(Ebook) National Traditions in Nineteenth-Century Opera, Volume I: Italy, France, England and the Americas (The Ashgate Library of Essays in Opera Studies) by Steven Huebner ISBN 9780754628996, 075462899X

(Ebook) National Traditions in Nineteenth-Century Opera, Volume I: Italy, France, England and the Americas (The Ashgate Library of Essays in Opera Studies) by Steven Huebner ISBN 9780754628996, 075462899X

This volume covers opera in Italy, France, England and the Americas during the long nineteenth century (1789-1914). The book is divided into four sections that are thematically, rather than geographically, conceived: Places-essays centering on contexts for operatic culture; Genres and Styles-studies dealing with the question of how operas in this period were put together; Critical Studies of individual works, exemplifying particular critical trends; and Performance.Historiographic Background.
Much of the exemplary English-language research gathered in the volumes of the present series is of recent vintage, perhaps not surprisingly. In the last third of the twentieth century opera studies thrived as the field of musicology became more populated and spread its critical wings: research produced greater nuance, new epistemological spaces emerged and (from a more Malthusian perspective) scholars deployed greater ingenuity in order to prosper in the marketplace of ideas.
Nineteenth-century Italian and French opera studies were no exception, though their historical roots in the discipline went less deep than other areas of operatic inquiry, for example, the early history of the genre or Mozart or Wagner. Before 1970 landmarks of English-language research on the French repertory are few and far between. For many years, William Crosten (1948) provided the best introduction to the experiences of Rossini, Auber and Meyerbeer in the Parisian theatrical world. It still serves well as a colourful and engaging introduction to grand opera , a reminder that attention to sources and good writing can spark interest just as effectively as critical theory does. Likewise, in an important and still valuable biography of Bizet, Mina Curtiss (1958) brought similar dedication to the primary source record that was rare in English-language writing on nineteenth-century French opera composers...