scholarly journals From Tangible to Intangible Heritage inside Italian Historical Opera Houses

Heritage ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 826-835 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Prodi

Historical opera houses in Italy have been the place for the development of a relevant part of the National musical tradition and their design is paired with a peculiar acoustical fingerprint. Due to its relevance this can be regarded as an intangible heritage embedded in the tangible heritage constituted by the theatre building itself. In particular the presence of fairly deep lateral enclosures opened to the main hall volume, called the “boxes,” is of paramount importance for the implications it had on the listening experience perceived by the public. For instance, the positions in the box recess had a much less favourable sound field compared to the frontal ones located at the box opening towards the hall. In this work the need for the box design is briefly recalled from an historical perspective and then the sound field in the boxes is described as the combination of several sound reflections from specific interior surfaces. It is seen how the related listening experience can vary in a remarkable manner while moving from boxes at different tiers. This characteristic greatly differentiates historical opera houses from modern ones, where one of the most valuable attribute is a limited change in acoustics over large audiences. The acoustical environment of historical halls and inside boxes in particular was important in building up the ear of the Italian opera goers, thus a close consideration of the peculiarities of the intangible heritage is necessary in case of restorations and cannot be overlooked.

Author(s):  
Carlotta Sorba

This chapter analyzes how programming in Italian opera houses gradually shifted from new to established old works in the middle of the nineteenth century. By tradition, contractual agreements committed an impresario to stage a consistent number of works, either recently composed or new to the city. From the 1820s, both taste and programming became increasingly focused on a small number of authors and composers, seen most significantly in the successes of Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. From 1850, theaters produced fewer new works, and programming became increasingly stable and consistent around a small repertory. Crucially, it was the authority wielded by producers and publishers, reinforced by the will of the public, that defined the new canonic repertory, rather than any leadership from critics. This chapter is paired with Jutta Toelle’s “Operatic canons and repertories in Italy around 1900.”


1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Della Seta

The historiography of Italian opera is particularly well suited to illustrate some problems in the general field of music history and musicology. On the one hand, there is little doubt that Italian opera belongs to the canon, not to say the museum, of learned western music; indeed, today's opera houses surpass concert halls in projecting the ‘museum character’ in which musical tradition seems ‘frozen’. On the other hand, it is also true that only in recent years has international musicology accepted Italian opera as unquestionably deserving of attention. The reasons for this delay are clear enough. Some were easily overcome, connected to the very history of our discipline: since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the musical language of Italian operatic composers diverged from the mainstream Austro-German tradition; the dramaturgy of Italian opera was difficult to understand in a cultural context moulded by Wagnerian theory and practice (in part also by Shakespeare, Schiller, etc.). Other factors, however, are more deeply embedded, and continue to have an effect even in intellectual conditions very different from those of traditional musicology. These include: the manner in which extra-artistic factors determine the operatic work; the various creative competencies that take part in operatic production; the considerable importance accorded to performers, particularly singers; the possibility that parts of an opera may be moved from one work to another, or from one author to another; the fact that in die history of Italian operatic conventions, shared codes and repetition of formulas often prevailed over the search for novelty.


Author(s):  
Jutta Toelle

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.”


Author(s):  
Michel Noiray

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.”


Author(s):  
Юлия Сергеевна Овчинникова

В статье рассматривается специфика бытования музыкального фольклора теленгитов селения Язула Улаганского района Республики Алтай в условиях транзитивности (по материалам полевых исследований 2003 и 2019 гг.). Музыкальный фольклор теленгитов обособленного селения характеризуется полистадиальностью, «вероятностной» (поливекторной, нелинейно меняющейся) природой развития, увеличением культурного разнообразия и трансформацией моноязычной культурной среды в многоязычную в лингвистическом, музыкальном и бытовом планах. Каналами инокультурного влияния на интонационное поле теленгитской музыкальной традиции сегодня выступают радио, Интернет и телевидение, сельский клуб, доступная транспортная связь с городом, международные курултаи сказителей . При расширении сферы бытования различных форм фольклоризма (советского, российского, алтайского) песенная фольклорная традиция теленгитов продолжает существовать исключительно в обрядовом контексте (закрыто от глаз приезжих). Владение каем - особым типом интонирования, характерным для тюрков Горного Алтая, маркирующим их этнокультурную идентичность, - востребовано сегодня со стороны туристов, региональной администрации и общественности, что ведет к миграции носителей этой традиции из обособленных селений в центральные. Трансформация искусства кая обусловлена единым процессом глобализации/глокализации, переходом от традиционного контекста бытования к сценическому фольклоризму, проникновением инокультурных интонационных форм в звуковой ландшафт теленгитских селений. This article focuses on the current state of Telengit music culture in Yazula Village (Ulagan Region, Republic of Altai) in conditions of transitivity. The material presented is based on field studies in 2003 and 2019. The Telengit musical folklore of this territorially isolated village is characterized by polystadiality; the “probabilistic,” non-linear nature of its development; by an increase of cultural diversity; and by the transformation of a monolingual environment into a multi-lingual one in linguistic, musical and ontological terms. Channels for outside cultural influence on the intonational field of the Telengit musical tradition include: radio, television, the Internet, the local club, transportation to the city; and International Kurultai of storytellers. In the presence of different forms of folklore (Soviet, Russian, Altaian) performed in the village club, the village folksong tradition continues to live on exclusively in a ritual context (inaccessible to outsiders). The mastery of kai as a specific type of intonation, typical for the Turks of Gorny Altai, that marks their ethnocultural identity, is in demand today by tourists, regional administrations and the public. This leads to the migration of carriers of this tradition out of isolated settlements into more central ones. The transformation of the art of kai in modern Telengit culture is conditioned by the process of globalization/glocalization; by the change of kai’s function in a traditional context to that of staged folklorism; and by the penetration of other cultural intonational forms into the soundscape of Telengit villages.


2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco JB Reifschneider ◽  
Carlos A Lopes ◽  
Cláudia SC Ribeiro

ABSTRACT The article describes the origin, development and main results of Embrapa Vegetables' Capsicum breeding program, a continuous activity for more than three decades. The article points out and highlights how partnerships, both in Brazil and abroad, both with the public and the private sectors, were vital to the success of the program. The article also glosses over the development of the Capsicum germplasm bank and its importance to the breeding program, concluding with a set of faced challenges and lessons learned which might be of interest to other similar programs.


2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-231
Author(s):  
T. M. Chan ◽  
W. M. To

Balconies are normally used in large auditoria such as concert halls or opera houses, to increase seating capacity or to give better view for a distinguished group of the audience. When ray-tracing based computer models are applied to study the acoustical quality of these auditoria, the alteration of the sound field due to balcony fronts is normally unobservable, because of the relative small size of the balcony fronts in the auditorium. Furthermore, most diffuse reflection ray-tracing methods are not based on direct wave acoustics but on an approximation of the scattering effect. In practice, experience shows that balcony fronts give additional warmth to music. This effect is more prominent when singers perform in traditional horseshoe shaped opera houses with multi-levels balconies. This paper describes modelling of scattering from balcony fronts using a theoretical wave approach, in which the incident wave front is not plane but spherical. A computer simulation illustrates the scattering of sound that takes place when the wavefront impinges on the surface of the balcony fronts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-29
Author(s):  
Gabrielle A. Berlinger

Abstract: Founded in a nationally landmarked apartment building on the ever-gentrifying Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum is an historic site of immigrant social history and material culture. Constructed in 1864 and occupied by over 7,000 immigrants until its closing in 1935, this building has withstood constantly rising visitorship each year since its opening as a museum in 1988. With apartment spaces restored for the public to explore without roped-off restriction, this time capsule of domestic immigrant life requires continual maintenance to preserve its historic physical fabric. Through interviews with the Museum staff and the Preservation Advisory Committee (conservators, architectural historians, curators), as well as documentation of technical processes carried out in the preservation process, this ethnographic study investigates the questions and compromises that arise in the preservation of the tangible and intangible heritage contained within an historic structure in constant use. Which narratives are reconstructed through the Museum’s decisions to restore certain material features of the building while allowing others to decay? What are best practices for interpretation and preservation when a museum’s success results in the gradual destruction of its main artifact (the building) through use? This study explores the intersection of museum mission and practice, heritage construction, and historic preservation at a site both sustained and destroyed by its increasing success.


Author(s):  
Tommy Satriadi Nur Arifin

The purpose of this study is to discuss media convergence as the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This study uses a historical perspective which is the first media age with the broadcast pattern and the second media age with interactivity patterns. Results of research Broadcast media that use radio frequency transmission can now be accessed through an Internet connection as streaming media. In conclusion, the public can access radio and television through an internet connection and reduce the need for these devices, using an internet connection when it is available for the network to access broadcasts. Keywords: Convergence, Broadcast Media, New Media, Streaming


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Zozaya-Montes ◽  
Nicola Schiavottiello

The UNESCO World Heritage city of Évora (Portugal) hosted the second Heritales – International Heritage Film Festival in September 2017. In this edition the festival focused on current and past sustainable communities, selecting works that explored and problematized the relationship and coexistence of modernity and sustainability when applied to human groups and societies. The films presented the everyday life, knowledge, crafts and know-how of ordinary people highlighting the changes and challenges that the expansion of consumer-based economies, globalization and world politics have brought. As organizers, by focusing on sustainability in heritage context, we wanted to go beyond current preservation strategies of the tangible and intangible heritage, to promote a reflection on the “culture of sustainability” itself, looking at how sustainable ways-of-existence have characterized various communities and cultural practices worldwide. Since its first edition, the festival has been a space for the promotion of a critical understanding of cultural heritage, aimed to the broader public. By using emblematic historical places as stage, Heritales has challenged the mainstream cultural heritage scientific communication. Its proposal is to approach heritage’s issues through multiple types of media and artistic work such as films and documentaries but also cultural heritage’s games, exhibitions, theatre and performance, with talks and several communication strategies to facilitate the encounter between the authors and the public. Although the festival has received many positive feedbacks and the support of various entities such as the UNESCO Chair of the University of Évora (Portugal) and the FCT (Science and Technology Foundation, Portugal) it is still at its early stage of action. In this paper we would like to present the results of our experiment and analyse its concept and results, so that more collaborative and sustainable methodologies can also become a part of our plan of actionfor the organization of future events.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document