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Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth Century Italy
Author: Martha Feldman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
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Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth Century Italy
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144 West 66th Street
New York NY 10023
United States
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Quantity:
Pickup available at Juilliard Store
Usually ready in 4 hours
Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth Century Italy
Juilliard Store
Pickup available, usually ready in 4 hours
144 West 66th Street
New York NY 10023
United States
Quantity:
Pickup available at Juilliard Store
Usually ready in 4 hours
Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth Century Italy
Juilliard Store
Pickup available, usually ready in 4 hours
144 West 66th Street
New York NY 10023
United States
Performed throughout Europe during the 1700s, Italian heroic opera, or opera seria, was the century’s most significant musical art form, profoundly engaging such figures as Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. Opera and Sovereignty is the first book to address this genre as cultural history, arguing that eighteenth-century opera seria must be understood in light of the period’s social and political upheavals.
Taking an anthropological approach to European music that’s as bold as it is unusual, Martha Feldman traces Italian opera’s shift from a mythical assertion of sovereignty, with its festive forms and rituals, to a dramatic vehicle that increasingly questioned absolute ideals. She situates these transformations against the backdrop of eighteenth-century Italian culture to show how opera seria both reflected and affected the struggles of rulers to maintain sovereignty in the face of a growing public sphere. In so doing, Feldman explains why the form had such great international success and how audience experiences of the period differed from ours today. Ambitiously interdisciplinary, Opera and Sovereignty will appeal not only to scholars of music and anthropology, but also to those interested in theater, dance, and the history of the Enlightenment.
Taking an anthropological approach to European music that’s as bold as it is unusual, Martha Feldman traces Italian opera’s shift from a mythical assertion of sovereignty, with its festive forms and rituals, to a dramatic vehicle that increasingly questioned absolute ideals. She situates these transformations against the backdrop of eighteenth-century Italian culture to show how opera seria both reflected and affected the struggles of rulers to maintain sovereignty in the face of a growing public sphere. In so doing, Feldman explains why the form had such great international success and how audience experiences of the period differed from ours today. Ambitiously interdisciplinary, Opera and Sovereignty will appeal not only to scholars of music and anthropology, but also to those interested in theater, dance, and the history of the Enlightenment.