Cherubini: A Critical Anthology, 1788–1801

1993 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 95-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Charlton
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Account ◽  
Performance History ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
History Of

… as they say in Germany, ‘in music, Cherubini is a hundred years ahead of us’. trans. from Correspondance des Arrwteurs musiciens, 8 October 1803Attitudes to Cherubini have been affected by the knowledge that his most important operas had scant success in Paris after 1800. This lack of a continuous French performing tradition has encouraged the feeling that they were perhaps unviable or unattractive. It is not one shared by the author of a substantial dissertation on Cherubini, Stephen C. Willis; but Willis's work was focussed on the composer rather than his operas’ reception. In fact, neither the performance history nor reception of these five main works has apparently, until now, been investigated. They are: Démophoon (text by J. F. Marmontel, Paris Opéra, 2 December 1788); Lodoïska (C. F. Fillette, or ‘Fillette Loraux’, 18 July 1791); Eliza, ou Le voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard, J. A. Révéroni St-Cyr, 13 December 1794); Médée (F. B. Hoffman, 13 March 1797); and Les Deux journées (J. N. Bouilly, 16 January 1800). The last four were all produced at the Théâtre Feydeau. A properly detailed account of Cherubini's involvement at this theatre must be reserved for another occasion: part of the ignorance surrounding the genesis of these extraordinary operas lies simply in the fact than no history of the Feydeau has been written. Cherubini produced two comedies at the Feydeau which were unsuccessful and are not considered here: L'Hôtellerie portugaise (25 July 1798) and La Punition (23 February 1799).

The Body and the Voice in La Muette de Portici

2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maribeth Clark
Keyword(s):  
Active Role ◽  
The Body ◽  
Singing Voice ◽  
Performance History ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changing Attitudes

This article explores changing attitudes toward actors' bodies at the Paris Opera through the performance history of D. F. E. Auber's opera La Muette de Portici from 1828 to 1879. Because a mime performed the role of Fenella and the chorus played an active role in the mise en scene, the opera placed unusual emphasis on the physical. Over this period, however, emphasis shifted from appreciation of acting to emphasis on singing. For example, during the tenor Adolphe Nourrit's tenure at the Opera critics admired his skill as an actor in the role of Masaniello. When replaced by Gilbert Duprez in 1837, critics praised the tenor's vocal power and lack of emphasis on the histrionic. During this same time, critics began to interpret the gestures of the mime playing Fenella as semantically empty, and her body as filling a space that a singer should occupy. The important role that the barcarolle plays in the opera allows in part for these transitions. Viewed as a chanson napolitaine, it accentuates the rocking of a boat and the physical body at work; however, interpreted as the song of a Venetian gondolier, the song emphasizes the enunciation of a singing voice at the expense of the body. Reviews of La Muette reflect this ambivalence toward performance styles that call attention to the body, particularly those that might be interpreted as belonging to the working classes.

Performing the Mass in B Minor in an Age of Choices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Melamed
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Performance History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Compositional History

Every performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’'s Mass in B Minor makes choices. The work’s compositional history and the nature of the sources that transmit it require performers to make decisions about its musical text and about the performing forces used in its realization. The Mass’s editorial history reflects deeply ideological views about Bach’s composition and how it should sound, not just objective reporting on the piece, with consequences for performances that follow specific editions. Things left unspecified by the composer need to be filled in, and every decision—including the choice to add nothing to Bach’s text—represents an interpretation. And the long performance history of the Mass offers a range of possibilities, reflecting a tension between the performance of a work like the Mass in Bach’s time and the tradition inherited from the nineteenth century. Every performance thus represents a point of view about the piece; —there are no neutral performances.

Empiricisms

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Allen
Keyword(s):  
John Dewey ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
William James ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Chinese Tradition ◽  
Experimental Practice ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
History Of

Empiricisms reassesses the values of experience and experiment in European philosophy and comparatively. It traces the history of empirical philosophy from its birth in Greek medicine to its emergence as a philosophy of modern science. A richly detailed account in Part I of history’s empiricisms establishes a context in Part II for reconsidering the work of the so-called radical empiricists—William James, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and Gilles Deleuze, each treated in a dedicated chapter. What is “radical” about their work is to return empiricism from epistemology to the ontology and natural philosophy where it began. Empiricisms also sets empirical philosophy in conversation with Chinese tradition, considering technological, scientific, medical, and alchemical sources, as well as selected Confucian, Daoist, and Mohist classics. The work shows how philosophical reflection on experience and a profound experimental practice coexist in traditional China with no interaction or even awareness of each other. Empiricism is more multi-textured than philosophers tend to assume when we explain it to ourselves and to students. One purpose of Empiricisms is to recover the neglected context. A complementary purpose is to elucidate the value of experience and arrive at some idea of what is living and dead in philosophical empiricism.

A Performance History of Aureliano in Palmira

1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-37
Author(s):  
T. KAUFMAN
Keyword(s):  
Performance History ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Performance

Chicago's Auditorium Building: Opera or Anarchism

1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Siry
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Social History ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opera House ◽  
Opera Houses

Adler and Sullivan's Auditorium Building in Chicago (1886-1890) is here analyzed in the context of Chicago's social history of the 1880s. Specifically, the building is seen as a capitalistic response to socialist and anarchist movements of the period. The Auditorium's principal patron, Ferdinand W. Peck, created a theater that was to give access to cultural and civic events for the city's workers, to draw them away from both politicized and nonpoliticized "low" urban entertainments. Adler and Sullivan's theater was to serve a mass audience, unlike opera houses of the period, which held multiple tiers of boxes for privileged patrons. This tradition was represented by the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City (1881-1883). Turning away from works like the Paris Opéra, Peck and his architects perhaps sought to emulate ideas of other European theaters of the period, such as Bayreuth's Festspielhaus (1872-1876). Sullivan's interior had an ornamental and iconographic program that was innovative relative to traditional opera houses. His design of the building's exterior was in a Romanesque style that recalled ancient Roman monuments. It is here compared with other Chicago buildings of its era that represented high capital's reaction to workers' culture, such as Burnham and Root's First Regiment Armory (1889-1891), Peck's own house (1887), and the Chicago Athenaeum (1890-1891). The Auditorium's story invites a view of the Chicago School that emphasizes the role of patrons' ideological agenda rather than modern structural expression.

“Solidarity is Something you can Hold in your Hand”

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Torkil Lauesen
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Global Context ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Support Work

Abstract This article tells the story of an organization based in Copenhagen, Denmark, which supported the Liberation struggle in the Third World from 1969 until April 1989. It focus on the support to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (pflp). The story is told in a historical and global context. The text explains the strategy and tactic behind the support-work. It explains how the different forms of solidarity work developed over two decades (for a more detailed account of the history of the group, see Kuhn, 2014). Finally, the article offers an evaluation of the past and a perspective on the future struggle for a socialist Palestine.

TWO HUNTERS, A MILKMAID AND THE FRENCH ‘REVOLUTIONARY’ CANON

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIA DOE
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Stage I ◽  
Performance History ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Printed Music

ABSTRACTLarge-scale programming studies of French Revolutionary theatre confirm that the most frequently staged opera of the 1790s was not one of the politically charged, compositionally progressive works that have come to define the era for posterity, but rather a pastoral comedy from mid-century:Les deux chasseurs et la laitière(1763), with a score by Egidio Duni to a libretto by Louis Anseaume. This article draws upon both musical and archival evidence to establish an extended performance history ofLes deux chasseurs, and a more nuanced explanation for its enduring hold on the French lyric stage. I consider the pragmatic, legal and aesthetic factors contributing to the comedy's widespread adaptability, including its cosmopolitan musical idiom, scenographic simplicity and ready familiarity amongst consumers of printed music. More broadly, I address the advantages and limitations of corpus-based analysis with respect to delineating the operatic canon. In late eighteenth-century Paris, observers were already beginning to identify a chasm between their theatre-going experiences and the reactions of critics: Was a true piece of ‘Revolutionary’ theatre one that was heralded as emblematic of its time, or one, likeLes deux chasseurs, that was so frequently seen that it hardly elicited a mention in the printed record?

scholarly journals The biology of Limacina retroversa

1954 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. Morton
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Breeding Season ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Larval Stages ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Clione Limacina

The Plymouth Fauna List contains records of two genera of pteropods, Limacina and Clione. Of the first, Limacina retroversa (Flem.) is by far the better-known species, apparently occurring regularly at Plymouth in large numbers in townettings from outside, and sometimes inside, the Sound. It breeds at Plymouth from June to August, and Lebour (1932) has given a detailed account of its breeding and larval stages and has discussed its role in the plankton. The second species of Limacina at Plymouth is lesueuri (d'Orbigny), which has been observed from time to time since 1906, when it was very common. The last record in the Fauna is off the Breakwater in 1920. Of the gymnosomatous pteropods, Clione limacina Phipps is the only species regularly occurring. Lebour (1931) has described the life history of this form, and mentions February to August as its months of greatest abundance. Its breeding season is June to August. Another gymnosome, tentatively referred to as Clionina longicauda, is reported by Russell (1936), and from the specimen department at Plymouth Laboratory the writer obtained some preserved specimens, not easily identifiable, of a Pneumodermopsis taken locally; its species is perhaps ciliata, recorded by Massy (1917) from the Irish Coast.

scholarly journals Plant Performance History of an Innovative Gate Valve in Critical Service Applications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. S. Kalsi ◽  
Patricio Alvarez ◽  
Thomas White ◽  
Micheal Green
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Gate Valve ◽  
Plant Performance ◽  
Flow Loop ◽  
Performance History ◽  
Pressurized Water ◽  
Maintenance Costs ◽  
History Of ◽  
Water Reactors

A previous paper [1] describes the key features of an innovative gate valve design that was developed to overcome seat leakage problems, high maintenance costs as well as issues identified in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Generic Letters 89-10, 95-07 and 96-05 with conventional gate valves [2,3,4]. The earlier paper was published within a year after the new design valves were installed at the Pilgrim Nuclear Plant — the plant that took the initiative to form a teaming arrangement as described in [1] which facilitated this innovative development. The current paper documents the successful performance history of 22 years at the Pilgrim plant, as well as performance history at several other nuclear power plants where these valves have been installed for many years in containment isolation service that requires operation under pipe rupture conditions and require tight shut-off in both Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs). The performance history of the new valve has shown to provide significant performance advantage by eliminating the chronic leakage problems and high maintenance costs in these critical service applications. This paper includes a summary of the design, analysis and separate effects testing described in detail in the earlier paper. Flow loop testing was performed on these valves under normal plant operation, various thermal binding and pressure locking scenarios, and accident/pipe rupture conditions. The valve was designed, analyzed and tested to satisfy the requirements of ANSI B16.41 [9]; it also satisfies the requirements of ASME QME 1-2012 [10]. The results of the long-term performance history including any degradation observed and its root cause are summarized in the paper. Paper published with permission.

Augustine

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Rational Method ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Spiritual Autobiography ◽  
Systematic Method ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Epistemology

At the heart of Augustine’s intellectual and spiritual autobiography is a search for wisdom that demands of him sophisticated epistemological reflection. The results—in particular, his identification of the category of rational or justified assent on less-than-certain grounds and his inquiry into the nature and epistemic value of testimony—break dramatic new ground in the history of epistemology. He articulates a concept of belief (as assent to a proposition on the basis of testimony) and distinguishes it from understanding (assent to a proposition on the basis of reasoned insight). Exploiting that distinction, he develops both a rationale for and a detailed account of a systematic method for the rational investigation of theological matters, which he characterizes as belief seeking understanding. Augustine’s famous reflections on the paradox of evil and on the nature of the divine Trinity provide compelling illustrations of his application of this rational method and its results.

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