Incidental Music and the Revival of Greek Tragedy from the Italian Renaissance to German Romanticism

2010 ◽  
pp. 47-66
Author(s):  
Jason Geary
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
German Romanticism ◽  
Incidental Music

scholarly journals Symbolism and theatre of masques: The deathly carnival of la belle époque

Muzikologija ◽  
2005 ◽  
pp. 85-99
Author(s):  
Nadezda Mosusova
Keyword(s):  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
Belle Epoque ◽  
Incidental Music ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Remote Areas ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Pierrot Lunaire ◽  
Belle Époque

The junction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Europe sharpened the clash of artistic novelties in the Western and Slavonic worlds, caused by developed Symbolism and Expressionism. As an output of the former reappeared in the "Jahrhundertwende" the transformed characters of the Commedia dell'arte, flourished in art, literature and music in Italy France, Austria and Russia. Exponents of Italian Renaissance theatre Stravinsky's Petrushka (1911) and Sch?nberg's Pierrot lunaire (1912) turned soon to be main works of the Russian and Austrian expressionistic music style, inaugurated by Strauss's Salome, which won opera stages from the 1905 on. Influences of the latter were widespread and unexpected, reaching later the "remote" areas of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as the Balkans (in 1907 the Canadian dancer Maud Allan performed The Vision of Salome in Belgrade - music Marcel Remy - making her debut in Vienna 1903). Compositions of Strauss and Sch?nberg (Erwartung included) reflected also the strong cult of death present in Vienna's Finde-si?cle Symbolism concerning among other works plays by Wedekind and Schnitzler (Veil of Pierrette was staged successfully in Russia, too), with prototypes in Schumann's Carnival and Masquerade by Lermontov (both works written in 1834!). It was not by chance that Schumann's piano suite became one of the first ballets of Diaghilev's Saisons Russes (1910) and Masquerade, performed with the incidental music by Alexander Glazunov, the last pre-revolutionary piece of Vsevolod Meyerhold (1917).

THE MOCK HEROIC, AN INTRUDER IN ARCADIA: GIROLAMO GIGLI, ANTONIO CALDARA AND L'ANAGILDA (ROME, 1711)

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-62
Author(s):  
AYANA SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Structural Requirements ◽  
Basic Goal ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
Antonio Caldara ◽  
Arcadian Academy ◽  
Papal States

ABSTRACTIn 1711 the opera L'Anagilda was performed in the private theatre of Francesco Maria Ruspoli, an important Roman patron of the Arcadian Academy. L'Anagilda's librettist (Girolamo Gigli) and composer (Antonio Caldara) were both associated with this society, but the opera contrasts with the basic goal of Arcadian aesthetics – namely, to reform literature and opera by imitating the structure of ancient Greek tragedy and the stylistic purity of Italian renaissance poets. Rather, Gigli and Caldara created an opera infused with comedy, interspersed with fantastic intermezzos and formulated according to a genre not endorsed by Arcadian literary critics, the mock heroic. This article explores topics related to one central question: why would Gigli and Caldara openly flout the literary precepts of Arcadia? Gigli was a career satirist whose works eventually caused him to be exiled from his native Siena, all of Tuscany and the Papal States, and to be expelled from three major literary academies, the Intronati, the Cruscanti and the Arcadians. Since he continually criticized the organizations to which he belonged for their narrow-mindedness, prejudice and hypocrisy, I contend that L'Anagilda represents a critique of Arcadia. Yet in the process, Gigli also shows the Arcadians that there is more than one path to verisimilitude and the imitation of classical models. Despite the mock-heroic characteristics of the libretto, Gigli adheres to some Arcadian structural requirements, and Caldara's score heightens the characterizations and the overall verisimilitude of the opera.

The Orchestra as Acting Area in Greek Tragedy

Ramus ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Ley ◽  
Michael Ewans
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Classical Drama ◽  
Considerable Experience

For some years past there has been a welcome change of emphasis towards the consideration of staging in books published on Greek tragedy; and yet with that change also a curious failure to be explicit about the central problem connected with all stagecraft, namely that of the acting-area. In this study two scholars with considerable experience of teaching classical drama in performance consider this problem of the acting-area in close relation to major scenes from two Greek tragedies, and suggest some general conclusions. The article must stand to some extent as a critique of the succession of books that has followed the apparently pioneering study of Oliver Taplin, none of which has made any substantial or sustained attempt to indicate where actors might have acted in the performance of Greek tragedy, though most, if not all, have been prepared to discard the concept of a raised ‘stage’ behind the orchestra. Hippolytus (428 BC) is the earliest of the surviving plays of Euripides to involve three speaking actors in one scene. Both Alcestis (438 BC and Medea (431 BC almost certainly require three actors to be performed with any fluency, but surprisingly present their action largely through dialogue and confrontation — surprisingly, perhaps, because at least since 458 BC and the performance of the Oresteia it is clear that three actors were available to any playwright.

Reading and Interpreting Variants inCome and Go,Va-et-vientandKommen und Gehen

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-86
Author(s):  
Pascale Sardin
Keyword(s):  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
French Translation ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Famous Paper ◽  
Textual Variants ◽  
Insight Into

This paper focuses on textual variants in Come and Go, Va-et-vient and Kommen und Gehen and considers these variants as thresholds (Genette, 1997) into these works. This paper aims to show how Beckett's self-translating process, which was prolonged and complicated in the case of his plays when he directed them himself, produces a number of possible textual confusions, but also how these complications constitute insight into the Beckettian text. Indeed variants and rewritings point to moments in the writing and rewriting process when Beckett met ‘resistant vitalities’ mentioned by George Steiner in After Babel (1975). To illustrate this, I study Beckett's first ‘dramaticule’, Come and Go, by examining its pre-texts, the French translation, and Beckett's production notebooks for Kommen und Gehen. In these texts, I explore the motifs of death and ocular anxiety, as studied by Freud in his famous paper on ‘The Uncanny.’ I show how the Freudian uncanny actually reveals the parodic archaism of Beckett's drama, as a parallel is drawn between the structure of Beckett's play and Greek tragedy. Beckett's sometimes ‘messy’ rewritings in Come and Go, Va-et-vient and Kommen und Gehen served the performing intuitive perception in us of death, an issue explored here through the trope of femininity. Furthermore, comparing Beckett's Come and Go and Va-et-vient makes it easier to see Beckett progressing towards what Deleuze called a ‘theatre of metamorphoses and permutations’ in Difference and Repetition – a monograph published in France the very year Come and Go was first produced (1966).

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