Full Description
This Companion celebrates the extraordinary riches of the twentieth-century operatic repertoire in a collection of specially commissioned essays written by a distinguished team of academics, critics and practitioners. Beginning with a discussion of the century's vital inheritance from late-romantic operatic traditions in Germany and Italy, the text embraces fresh investigations into various aspects of the genre in the modern age, with a comprehensive coverage of the work of individual composers from Debussy and Schoenberg to John Adams and Harrison Birtwistle. Traditional stylistic categorizations (including symbolism, expressionism, neo-classicism and minimalism) are reassessed from new critical perspectives, and the distinctive operatic traditions of Continental and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and United States are subjected to fresh scrutiny. The volume includes essays devoted to avant-garde music theatre, operettas and musicals, filmed opera, and ends with a discussion of the position of the genre in today's cultural marketplace.
Contents
A chronology of twentieth-century opera Nigel Simeone; Part I. Legacies: 1. Opera in transition Arnold Whittall; 2. Wagner and beyond John Deathridge; 3. Puccini and the Italian tradition Virgilio Bernardoni; Part II. Trends: 4. Words and actions Caroline Harvey; 5. Symbolist opera: trials, triumphs, tributaries Philip Weller; 6. Expression and construction: the stage works of Schoenberg and Berg Alan Street; 7. Neo-classical opera Christopher Walton; Part III. Topographies: 8. France and the Mediterranean Nigel Simeone; 9. Austria and Germany, 1918--1960 Guido Heldt; 10. Eastern Europe Rachel Beckles Willson; 11. Russian opera: between modernism and romanticism Marina Frolova-Walker; 12. American opera: innovation and tradition Elise K. Kirk; 13. Opera in England: taking the plunge Christopher Mark; Part IV. Directions: 14. Music theatre since the 1960s Robert Adlington; 15. Minimalist opera Arved Ashby; 16. Opera and film Mervyn Cooke; 17. Popular musical theatre (and film) Stephen Banfield; 18. Opera in the marketplace Nicholas Payne; 19. Technology and interpretation: aspects of 'modernism' Tom Sutcliffe.
