Sentimental Opera
Questions of Genre in the Age of Bourgeois Drama
Published on 29. March 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
297 pages
978-1-108-46183-2 (ISBN)
Description
Sentimental Opera is a study of the relationship between opera and two major phenomena of eighteenth-century European culture - the cult of sensibility and the emergence of bourgeois drama. A thorough examination of social and cultural contexts helps to explain the success of operas such as Paisiello's Nina as well as the extreme emotional reactions of their audiences. Like their counterparts in drama, literature and painting, these works brought to the fore serious contemporary problems including the widespread execution of deserters, the treatment of the insane, and anxieties relative to social and familial roles. They also developed a specifically operatic version of the dominant language of sensibility. This wide-ranging study involves such major cultural figures as Goldoni, Diderot and Mozart, while refining our understanding of the theatrical genre system of their time.
Reviews / Votes
'A valuable contribution not only to the study of late eighteenth-century opera but to our awareness of the priorities, absorptions and obsessions of cultured Europe on the eve of the French Revolution.' The Times Literary SupplementMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises; 17 Printed music items; 13 Halftones, unspecified; 13 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 170 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
518 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-108-46183-2 (9781108461832)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
10/2013
Cambridge University Press
€129.60
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Stefano Castelvecchi is Lecturer in Music at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John's College. He has published critical editions of works by Rossini and Verdi and various articles on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian opera. His edition of Abramo Basevi's The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi (1859) is forthcoming.
Content
Preface; A prologue on genre; 1. Pamela goes to the opera; 2. The emergence of bourgeois drama; 3. The codification of bourgeois drama; 4. Opera as drame; 5. Sensibility and the moral cure; 6. A sentimental opera; 7. Sentimental, anti-sentimental; 8. Avenues; Appendix: Bartolomeo Benincasa's preface to Il disertore (1784).