The Ballad of Baby Doe

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Pollack
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Historical Accuracy ◽  
True Love ◽  
Baby Doe ◽  
Love Triangle

The libretto to the opera The Ballad of Baby Doe, with music by Douglas Moore, was Latouche’s crowning achievement. A dramatization of the true love triangle involving the nineteenth-century Colorado silver king Horace Tabor and his two wives, Augusta Tabor and Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor, the work premiered in Colorado shortly before the lyricist’s death, and became one of the most successful works in the American operatic canon. This chapter considers the work’s historical accuracy, with regard to Latouche’s libretto, and its musical and poetic essence, as well as some consideration of its critical reception.

The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Franko
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
World War ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Critical Discourses

This book is an examination of neoclassical ballet initially in the French context before and after World War I (circa 1905–1944) with close attention to dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar. Since the critical discourses analyzed indulged in flights of poetic fancy a distinction is made between the Lifar-image (the dancer on stage and object of discussion by critics), the Lifar-discourse (the writings on Lifar as well as his own discourse), and the Lifar-person (the historical actor). This topic is further developed in the final chapter into a discussion of the so-called baroque dance both as a historical object and as a motif of contemporary experimentation as it emerged in the aftermath of World War II (circa 1947–1991) in France. Using Lifar as a through-line, the book explores the development of critical ideas of neoclassicism in relation to his work and his drift toward a fascist position that can be traced to the influence of Nietzsche on his critical reception. Lifar’s collaborationism during the Occupation confirms this analysis. The discussion of neoclassicism begins in the final years of the nineteenth-century and carries us through the Occupation; then track the baroque in its gradual development from the early 1950s through the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.

scholarly journals Iphigénie à Paris: Positioning Gluck Historically in Early Twentieth-Century France

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15
Author(s):  
William Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Music History ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Unusual Event ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Vincent D'indy

In December 1907, Gluck's opera Iphigénie en Aulide was produced in Paris at the Opéra-Comique, the last of his major operas to be revived in France. The ensuing critical reception pitted Vincent d'Indy, who harshly criticized the production, against its director, Albert Carré; d'Indy further responded by conducting the overture to Iphigénie only a few weeks later as a musical corrective to the performance at the Opéra-Comique. This unusual event highlights the historiographie problem Gluck presented to early twentieth-century critics in France: did his music look backwards to the tragédies lyriques of Lully and Rameau, or did it prefigure the Wagnerian music-dramas of the nineteenth century? The 1907 Opéra-Comique production of Iphigénie and its aftermath encapsulate the struggle to incorporate Gluck into newly developing and often competing narratives of music history.

scholarly journals The Menagerie or the Visitor’s Pass? Aleksandra Zrazhevskaia and Praskov’ia Bakunina on Russian Women Writers

2007 ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Diana Greene
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
The Social ◽  
Innovative Work ◽  
Literary Exchange ◽  
Literary Movements

This article examines an 1842 literary exchange between Aleksandra Zrazhevskaia (1805-1867) and Praskov’ia Bakunina (1810-1880?) concerning the place of women writers in nineteenth-century Russian literature. It is followed by a translation of the exchange itself. Zrazhevskaia’s “Zverinets” (The Menagerie), a formally innovative work of literary criticism addressed in part to Bakunina, challenged the social norms that discouraged women’s writing, as well as the men literary critics who enforced them. In a verse epistle response, Bakunina repudiated Zrazhevskaia’s ideas, maintaining that Russian men critics will extend hospitality and courtesy to women writers who comport themselves as guests in the men’s club of Russian letters. The exchange raises questions about the critical reception of women writers in mid nineteenth-century Russia, women as literary critics, and the gendering of nineteenth century literary movements and aesthetics, which are discussed in relation to the wider pan-European literary climate of the time.

Realism and the Institution of the Nineteenth-Century Novel

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-68
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Margaret Oliphant ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Walter Scott

This chapter argues that establishing an origin for what we now call ‘British realism’ or ‘the Irish novel’ is both an institutional and an anachronistic endeavour: the stories that we tell about novels are actually stories about the cultural institutions that study novels. Considering the formal and political divisions of Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent alongside its changing critical reception, the chapter demonstrates how ‘British realism’ is an anachronistic formation and offers a new origin story where ‘British realism’ and ‘the Irish novel’ are not separate traditions or forms, but rather dynamically intertwined. Castle Rackrent, long thought to be an exemplary Irish novel precisely because it is not realist, develops realist contradictions that are taken up by later nineteenth-century Irish, Scottish and English novelists like Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant and Anthony Trollope.

The silencing of Lucia

1992 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Smart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Mad Scene ◽  
Mental Decline

In Act III of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the chaplain Raimondo appears at the wedding celebrations to tell the assembled guests that Lucia has murdered her husband Arturo. While the chorus expresses shock, Lucia enters, dishevelled and deranged; the crowd turns towards her, murmuring ‘Par dalla tomba uscita!’ This image of a figure emerging from the grave, certainly apt by nineteenth-century poetic standards, also suggests itself as a contemporary metaphor: a shift in critical reception. Traditionally, a noisy chorus of operatic critics has regarded Lucia with a mixture of fascination and horror, emphasising the sepulchral aspects of her madness. Recently, however, a rather surprising resurrection has been effected through the notion, popular among some feminist critics, that Lucia's mental decline could be interpreted as positive, even liberatory. This view has been expressed most flamboyantly by Catherine Clément, for whom madness is one of the few ways an operatic heroine can escape the near-inevitable plot process of seduction and death. Her effusions on Lucia's mad scene illustrate this position vividly: ‘Lucia dances with her desires: listen how joyful, airy and peaceful it is. Who says anything about unhappiness? Madwomen's voices sing the most perfect happiness’

‘The Worst Oratorio Ever!’: Colonialist Condescension in the Critical Reception of George Tolhurst’s Ruth (1864)

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (02) ◽  
pp. 199-227
Author(s):  
Sarah Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
First Century ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Parent State ◽  
British Colony ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Cultural Hierarchies ◽  
Made In

The oratorio genre was regarded amongst the most edifying and instructive artforms of the Victorian era, and it was to these lofty ideals that George Tolhurst (1827–1877) aspired when composing his 1864 oratorioRuth. The first work of its kind written in the British colony of Victoria, Australia,Ruthreceived an initially favourable local reception; Tolhurst was urged by the Melbourne press to aim higher and present his work to a wider and more discerning audience. Consequently, he took his work to London where it was roundly criticized, widely mocked and eventually dubbed ‘the worst oratorio ever’. It might be assumed that a work so poorly received in the cultural metropolis of London would be, like so much other Victorian music, immediately forgotten. However, through its notoriously bad reception,Ruth– in what Percy Scholes describes as a ‘succès de ridicule’ – found a cult following that has spanned from the nineteenth century to the present day. This article examines the critical reception ofRuththrough the lens of colonial social relations, arguing that the treatment ofRuthin both London and Melbourne is emblematic of broader trends in the nineteenth-century relationship between parent state and settler colony. It also explores the surprising phenomenon of twentieth- and twenty-first-century consumption ofRuthin Britain, questioning whether the legacies of certain Victorian social and cultural prejudices relating to the artistic products of the colonies have been mitigated. Aesthetic and representational decisions made in recent revivals of Ruth suggest that cultural hierarchies forged during the Victorian era continue to be reinforced in the present day.

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