The Last Troubadours: Poetic Drama in Italian Opera 1597-1887

1991 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 268
Author(s):  
Madison U. Sowell ◽  
Deirdre O'Grady
Keyword(s):  
Italian Opera ◽  
Poetic Drama

The Last Troubadours: Poetic Drama in Italian Opera 1597-1887

1995 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 218
Author(s):  
Bojan Bujic ◽  
Deirdre O'Grady
Keyword(s):  
Italian Opera ◽  
Poetic Drama

Dancing in Early Productions of The Beggar's Opera

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
Jeremy Barlow ◽  
Moira Goff
Keyword(s):  
Political Corruption ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The Many

John Gay's The Beggar's Opera was accepted for production by John Rich, manager at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and received its premiere in January 1728. With its twin satirical targets of Italian opera and political corruption, and its fresh approach to musical entertainment, the opera had an unprecedented success during its first season and continued to be performed every year in London for the remainder of the century. Alongside the many songs, the libretto indicates three contrasting ensemble dances, introduced at key moments of the drama. These dances have been overlooked in most studies of The Beggar's Opera. The article investigates the significance of the dances within the ballad opera, the dancers who may have performed them and what they may have been dancing. Each dance and its music is analysed in detail, and placed within the context of the dance repertoire and wider theatrical background at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The authors also demonstrate the importance of dance in attracting audiences at Lincoln's Inn Fields; and show how, as box office receipts for The Beggar's Opera eventually declined, Rich stimulated demand by introducing divertissements and entr'acte dances unrelated to the show.

Operatic Canons and Repertories in Italy c. 1900

2020 ◽  
pp. 225-241
Author(s):  
Jutta Toelle
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Music Publishers ◽  
Opera Houses

This chapter outlines how a fundamental crisis arose in Italian opera houses by 1900, shaped by the focus on canonic repertory as it was defined by the leading theaters and music publishers. Planning of repertory became focused on specific kinds of operas—in effect a canonic typology—from which a work was chosen as appropriate to a specific season or social context. Eventually, this repertory came to be perceived as finite, establishing certain canonic types as standard choices for the organization of a theater’s repertory or a publisher’s list. The leading such framework took shape most significantly in Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, devised by publishers and glorified by key artists, most significantly the conductor Arturo Toscanini. This chapter is paired with Carlotta Sorba’s “Theaters, markets, and canonic implications in the Italian opera system, 1820–1880.”

The Practical and Symbolic Functions of Pre-Rameau Opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Michel Noiray
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter explains how a uniquely long-lived canon evolved in revivals of operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully and his immediate successors—chiefly André Campra and André-Cardinal Destouches—right up to the early 1770s. The Académie Royale de Musique was unique as the only theater to resist Italian repertory, except in two brief controversial periods. A dogmatic commitment to the old style and repertory survived after Lully’s death, quite separate from the operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau. Opposition to this unique practice broke out occasionally among the public, but such opinion was not widely supported in the press. It is striking that the main critics of ancienne musique, as it was called—Rousseau, Paul Henri d’Holbach, and Friedrich Melchior von Grimm—all came from outside France. This chapter is paired with Franco Piperno’s “Italian opera and the concept of ‘canon’ in the late eighteenth century.”

Classicism and Poetic Drama

1966 ◽  
Vol XVI (2) ◽  
pp. 154-169
Author(s):  
FRED INGLIS
Keyword(s):  
Poetic Drama
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