Full Description
There can be little doubt that opera and emotion are inextricably linked. From dramatic plots driven by energetic producers and directors to the conflicts and triumphs experienced by all associated with opera's staging to the reactions and critiques of audience members, emotion is omnipresent in opera. Yet few contemplate the impact that the customary cultural practices of specific times and places have upon opera's ability to move emotions. Taking Australia as a case study, this two-volume collection of extended essays demonstrates that emotional experiences, discourses, displays and expressions do not share universal significance but are at least partly produced, defined, and regulated by culture. Spanning approximately 170 years of opera production in Australia, the authors show how the emotions associated with the specific cultural context of a nation steeped in egalitarian aspirations and marked by increasing levels of multiculturalism have adjusted to changing cultural and social contexts across time. Volume I adopts an historical, predominantly nineteenth-century perspective, while Volume II applies historical, musicological, and ethnological approaches to discuss subsequent Australian operas and opera productions through to the twenty-first century. With final chapters pulling threads from the two volumes together, Opera, Emotion, and the Antipodes establishes a model for constructing emotion history from multiple disciplinary perspectives.
Contents
Part 1: Context and Concepts
Introduction
Jane W. Davidson, Michael Halliwell and Stephanie Rocke
Chapter 1 Historical Accounts and Emotions Contexts of Opera in Australia since Colonisation
Jane W. Davidson and Stephanie Rocke
Part 2: Western Opera in the Antipodean Metropolis & Regional Circuit (1840-1920)
Chapter 2 Setting the Scene; Preparing the Backdrop: Establishing the Cultural Space for Opera in Early Melbourne (1840-1851)
Esmeralda Rocha and Stephanie Rocke
Chapter 3 Opera and Emotions in Gold Rush Melbourne (1851-1890)
Esmeralda Rocha and Stephanie Rocke
Chapter 4 The Art of the Impossible: Fanny & Martin Simonsen's Family Odyssey
Caroline Anne Ellsmore
Chapter 5 Henry Tate's "Marvellous Melbourne": Heartfelt Responses to Opera and the Opera Companies of his Lifetime (1873-1926)
Christine Mercer
Part 3 "The Other" Opera
Chapter 6 Ethiopian Entertainers and Opera Burlesque: Blackface Parodies in Colonial Australia
Helen J. English
Chapter 7 Smoking Opium, Puffing Cigars, and Drinking Gingerbeer: Chinese Opera in Australia
Michael Williams
Chapter 8 Chinese Opera and Racism in Colonial Victoria 1853-1870
Stephanie Rocke
