Roger Parker

Carolyn Abbate

“The best single volume ever written on the subject, such is its range, authority, and readability.”—Times Literary Supplement

A History of Opera

The Last 400 Years

History of Opera

A historical survey of opera, from its beginnings in Florence 400 years ago, up to opera in the 1990s.

The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera

Opera is in many ways the most extraordinary artistic medium of the last four hundred years. Prohibitively expensive and patently unrealistic, it can nevertheless paint the human passions with astonishing power and drama. This book, the first full-length, single-volume history of opera for more than a generation, provokes in-depth discussions of many works by the greatest opera composers, from Monteverdi, Handel and Mozart, to Verdi and Wagner, to Strauss, Puccini, Berg, and Britten. There are lively discussions of opera's social, political and literary backgrounds, its economic cicumstances and the almost continual polemics that have accompanied its development through the centuries. Central to the book is an exploration of the tensions - between words and music, character and singer - that have always sustained and enlivened opera. In a polemical final chapter, Abbate and Parker examine the problems that opera has faced in the last half century, when new works - which were once opera's life-blood - have shrunk to a tiny remnant, and have largely failed to find a permanent place in the repertoire. Has opera, they ask, reached the end of its natural lifespan? Yet the book's final message is one of celebration. Even if the majority of opera's most popular and enduring works were written in what is now a remote European past, in circumstances very different from our own, and the viability of contemporary opera is ever more in question, opera as an art form remains extraordinarily buoyant and challenging. It continues to transform people physically, emotionally, and intellectually, and to articulate human experience in ways no other art form can match.

The Last Four Hundred Years

Operatic Visions and Revisions from Handel to Berio

Remaking the Song

A história da ópera é narrada com profundidade inédita nesta obra que já nasce como referência. A ópera é uma das formas de arte mais extraordinárias dos últimos quatro séculos. Proibitivamente cara e irrealista por essência, representa no entanto as paixões humanas com inigualáveis poder e drama. O livro de Carolyn Abbate e Roger Parker já nasce como clássico: desde o trabalho de Joseph Kerman, A ópera como drama, escrito na década de 1950 e ainda referência incontornável sobre o assunto, talvez o gênero não tenha recebido um tratamento de escopo tão ambicioso. Se o leitor especializado encontrará neste ensaio análises profundas, o leigo terá um guia que o conduzirá às várias facetas e períodos da ópera. Da corte dos Médici na Florença do século XVI até o presente, passando por Monteverdi, Händel, Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Berg e Britten, os autores traçam análises profundas dos contextos sociais, políticos e literários, das circunstâncias econômicas e das quase constantes polêmicas que acompanharam o desenvolvimento do gênero nos últimos quatro séculos. Isso sem se descuidar da apreciação propriamente estética das óperas estudadas e do aspecto central e talvez definidor dessa forma de arte: as tensões entre palavra e música, personagem e intérprete. Impossível negar que há uma crise na "produção" contemporânea, além da difícil questão do financiamento (a ópera, como negócio do entretenimento ou atividade econômica, não parece ser autossustentável). A audiência, no entanto, cresce e a ópera permanece criativa e florescente, com encenações originais e intérpretes talvez tecnicamente melhores do que jamais foram. A ópera, enfim, vive.

Os últimos quatrocentos anos

Uma história da ópera

Arthur Groos

"Libretto-bashing has a distinguished tradition in the blood sport of opera," writes Arthur Groos in the introduction to this broad survey of critical approaches to that much-maligned genre. To examine, and to challenge, the long-standing prejudice against libretti and the scholarly tradition that has, until recently, reiterated it, Groos and Roger Parker have commissioned thirteen stimulating essays by musicologists, literary critics, and historians. Taken as a whole, the volume demonstrates that libretti are now very much within the purview of contemporary humanistic scholarship. Libretti pose questions of intertextuality, transposition of genre, and reception history. They invite a broad spectrum of contemporary reading strategies ranging from the formalistic to the feminist. And as texts for music they raise issues in the relation between the two mediums and their respective traditions. Reading Opera will be of value to anyone with a serious interest in opera and contemporary opera criticism. The essays cover the period from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on works of the later nineteenth century. The contributors are Carolyn Abbate, William Ashbrook, Katherine Bergeron, Caryl Emerson, Nelly Furman, Sander L. Gilman, Arthur Groos, James A. Hepokoski, Jurgen Maehder, Roger Parker, Paul Robinson, Christopher Wintle, and Susan Youens. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Reading Opera

“The best single volume ever written on the subject, such is its range, authority, and readability.”—Times Literary Supplement Why has opera transfixed and fascinated audiences for centuries? Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker answer this question in their “effervescent, witty” (Die Welt, Germany) retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the musical and dramatic means by which it communicates, and its role in society. Now with an expanded examination of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century, this “lucid and sweeping” (Boston Globe) narrative explores the tensions that have sustained opera over four hundred years: between words and music, character and singer, inattention and absorption. Abbate and Parker argue that, though the genre’s most popular and enduring works were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to change the viewer— physically, emotionally, intellectually—with its enduring power.

Eleven leading authorities chronicle the full sweep of opera, ranging from the earliest known works to such experimental efforts as Robert Wilsom and Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach. In three sections on staging, singers, and the social climate, the writers give us a look behind the scenes as well as a feel for what opera was like in the past. 8 b&w plates.

The Oxford History of Opera

Alison Latham

The number of Verdi's works in the current repertories of the world's opera houses is greater than at any time since the composer's death a century ago. Yet, those responsible for staging and performing these works are faced with many difficult decisions, not least of which is how to make theoperas relevant to modern audiences while respecting the composer's intentions. First written for an international conference at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, these lively and stimulating essays by leading Verdi scholars, music and stage practitioners reflect current thinking on matterssuch as 'authentic' staging, performance practice, Verdi's approach to the ballet, and the role of critical editions. With a chronology of the composer's life and times and also a list of his works, this anthology is essential reading for anyone interested in the performance of Verdi's operas inthe new millennium.

Edited by Alison Latham and Roger Parker

Verdi in Performance

"This book presents a great deal of new material. It also presents new interpretations of materials discussed earlier and elsewhere. As the editors point out in the introduction, discussion of opera has only in recent years taken on an analytical dimension. The scholars represented in this volume are among those at the forefront of the new critical and analytical movement. What they write is perhaps at times controversial, but it is always important."--William C. Holmes, University of California, Irvine "The editors' introduction to this collection. . . speaks eloquently for a richer and more varied approach to the analysis of opera. . . . The contributors are among the most accomplished scholars in nineteenth-century music studies. . . . More impressive is the depth and range of scholarship and analysis displayed. . . to the end of changing the historical and analytical stance toward the operas of Verdi and Wagner, by eschewing the partisan quarrels of the past and by the application of similar rigorous standards to each composer's music. . . . This volume will have a wide influence upon scholarly and analytical approaches to the music of Verdi and Wagner."--Richard Swift, University of California, Davis "This book presents a great deal of new material. It also presents new interpretations of materials discussed earlier and elsewhere. As the editors point out in the introduction, discussion of opera has only in recent years taken on an analytical dimension. The scholars represented in this volume are among those at the forefront of the new critical and analytical movement. What they write is perhaps at times controversial, but it is always important."--William C. Holmes, University of California, Irvine

Verdi and Wagner

Analyzing Opera

In a collection of essays, Oxford Fellow Roger Parker brings a series of valuable insights to bear on Verdian analysis and criticism. The book serves as a model of research and critical thinking about opera, while nevertheless retaining a deep respect for opera's continuing power to touch generations of listeners. 4 photos. 46 music examples.

Essays in Verdian Discourse

Leonora's Last Act

Susan Rutherford

London, 1820. The British capital is a metropolis that overwhelms dwellers and visitors alike with constant exposure to all kinds of sensory stimulation. Over the next two decades, the city’s tumult will reach new heights: as population expansion places different classes in dangerous proximity and ideas of political and social reform linger in the air, London begins to undergo enormous infrastructure change that will alter it forever. It is the London of this period that editors Roger Parker and Susan Rutherford pinpoint in this book, which chooses one broad musical category—voice—and engages with it through essays on music of the streets, theaters, opera houses, and concert halls; on the raising of voices in religious and sociopolitical contexts; and on the perception of voice in literary works and scientific experiments with acoustics. Emphasizing human subjects, this focus on voice allows the authors to explore the multifaceted issues that shaped London, from the anxiety surrounding the city’s importance in the musical world at large to the changing vocal imaginations that permeated the epoch. Capturing the breadth of sonic stimulations and cultures available—and sometimes unavoidable—to residents at the time, London Voices, 1820–1840 sheds new light on music in Britain and the richness of London culture during this period.

Roger Parker

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