in Europe (Giacomo Puccini, Paul Hindemith, and Ernst Krenek) and only a few in the United States (Marc Blitzstein and George Antheil), all of them spent significant time in the United States, and all of the works discussed are either set in the United States, utilize American characters, or tied to important American themes.

Reproducing Carmen in the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Christoforidis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Silent Film ◽  
American Opera ◽  
Carl Van Vechten

Chapter 9 explains that Carmen proved an ideal vehicle for the new technologies of the twentieth century, embraced by the new recording artists whose prestige was borrowed from the operatic world. The young American opera star Geraldine Farrar, building on the legacies of Emma Calvé and Maria Gay, enjoyed an unprecedented and unmistakably modern celebrity as Carmen, born of her ability to exploit the confluence of operatic performance, recordings, and the silent film industry. In this context, the Metropolitan Opera’s attempt to stage a genuine Spanish opera in the guise of Enrique Granados’s Goyescas was undermined by comparison with the vibrant New York traditions of Carmen in the winter of 1915–16, when the fashion for all things Spanish was so intense that Carl Van Vechten dubbed it “the Spanish blaze.”

Negotiating Convention: Pop-Ups and Populism at the San Francisco Opera

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-450
Author(s):  
MEGAN STEIGERWALD ILLE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
American Opera ◽  
Pan American ◽  
Dramatic Shift ◽  
A Site ◽  
Opera Production ◽  
Opera Houses

AbstractTwenty-first-century North American opera houses have attempted to bring in new audiences to make up for a declining and aging population of subscribers through means both traditional and unorthodox. The San Francisco Opera's SF Lab Initiative (2015–2018) was created with such goals in mind. Alternative forms of programming, which I categorize as auxiliary programming, have gained traction as a marketing and aesthetic strategy in recent years, and ultimately signal a dramatic shift in approaches to regional opera production in the United States. While scholars have explored the creation and funding of contemporary operatic productions in the United States, little attention has been given to forms of programming beyond the operatic mainstage. Using interviews with company members and analysis of advertising and reception of the events, I examine the SFO Lab programming as a site of negotiation between operatic convention and experimentation. Based on a populist vision of operatic access, the SF Opera Lab re-contextualized rather than eliminated class and intellectual hierarchies. More broadly, this application of experimental performativity contributes to discourses about Pan-American experimentalism(s) and demonstrates the ways in which a focus on local encounters can yield broad applications for genres and/or scenes beyond opera in the United States.

Vanessa

Samuel Barber ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 409-439
Author(s):  
Barbara B. Heyman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Opera ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
Northern Country ◽  
Opera House ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Snowy Winter

When it was performed in 1958, Barber’s opera Vanessa was the first new American work produced by the Metropolitan Opera since 1947 and only the twentieth since the opening of the opera house in 1883. It took Barber two decades to find a libretto, and his search finally culminated in his own backyard, as it were, when his partner Gian Carlo Menotti offered to write the libretto. This chapter narrates how Vanessa evolved, from the creation of the plot to the actors and sets. Set in an unnamed “northern country about 1905,” the story unfolds about two women: Vanessa, a lady of great beauty, who for twenty years of winter after snowy winter has awaited the return of her only love, Anatol; and her beautiful young niece, Erika. The concluding quintet is considered one of the most brilliant climaxes in the twentieth-century repertoire. The opera’s critical success led to the production of Vanessa at the Salzburg Festival, the first American opera performed there. There have been numerous productions in the United States and abroad since then, including a brilliant one at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2018.

The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin E. Zimring
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
American Life ◽  
Peak Rate ◽  
Or Practice

The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. Why did it happen when it happened? What explains the unprecedented magnitude of prison and jail expansion? Why are the current levels of penal confinement so very close to the all-time peak rate reached in 2007? What is the likely course of levels of penal confinement in the next generation of American life? Are there changes in government or policy that can avoid the prospect of mass incarceration as a chronic element of governance in the United States? This study is organized around four major concerns: What happened in the 33 years after 1973? Why did these extraordinary changes happen in that single generation? What is likely to happen to levels of penal confinement in the next three decades? What changes in law or practice might reduce this likely penal future?

Orientalized Aztecs: Observations on the Americanization of Theatrical Dance

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
K. Mitchell Snow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Policy ◽  
Ballets Russes

The opening decades of the twentieth century saw a passing fashion for “Aztec” dancing in the vaudeville theaters of the United States. Russian classical dancers Kosloff and Fokine tapped the orientalist currents of the Ballets Russes, adopting the Aztec as superficial signs of the American. Conversely, works by Shawn and film director Cecil B. DeMille, which served as points of reference for the Russians, represented a continuation of equally orientalist attitudes toward Mexico's past, forged during the realization of the United States’ policy of Manifest Destiny. The emergence of a cadre of trained dancers from Mexico, trained by students of Kosloff and Shawn, would bring a distinctively different perspective on the presentation of their heritage to the dance stage, one that was no longer based in the imagination of an expansionist America.

A Century of America on Chinese Screens

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiwei Xiao
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Print Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
American People ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Films ◽  
New Millennium

AbstractNo serious study has been published on how Chinese filmmakers have portrayed the United States and the American people over the last century. The number of such films is not large. That fact stands in sharp contrast not only to the number of "China pictures" produced in the United States, which is not surprising, but also in contrast to the major role played by Chinese print media. This essay surveys the history of Chinese cinematic images of America from the early twentieth century to the new millennium and notes the shifts from mostly positive portrayal in the pre-1949 Chinese films, to universal condemnation during the Mao years and to a more nuanced, complex, and multi-colored presentation of the last few decades.

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