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MORRIS: Reading Opera Between the Lines: Orchestral Interludes and Cultural Meaning from Wagner to Berg

Interludes in opera articulate moments when the lush voices of singers and vivid spectacle of scenery and action are removed and often the curtain is drawn, and thus they span a functional gap between textless instrumental music and explicit theatrical vehicle. Although composers and analysts suggest rich and multivalent meanings for the music, those implications often escape decoding by audiences. Even the interlude titles — Zwischenspiel, entr'acte, intermezzo — suggest their intermission-like nature. As functional placeholders for scene changes and the like, the interludes are for many a cue to relax attentive listening, read synopses, and whisper with companions. Undaunted by such complexities, Morris takes up the problematic nature of operatic interludes, engaging their ambiguities with eyes wide open in an effort to enrich our understanding of these challenging bits of music.

GOEHRING: Three modes of perception in Mozart — the philosophical, pastoral, and comic in Così fan tutte

According to the book jacket, this is the first major scholarly study of Così fan tutte, considered to be one of Mozart's least-understood operas and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte's most interesting text. Così fan tutte has been studied extensively, despite the broad assertion stated in the book. What the author of this study brings to the reader, which others have not, is a detailed examination of the philosophical, pastoral, and comic background of the libretto, characters, and music of the opera. New perspectives on text and tone in the opera, the subtle use of the pastoral mode, and the tension and balance between philosophy and comedy are what the author brings to the study of this work. In addition, the author does an intensely close reading of the primary sources of the opera, in order to support his theories and statements.

TRIBO: Annals 1847-1897 del Gran Teatre del Liceu

The importance of the Teatre del Liceu, can not be overstated. The house ranks with all the leading theatres of the world, being right up there with Paris, London, New York, Vienna, Madrid, Rome, Milan, Lisbon, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Turin, Naples, Buenos Aires, and other cities of comparable importance. During its long history (158 years at the time of writing) it featured many of the great singers. These include Caruso, Battistini, Tamagno, Ruffo, Caballe, Tebaldi, Mario, Pavarotti, Vignas, Lazaro, O'Sullivan, Stracciari, Pagliughi, Gayarre, Masini, Stagno, Lauri-Volpi, Bellincioni, and countless others. Quite a few of these who sang there before 1897 are represented on the accompanying disc.

MAY: Decoding Wagner — An Invitation to His World of Music Drama

Thomas May's stated goal in Decoding Wagner is indeed summarized in his subtitle, An Invitation to His Music Dramas. Mr. May offers an introduction to those who may seek a reliable yet succinct guide in their first Wagnerian experience; a further potential readership is seen among those who have attended performances of Wagner but who wish to expand their appreciation of the music dramas. In his chronological overview of Wagner's oeuvre from the mid-1830s until the close of his career May presents an approachable guide to appreciating the composer's operatic genius. As an illustration of May's commentary on the works, a generous selection of Wagner's music is included on two Discs that accompany the volume in a protective sleeve.

The Cambridge Companion to the Lied

Books described as a "Companion" to this or that and published by university presses should be required to come with a Reader Beware label. As is the case with many books put out by university and many for-profit publishers, the main reason for publishing these is to advance the tenure and promotion prospects of the authors. This is not a bad thing, except that all too often the books aren't very good.

DUNSBY: Making Words Sing: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Song

In Making Words Sing, Jonathan Dunsby investigates what he calls the "vocality" of song, that is, the "quality of having voice," as the author states in the introduction to his study. By using this perspective, Dunsby focuses on the intensification of the text that occurs when words are set to music, which stands in opposition to the kind of "songfulness" that Lawrence Kramer discussed in Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002).

RANDALL & DAVIS: Puccini & the Girl

"Puccini & the Girl" is a rare and engrossing work of scholarship that can be enjoyed on several levels. For the Puccini-lover, to say nothing of one who has a special interest in La Fanciulla del West, it will provide a wealth of information not previously available, particularly all in one place. Any one interested in the creative process will find it exposed and examined clearly. The scholar will recognize the fascinating chance discovery, the thrill of the chase and the deep rewards of work undertaken lovingly and with rigorous care by the dedicated and passionate co-authors.

HANSEN: The Sibyl Sanderson Story — Requiem for a Diva

Jack Winsor Hansen's 520-page biography of Sibyl Sanderson (1865 - 1903) is packed with romanticism and gossip that will delight and titillate true worshipers of operatic divas and inquisitive opera fans. It also fills a gap in the music-historical writings about opera at the end of the 19th century.

The Cambridge Companion to John Cage

Cage's music is like Einstein's theorem: most people know it exists, know it's important, but beyond these facts know nothing about it (count me in this category when it comes to Einstein).

WEAVER & PUCCINI: The Puccini Companion

If any opera lover feels daunted by the many biographies and analytical tomes dedicated to the life and art of Giacomo Puccini, Norton has done that reader a tremendous favor with the publication of The Puccini Companion. Tightly organized, this series of essays details the life, discusses the operas, and provides a wealth of supplementary information about the composer.

EVERETT: The Musical — A Research and Information Guide

Much current popular culture assumes that its audience is knowledgeable of the American musical. References to, and parodies of, specific musicals are frequently a part of episodes of The Simpsons and South Park, and ads for companies as diverse as The Gap and the World Wrestling Entertainment promotion recently have restaged numbers from West Side Story to plug their products or events. Rarely, if ever, are the sources acknowledged; it is simply taken for granted that a general audience will understand the quotations and parodies.

TOMMASINI: The New York Times Essential Library: Opera — A Critic’s Guide to the 100 Most Important Works and the Best Recordings

"I particularly want to reach newcomers" writes Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music critic, in his preface. I do not think they will be helped very much by this book. A rookie who picks it up and reads the subtitle may expect something more than two operas by Bellini, two by Donizetti, one Gounod (not Faust), one Massenet (not Manon) and no Lohengrin.

KRAMER: Opera and Modern Culture — Wagner and Strauss

"New musicology" is the cultural study, analysis and criticism of music, which proffers the belief that music has societal, religious, political, personal, and sexual agendas. Consequently, new musicology, much like the discussion of such topics at social gatherings, can be polarizing.

SMART: Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera

Here's a serious niche book, a relatively slender volume dealing with a topic at once both arcane and surprisingly central to some of the major controversies in opera production today. I think it has major problems but it has become for me the pebble dropped into the pond that sends ripples to unexpected places, raising interesting questions in the process.

The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera

Among the recent publications on opera, The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, edited by David Charlton, breaks new ground with its systematic and thorough exploration of grand opera, a specific part of the genre which played an important role in the musical culture of the nineteenth century.

LOEWENBERG: Annals of Opera, 1597-1940

This volume has long been regarded as the definitive work on the subject, and has been quoted in countless later works whenever a reference was required to the performance histories of individual operas. Taken as a whole, especially when one considers the state of library science when the book was first written, it is a magnificent piece of work, and belongs on the bookshelf of every researcher in the operatic field.

SCRUTON: DEATH-DEVOTED HEART — Sex and the Sacred in Wagner's Tristan and Isolde

Roger Scruton’s new book is an engrossing attempt, intensely argued throughout, to persuade the reader that Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is a religious work, not only in the vague sense that it elevates our feelings into an exalted condition that strikes the non-religious as “religious”, but in the precise sense that it incarnates, as the Eucharist incarnates the doctrine of Christianity, a doctrine that would give our meaningless lives a sufficient meaning if we were to believe and follow it. Nearly half a century ago, Joseph Kerman, in Opera as Drama, called Tristan “a religious drama” and suggested an analogy between it and Bach cantatas dealing with religious conversion and conveying religious experience. Twenty years later, Michael Tanner, a resolutely acute writer on Wagner, described Tristan and Bach’s St Matthew Passion as the two supreme examples of works “of which it is a prerequisite that one suspends disbelief . . . in the ethos which the work embodies and promulgates”. At the same time he admitted that the love unto death of Tristan and Isolde is not “a kind of living that can be rationally valued”. More recently and less cautiously, in his Wagner, he calls Tristan “the one work of Wagner’s which seems to be making an unconditional demand on our capacity to embrace a new, redeeming doctrine”.

MAGEE: THE TRISTAN CHORD — Wagner and Philosophy

Wagner, bloody Wagner; will we ever have done with the man? I don’t suppose that we’ll ever have done with his operas. For many of us, they are indispensable art; among the defining achievements of the Western tradition. “There is no music deeper . . . and no drama deeper either. (The Ring) is enough in itself to place Wagner alongside Shakespeare, Michelangelo and Mozart.” If you don’t think Wagner is that good, you won’t like Wagner and Philosophy, Bryan Magee’s new book about him. Whether or not he is that good, there is surely a problem that arises insistently about Wagner but not Michelangelo or Mozart or, least of all, about Shakespeare: that of getting the art clear of the artist. Shakespeare is notorious for disappearing from his plays, but Wagner is everywhere in his operas. You just can’t think about them and not think about him; nor would he conceivably have wished you to.

OSBORNE: The Opera Lover's Companion

Every CD collector faces the day (or days, in the case of the truly dedicated collector) when denial no longer suffices — the shelves are sagging and overflowing, and the time has come to purchase yet another storage unit. Perhaps others have done what I did once to forestall that day — I removed all the booklets from my opera sets (and cover boxes as well, of course) and stored them on that increasingly archaic furniture item, a bookshelf.

WARRACK: German Opera — From the Beginnings to Wagner

Writing a history of an important and complex operatic repertory spanning three dynamic centuries is a daunting task, one that is perhaps better suited to several specialists than a single author. While an individual rarely possesses the scholarly breadth to write with expertise and authority on so much music, he or she can impart a unifying perspective and a consistent set of goals. But this advantage can also prove to be a limitation.

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Books

The Cambridge Companion to Rossini
04 Jan 2005

The Cambridge Companion to Rossini

The title of this book, "The Cambridge Companion to Rossini" probably means different things to different people.

The Cambridge Companion to Rossini

Edited by Emanuele Senici. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 280 pages 10 half-tones 35 music examples

ISBN:0521001951 | ISBN13:9780521001953

 

Based on other such "companions" that I have seen (one published by Cambridge, the other two by another publishing house), I would expect a handy reference guide to the composer in question. Such a reference guide might include discussions of and/or information on:

  1. The operas
  2. The composer's life and times
  3. The singers who created the roles
  4. Other key interpreters — i.e. Conchita Supervia, Marilyn Horne and Chris Merritt in the case of Rossini
  5. A discography
  6. A discussion of the state of opera when the composer began his career, including composers who influenced him
  7. A discussion of the composer's key innovations and his style, including how that style changed over the years
  8. A discussion of the influence of the composer (or the period), i.e.which composers were strongly infuenced.
  9. A discussion, if appropriate, of the current state of the revival of the composer's operas
  10. A bibliography
  11. Any number of essays on various other aspects of the composer

Obviously, some of these aspects may be more feasible for one composer than for another. Thus, it would be more practical to discuss Bellini's ten operas1 in depth than Donizetti's sixty plus, with Rossini somewhere in between.

Again, it seems to me that such a Companion should serve as a handy reference work that opera lovers interested in a given composer or style might want to consult regularly. It is with that in mind that I will take a closer look at the "Rossini Companion", and how it meets my expectations.

  1. The Operas: Only four are discussed in depth (Tancredi, Semiramide, Il barbiere, and Guillaume Tell). The quality of these, especially Heather Hadlock's essay on Semiramide, makes one wish for more. If this volume were to serve my own needs in terms of a basic reference book on Rossini, I feel that comparable discussions would have been ideal for the more important works (Otello, Ermione, Armida, Mose, Zelmira, etc. and shorter discussions (a few paragraphs) for the lesser operas such as Adina and La gazzetta. It is a thin volume (only 264 pages), and by adding only about 150-200 or so pages, it would have been possible to accomplish this goal.
  2. The composer's life is adequately treated in the chapter by Richard Osborne.
  3. There are brief biographical notes on some of the creators of the many Rossini roles included in a section on Rossini singers in the chapter by Leonella Caprioli on singing Rossini. This is fine as far as it goes, but it is, admittedly, selective, and should have included all the creators of leading roles. To give one example, Geltrude Righetti-Giorgi, who created both Rosina and Cenerentola is missing, although the fact that she created both these roles is mentioned elsewhere.
  4. Some other key interpreters are included in the above list. On the other hand, Conchita Supervia, who played such a key role in the Rossini revival of the 1920 is not even mentioned in the index. Marilyn Horne, who sang 7 serio roles is included elsewhere in the chapter on the Rossini renaissance, but Chris Merritt, who sang ten serio roles, and did so magnificently, is not even mentioned.
  5. There is no discography, useful as that would have been, although it would eventually have been out of date.
  6. There is no discussion of the state of opera at the start of Rossini's career. Thus, Cimarosa is mentioned only in passing, while Mayr's Ginevra di Scozia, one of the most successful Italian operas between Cimarosa and Rossini, is completely ignored.
  7. An entire section, titled "Words and Music" is devoted to various aspects of Rossini's style. The chapters on compositional methods by Phillip Gosset and on dramaturgy by Marco Beghelli are to be particularly commended in that respect.
  8. Again, there is a little discussion of Rossini's influence, but no chapter devoted exclusively to it.
  9. There is a discussion of the revival of the composer's operas, which is, with one exception, quite good. The exception is the section on singers, to which slightly over two pages are devoted. This section goes into a fair amount of details on the prima donnas involved, especially Callas, Sutherland and Horne. It virtually ignores Caballe, simply saying that she is one of 11 sopranos who sang opposite Horne. Only one tenor (Salvatore Fisichella) is mentioned in passing. Rockwell Blake, Chris Merritt, Bruce Ford and William Matteuzzi, without whom much of the Rossini revival would have been impossible are completely ignored, as is the wonderful Sam Ramey. Finally, there is a statement to the effect that Rossini wrote many of his opere serie for two principal tenors, and that this has perhaps kept these operas from assuming a larger place in the repertory. He may or may not be right about that, but, should he not have at least mentioned all the performances and/or recordings of these works sung by Chris Merritt or Bruce Ford in combination with Rockwell Blake or William Matteuzzi?
  10. There is an excellent bibliography.
  11. Many of the individual chapters make great reading, and are highly interesting as far as they go.

To sum up, I consider this a nice book to have, as far as it goes, but would not view it as the definitive Rossini companion that this wonderful composer so richly deserves. It is just too lightweight to qualify.

1 If you count Bianca e Gernando and Bianca e Fernando as the same opera.

Tom Kaufman

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