
Opera in Postwar Venice
Cultural Politics and the Avant-Garde
Harriet Boyd-Bennett(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 2. September 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
244 pages
978-1-316-62057-1 (ISBN)
Description
Beginning from the unlikely vantage point of Venice in the aftermath of fascism and World War II, this book explores operatic production in the city's nascent postwar culture as a lens onto the relationship between opera and politics in the twentieth century. Both opera and Venice in the middle of the century are often talked about in strikingly similar terms: as museums locked in the past and blind to the future. These cliches are here overturned: perceptions of crisis were in fact remarkably productive for opera, and despite being physically locked in the past, Venice was undergoing a flourishing of avant-garde activity. Focusing on a local musical culture, Harriet Boyd-Bennett recasts some of the major composers, works, stylistic categories and narratives of twentieth-century music. The study provides fresh understandings of works by composers as diverse as Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Verdi, Britten and Nono.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
8 Printed music items; 8 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 170 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
429 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-316-62057-1 (9781316620571)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
03/2019
Cambridge University Press
€129.20
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Harriet Boyd-Bennett is Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham. Prior to this she was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Nottingham and Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford. She has published widely on music, culture and politics in Italy, modern opera performance and the musical avant-garde.
Content
List of figures and music examples; Acknowledgements; Note on translations; Introduction; 1. Stravinsky's timely excavations, 1951; 2. A Futura Memoria: Verdi's Attila, 1951; 3. Spectral opera: Britten's The Turn of the Screw, 1954; 4. Magic and realism in Prokofiev's The Fiery Angel, 1955; 5. Open works/staging crisis, 1959; 6. Noisy echoes in Luigi Nono's Intolleranza 1960, 1961; Bibliography.