scholarly journals Gothic Imaginations in Primo Ottocento Opera

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sarah Chesney
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Giuseppe Verdi ◽  
Scottish Literature ◽  
Gaetano Donizetti ◽  
The North ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
The Way

<p>Connections between the Gothic and opera remain a subsidiary concern to most writers on the Gothic and on opera, if they are even addressed at all. In this study I wish to illuminate how the Gothic is presented both musically and visually on stage through the setting and thematic traits in select nineteenth-century Italian operas. A number of ideas are central to this aim. Firstly, that the ‘Gothic’ dimension of ‘Gothic opera’ is overtly represented through staging. The settings of many ‘Gothic operas’ in Scotland and England reveal the continental European fascination with northern Europe and its history. This stemmed from the influx of English and Scottish literature, most prominently the Ossian poems and the works of Walter Scott and Shakespeare. Consequently, Gothic scenes such as ruined medieval castles and rugged cliffs, masked by darkness or mist are enmeshed with a northern landscape. Tartan costuming also visually situates the Gothic scenes in Northern Europe. Furthermore, the use of musical mannerisms of Scotland and England, particularly in chorus scenes, reinforces this parallel between the Gothic and the north, linking music to the visible Gothic setting. Secondly, I will explore the way in which Gothic imaginings of both immaterial and physical incarnations of the supernatural move between the latent subconscious and conscious realisation. This is evident through the interplay between voice, orchestra and the singer’s corporeality and draws upon recent operatic studies concerning representation of ‘others’, dramatisation, and theatrical spaces. This second section positions women at the heart of the Gothic in opera, as the soprano is most often the character susceptible to other-worldly encounters and madness. The fundamental figure in this study is Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). A number of his operas from the 1830s, especially Lucia di Lammermoor, emphasise how the Gothic may be revealed in opera. However, I conclude with a chapter on Macbeth, the ‘Gothic opera’ of Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), for this work demonstrates how the configuration of the Gothic is developed in musical and dramatic terms and presents a case where the supernatural influence becomes all-empowered.</p>

scholarly journals Gothic Imaginations in Primo Ottocento Opera

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sarah Chesney
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Giuseppe Verdi ◽  
Scottish Literature ◽  
Gaetano Donizetti ◽  
The North ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
The Way

<p>Connections between the Gothic and opera remain a subsidiary concern to most writers on the Gothic and on opera, if they are even addressed at all. In this study I wish to illuminate how the Gothic is presented both musically and visually on stage through the setting and thematic traits in select nineteenth-century Italian operas. A number of ideas are central to this aim. Firstly, that the ‘Gothic’ dimension of ‘Gothic opera’ is overtly represented through staging. The settings of many ‘Gothic operas’ in Scotland and England reveal the continental European fascination with northern Europe and its history. This stemmed from the influx of English and Scottish literature, most prominently the Ossian poems and the works of Walter Scott and Shakespeare. Consequently, Gothic scenes such as ruined medieval castles and rugged cliffs, masked by darkness or mist are enmeshed with a northern landscape. Tartan costuming also visually situates the Gothic scenes in Northern Europe. Furthermore, the use of musical mannerisms of Scotland and England, particularly in chorus scenes, reinforces this parallel between the Gothic and the north, linking music to the visible Gothic setting. Secondly, I will explore the way in which Gothic imaginings of both immaterial and physical incarnations of the supernatural move between the latent subconscious and conscious realisation. This is evident through the interplay between voice, orchestra and the singer’s corporeality and draws upon recent operatic studies concerning representation of ‘others’, dramatisation, and theatrical spaces. This second section positions women at the heart of the Gothic in opera, as the soprano is most often the character susceptible to other-worldly encounters and madness. The fundamental figure in this study is Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). A number of his operas from the 1830s, especially Lucia di Lammermoor, emphasise how the Gothic may be revealed in opera. However, I conclude with a chapter on Macbeth, the ‘Gothic opera’ of Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), for this work demonstrates how the configuration of the Gothic is developed in musical and dramatic terms and presents a case where the supernatural influence becomes all-empowered.</p>

Is Blood Thicker than Water? Farm Servants and the Family in Nineteenth-Century North Devon

2013 ◽  
pp. 10-26
Author(s):  
Caroline Verney ◽  
Janet Few
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Community Cohesion ◽  
Core Theme ◽  
Farming Communities ◽  
The North ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Way

This paper describes a small part of wider research into family and community in the nineteenth century undertaken by the late Caroline Verney. Her study of the north Devon parishes of Bittadon, Braunton, Georgeham, Marwood, Mortehoe and West Down centred on the way in which Victorian farming communities functioned, with investigations into kinship stemming from that core theme. At the same time, Janet Few was researching the role of kinship and its impact on community cohesion in three other areas of north Devon: Bulkworthy, Bucks Mills and Hatherleigh. Few's work on the farming parish of Bulkworthy is particularly relevant and has been used to complement Verney's findings for Mortehoe, which form the focus of this article. Together they have been used to investigate the employment of farm servants and the basis upon which they might have been chosen.

Scott Unbound

Serial Forms ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 69-106
Author(s):  
Clare Pettitt
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Text And Image ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The North ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
Performance Text

‘Scott Unbound’ shows how thinking about print in the 1820s and 1830s in a disaggregated, messy and material way, and seeing it as part of a new media world of performance, text, and image, can help us to think differently about the immense cross-class popularity of Walter Scott’s work. Right from the start, Scott’s powerful Romantic presence as the literary author of books rested on ‘Scott’ as a multimedia phenomenon. Taking the nineteenth-century print serial seriously challenges assumptions about what a ‘book’ might be. By unbinding Scott’s work, this chapter disperses his texts and restores them to their original promiscuous sociability. The Romantic idea of the author is complicated through the remediations of the multi-genre productions of ‘The Magician of the North’ (a.k.a. Walter Scott), and the phenomenon of ‘Scott’ in the early nineteenth century is produced by the generative possibilities of the serial more than has been previously recognized.

Jonson’s Reception

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Lockwood
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Substantial Influence ◽  
Literary Influence ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
Work Done ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

This chapter surveys Jonson’s impact on the nineteenth century, tracing out his substantial influence on poets, novelists and theatre professionals on the page and on the stage. In 1990, D. H. Craig wrote: ‘Jonson’s work, for the nineteenth century, was bafflingly inconsistent.’ This chapter, looking in detail at the way in which writers such as Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, George Eliot, and Anthony Trollope interacted with and learned from Jonson, argues that his work did offer a consistent point of departure for important trends in nineteenth-century writing. By examining such specific encounters, and the work done by William Poel in reviving Jonson’s plays for the professional theatre at the end of the century, this chapter continues to reshape our sense both of the power and persistence of Jonson’s literary influence in the centuries after his death.

The Evolution of Italian Melodrama: from Donizetti to Verdi

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-87
Author(s):  
Edith Georgiana Adetu ◽  
Petruța Maria Coroiu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Giuseppe Verdi ◽  
Maturation Process ◽  
Gaetano Donizetti ◽  
Political Events ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The 19Th Century

"This study presents the evolution of the Italian melodrama of the nineteenth century, having as a major composer exponents such as Gaetano Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi. The rich culture of the Italian Romantic space, as well as the socio-political events of the 19th century, influenced the mentality and style of opera composers. Thus, titles such as “La donna del lago” (1819), “Wilhelm Tell” (1829) – G. Rossini, “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” (1830) – V. Bellini, foreshadow the new directions of Italian romantic opera. The maturation process of Italian romantic opera is crowned by Gaetano Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi, who, through melodrama, achieve important stylistic synthesis. Keywords: Italian, melodrama, evolution, Donizetti, Verdi"

Gentlemen travellers in the north: Cutcliffe Hyne's Through Arctic Lapland, 1898

Polar Record ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian R. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The North ◽  
Gulf Of Bothnia ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Way

Cutcliffe Hyne, a popular late-nineteenth-century writer, and his artist friend Cecil Hayter travelled overland from Varanger Fjord in Arctic Norway to the head of the Gulf of Bothnia in the summer of 1896. The ostensible aim of the trip was to observe the Sami in their own habitat, but it also had an element of adventure for its own sake. Approximately half of the distance was accomplished on foot and the rest by canoe or post cart. They were ill-prepared for the journey and experienced considerable problems in securing food at various farms and villages at which they stopped en route. Hyne wrote a travel book based upon the trip entitled Through Arctic Lapland, and this is of interest today as providing a first-hand account of the way of life of the inhabitants of the region through which they passed and also as an example of a style of travel writing that was then common but is now extinct.

Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
The Way

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry

A Distinction No Longer of Use: Evolutionary Discourse and the Disappearance of the Trope/Figure Binarism

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Sharon-Zisser
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Common Part ◽  
The Way

Abstract: The concem with progress and utility is shared by nineteenth-century scientists, philosophers, and rhetoricians, leading to significant correspondences among their discourses. This concern is manifest, for example, in the way in which several rhetorical treatises of the nineteenth century regard the distinction between a figure and a trope, which had been a common part of rhetorical theory since the time of Quintilian, as useless and anachronistic. By examining three nineteenth-century articulations of the justifications for erasing the trope/figure distinction from the cultural repertoire, this essay reveals structural and semantic parallels between these rhetorical treatises and the discourses of evolution and utilitarianism. Thus, the essay locates the source of the synonymity which the terms “trope” and “figure” have acquired in contemporary critical metalanguage in Victorian ideologies of progress and of the unprofitability and consequent discardability of the ancient.

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