Puccini reception lay at the heart of a crisis of national identity that gripped Italy at the fin de siècle. His music was simultaneously held up as a symbol of cultural strength and derided as a manifestation of decadence. The sharply polarised responses of the critics mirrored wider ideological rifts in a society increasingly beset with dissatisfaction and disunity, and responses to score and libretto were at times almost 'drowned out' as Puccini became caught up in a crossfire of polemics concerning the contested question of what it meant to be Italian. This study uses evidence from turn-of-the-century press reports in order to assess Puccini's role in the nation-building process. Penetrating the conflicts which surrounded his works not only informs us about how public reputations were constructed, sustained and challenged, but reveals much about the aspirations of a nation on the brink of Fascism. Contextual chapters on the music press and the anxieties of early-twentieth-century Italian society are followed by a consideration of the ways in which Puccini was lionised as a national composer by his supporters in the early years of his career. Three case studies examine the first reviews of La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly, operas which provoked the expression of profound insecurities about the future of Italian music, with discussions centring on the threat of Wagnerism, tradition versus progress, musical sincerity, and the nature of opera criticism itself. The final chapter analyses Fausto Torrefranca's 1912 assault on Puccini as an 'effeminate' composer and contextualises his monograph (Giacomo Puccini e 1 'opera internazionale) alongside contemporary debates on gender and nationalism.

L'ingresso alia gioventù di Claudio Nerone (music: Antonio Giannettini, libretto: Giambattista Neri) was commissioned by Duke Francesco II d'Este for the formal entrance of his bride, Princess Margherita Farnese, into Modena on 9 November 1692. Set against a tense political environment that centred around issues of succession and government, this lavish gala production represented a statement of propagandist display and conspicuous 'court' celebration given in the somewhat contradictory context of the 'public' Teatro Fontanelli before honoured guests and an 'upper'-class ticket-buying public. In 1685, Duke Francesco had effectively contracted out opera in Modena to this privately-run theatre. While L'ingresso appeared to represent the culmination of this strategy, its indulgent extravagance seemingly caused the huge loss on production. Opera under Francesco came to an abrupt end. L'ingresso has since lain virtually untouched by musicologists; and while there have been a number of valuable studies into music under the duke (most noticeably with regard to oratorio, cantata, and instrumental music), there has been no in-depth study of opera. This thesis seeks to rectify this oversight by reporting upon opera production under Duke Francesco through a review of the Teatro Fontanelli archives, and a full reconstruction and audit of the L 'ingresso financial accounts. These not only offer an extraordinary insight into the administration and staging of L 'ingresso (and the cause of the loss suffered), but also identify the existence of a mutually beneficial policy that delivered opera for Francesco against a seemingly autonomous and potentially profitable Teatro Fontanelli through an accounting system which protected the impresario from his losses and liabilities on production. L 'ingresso thus presents a rare opportunity to document the mechanisms of opera patronage and production under Duke Francesco II d'Este, and to provide a valuable insight into the reality of provincial Italian opera towards the end of the seventeenth century.

A Knaresborough Passion is a reworking of the Crucifixio Christi pageant from the medieval York Cycle of Corpus Christi Plays. The chamber opera is a deconstructive displacement of the previously held assumptions in the original play and in the succeeding canonical tradition. The libretto, borrowing text from Tony Harrison's The Mysteries and Paul Corcoran's Four Knights at Knaresborough presents the characters in inversion to each other in a constantly shifting dialogic that cuts across temporal divisions. The displaced hierarchical structure then allows the characters to break free from otherwise closed ideological interpretations, allowing them to hint at other contexts and meanings.

No description available.

The romance of Armida and Rinaldo, an episode in Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), was a popular subject for adaptations in opera from the 1680s, and formed the basis for over sixty operas in the eighteenth century. This study examines the nature and appeal of the character of the enchantress Armida, both in its original poetic context and as a figure for later adaptation on the operatic stage. Tasso's poem, set in the First Crusade and written during the Counter-Reformation, contains overtones of cultural and religious conflict, as well as a fantasy of the re-integration of a divided community, The structure of the poem, Armida 's place in it, and the associations that underpin the character are discussed, as well as the reception of the work in the century following its publication. In the second half of the thesis, three of the first operatic treatments of this subject are discussed: Armide (1686) by Philippe Quinault and Jean-Baptiste Lully, La Gierusalemme Liberata (1687) by Giulio Cesare Corradi and Carlo Pallavicino, and Rinaldo and A/'mida (1698) by John Dennis and John Eccles. Each work, one French, one Italian, and one English, is found to approach the narrative and character from different perspectives, bringing to bear issues of social identity, theatrical form , cultural value and political imagery. The success of Armida as a subject for operatic adaptation is found to be due partly to the means with which the character supplied a range of expressive and representational practices, extending the virtuosic power of fantasy in epic poetry onto the stage

This appraisal presents various musico-dramatic works through the elucidation of source impulse and places them alongside other works in the genre, i and related works by the composer. Four of the works are operatic, in a hybrid form, I 1 which is both typical of and central to the author's creative output. The author ! 1 postulates an analytical theory that transcends the historical limitations of traditional musical, literary or dramatic presentation. For this reason the author adopts a comparative generic and historical analysis, which exposes both their debts to and departures from traditional operatic forms and structures. I Several arguments are postulated to evidence the originality of the works: the use of found or specially constructed instruments; the effect of these instruments on voices through the use of relative pitch; the absence of a traditional orchestra as the basis for an opera; the use of a vocal chorus to provide the role of an orchestra; the use of obscure languages; the use of several languages simultaneously; the symbiotic nature of music and text; the influence of the sound of the languages on the music itself; the ensuing dichotomy between meaning in music and meaning in text and the consequences for the dramatic presentation of the works. Evidence is provided from each of the works to point to originality of compositional style and idiosyncrasy of word setting, and the affects of these issues on contemporary audiences and performers. One research outcome suggests that responsibility for meaning in opera lies ultimately with the performer, rather than with the creator or the score. Such an argument could hardly be more forcibly made than when, as is the case here, both author and composer are one and the same. The works which constitute the portfolio have been performed widely, internationally, commercially recorded, broadcast on radio and some televised.

This document is the written component of a Practice-as-Research (PaR) doctoral project exploring opera training and opera production, with a particular focus on the creativity of the opera performer. It is submitted alongside a DVD evidencing a two-week-long training workshop with professional opera performers based on the Jacques Lecoq method of actor training. The four main research questions ask how performers can be included in the creative process as auteurs; what characterises a type of training model capable of unlocking the performers’ creativity and what skills it develops; how opera can evolve and outgrow definitions constrained by specific production models; and what impact the PaR processes had on the artistic practice. Chapter 1 starts by giving an overview of opera training and production practices and establishes the research within the radical humanist paradigm of the social sciences. Chapter 2 introduces the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, the theory of multiple intelligences of Howard Gardner and aspects of the creativity theory of Ken Robinson as the three major philosophical pillars of the study. Chapter 3 positions the research in the history and debates of PaR. It also details the Lecoq-inspired content of the workshop and offers a rationale for the use of studio-based group training, semi-structured interviews and training diaries as primary research methods. Chapter 4 complements the accompanying DVD to present the data that is further analysed in Chapter 5. Finally, Chapter 6 concludes the thesis by establishing the need for a safe exploratory ensemble environment, if the performer is to achieve his/her creative potential. That, however, requires the fostering and application of ‘multiple intelligences’ to performance and a non-deterministic view of the material. Ultimately, the thesis establishes the notion of an opera beyond the confinements of the structures that define what opera currently is, and presents a vision of opera as what we will it to become.

This thesis explores the role of Opera North as the publicly funded opera company for the north of England, addressing the ways in which the company embodies, mediates and fulfils an agenda for access, education and innovation. A broadly ethnographic approach is taken, through case studies of three productions and the work surrounding them: the commissioned ‘operetta’ Skin Deep by David Sawer and Armando Iannucci (2009), the commissioned ‘family opera’ Swanhunter by Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton (2009 and 2015), and the ‘staged concert’ version of Wagner’s Ring cycle for Leeds Town Hall and touring concert venues (2011-14). The nature and origins of the access agenda are explored, including the legacy of Opera North’s parent company English National Opera, and the post-war imperative of John Maynard Keynes, and his Arts Council, to fund decentralised and geographically dispersed ‘high’ cultural forms. Recent political agendas are also pertinent, particularly the developing aim of the UK’s ‘New Labour’ government (1997-2010) for cultural instrumentalism to address social issues. This is explored particularly in relation to the commission, by Opera North’s Education and Projects departments, of Swanhunter, in 2009. The access agenda and the works explored in the case studies are situated in their historical, political and artistic contexts, to give a cohesive account of Opera North’s cultural work in and for the north of England and beyond.

No description available.

This study focuses on artistic collaboration and the processes that, during an operatic rehearsal period and performance (or potentially any theatrical rehearsal and performance), make incarnate a director's personal or shared vision. The underlying requirement to unite various people within a creative setting, in order to produce an event whose success is determined by those individuals' parts in the making of that event, is a complex one. For the director, eliciting powerful performances is integral to their own professional success in the sense that, as they work through a period of rehearsals, the quality of acting and emotive characterisation will determine, to a large extent, the quality of the production. Many directors have signature styles of directing (see Chapter 2.2.11), developed via their subjective knowledge and the influences they have been exposed to, be they historical periods, psychological qualities, fashionable artistic genres, inter-personal influences, and so on. The language chosen during a rehearsal period (whether that be musical, linguistic, or bodily, via gesture and movement) would seem to be fundamental to the interaction within a group of professional performers and production personnel in which there are different roles, status and foci. For directors, then, intersubjectivity (Trevarthen, 2002) needs to be highly developed, attuning to their performers' understanding, feelings, fears, and emotional robustness, in order to maximise communicative efficacy, especially when one considers that opera singers operate within a global community where castings, often determined simply by vocal quality, can be multinational. The rehearsal period, therefore, is reliant on mutually clear forms of shared attention within a social environment that requires an uninterrupted flow of, often complex, communication.