Technology and the Diva
Sopranos, Opera, and Media from Romanticism to the Digital Age
Published on 21. February 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
244 pages
978-1-108-72333-6 (ISBN)
Description
In Technology and the Diva, Karen Henson brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore the neglected subject of opera and technology. Their essays focus on the operatic soprano and her relationships with technology from the heyday of Romanticism in the 1820s and 1830s to the twenty-first-century digital age. The authors pay particular attention to the soprano in her larger than life form, as the 'diva', and they consider how her voice and allure have been created by technologies and media including stagecraft and theatrical lighting, journalism, the telephone, sound recording, and visual media from the painted portrait to the high definition simulcast. In doing so, the authors experiment with new approaches to the female singer, to opera in the modern - and post-modern - eras, and to the often controversial subject of opera's involvement with technology and technological innovation.
Reviews / Votes
'Is a 'diva' a coddled megastar, or an archetype of female power? Is 'technology' a euphemism for the modern world's threat to artistic tradition, or a synonym for craft and innovation? The essays in this book will leave opera-lovers questioning their assumptions - and turning the page to read more.' Anne Midgette, classical music critic, The Washington Post 'What can, what should, technology do for the diva? Can such a starry, extravagant symbol find a place within our imaginings of industrial and post-industrial modernity? This engaging collection of essays, which ranges over two hundred years of opera, offers a fascinating and surprisingly positive answer.' Roger Parker, King's College LondonMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 246 mm
Width: 189 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
445 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-108-72333-6 (9781108723336)
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
09/2016
Cambridge University Press
€116.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Karen Henson is Associate Professor at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami. She trained at the University of Oxford and in Paris, and her work has been supported by fellowships and awards from The British Academy, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. Henson's research focuses on nineteenth-century opera, singers and opera performance, and opera and technology. She is the author of Opera Acts: Singers and Performance in the Late Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2015). She is currently working on a book about opera and early sound recording.
Content
A chronology Hannah Clancy, David Gutkin and Lucie Vagnerova; Introduction: of modern operatic mythologies and technologies Karen Henson; 1. Mythologies of the diva in nineteenth-century French theater Isabelle Moindrot; 2. Coloratura and technology in the mid nineteenth-century mad scene Sean M. Parr; 3. Photographic diva: Massenet's relationship with the soprano Sibyl Sanderson Karen Henson; 4. 'Pretending to be wicked': divas, technology, and the consumption of Bizet's Carmen Susan Rutherford; 5. The silent diva: Farrar's Carmen Melina Esse; 6. The domestic diva: toward an operatic history of the telephone Lydia Goehr; 7. The absent diva: notes toward a life of Cathy Berberian Arman Schwartz; 8. The televisual apotheosis of the diva in Istvan Szabo's Meeting Venus Heather Hadlock; 9. Diva poses by Anna Netrebko: on the perception of the extraordinary in the twenty-first century Clemens Risi; Afterword: opera, media, technicity Jonathan Sterne.