Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1017/S0954586722000234
Pallas Catenella
In 2018, Maria Callas rose from the dead. During a series of tours dubbed Callas in Concert, local orchestras performed with a three-dimensional hologram of the departed diva as she re-sounded arias of her past. This virtual manifestation of Callas put on a convincing show. Listeners were struck by the quality of the diva's voice – ‘from heart-breaking vulnerability to imposing strength’ – and marvelled at foley effects such as the clicking of her heels and rustling of her gown. Notably, however, the performance fell victim to repeated technical failures. In Chicago, a glitch caused her final encore to end prematurely; in Blacksburg, Virginia, audience members were distracted by the transparent nature of the hologram, which gave Callas an ‘especially ghostly appearance’. The performances set the operatic sphere atwitter with questions of ethics and taste, debates over classical music's obligations to the living and devotions to the dead. Anthony Tommasini likened the performances to a grand séance, an act of operatic necrophilia. Catherine Womack interpreted the spectral shows as a sign that ‘in the twenty-first century, living and breathing are not prerequisites for a successful performing career’. However, as Deirdre Loughridge, Gundula Kreuzer and Gabriela Cruz demonstrate in their monographs, Callas in Concert is not a phenomenon unique to the twenty-first century. Indeed, the authors show that technologically mediated resurrections of the dead, operatic appeals to nostalgia, and illusion-busting technical failures are instead part of a long operatic tradition, one which began well before the holographic revitalisations of Maria Callas.
{"title":"Spectral Mechanics and the Technical Failures of the Monograph","authors":"Pallas Catenella","doi":"10.1017/S0954586722000234","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586722000234","url":null,"abstract":"In 2018, Maria Callas rose from the dead. During a series of tours dubbed Callas in Concert, local orchestras performed with a three-dimensional hologram of the departed diva as she re-sounded arias of her past. This virtual manifestation of Callas put on a convincing show. Listeners were struck by the quality of the diva's voice – ‘from heart-breaking vulnerability to imposing strength’ – and marvelled at foley effects such as the clicking of her heels and rustling of her gown. Notably, however, the performance fell victim to repeated technical failures. In Chicago, a glitch caused her final encore to end prematurely; in Blacksburg, Virginia, audience members were distracted by the transparent nature of the hologram, which gave Callas an ‘especially ghostly appearance’. The performances set the operatic sphere atwitter with questions of ethics and taste, debates over classical music's obligations to the living and devotions to the dead. Anthony Tommasini likened the performances to a grand séance, an act of operatic necrophilia. Catherine Womack interpreted the spectral shows as a sign that ‘in the twenty-first century, living and breathing are not prerequisites for a successful performing career’. However, as Deirdre Loughridge, Gundula Kreuzer and Gabriela Cruz demonstrate in their monographs, Callas in Concert is not a phenomenon unique to the twenty-first century. Indeed, the authors show that technologically mediated resurrections of the dead, operatic appeals to nostalgia, and illusion-busting technical failures are instead part of a long operatic tradition, one which began well before the holographic revitalisations of Maria Callas.","PeriodicalId":42672,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Opera Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"235 - 244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43229699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1017/S0954586722000118
Jacek Blaszkiewicz
Abstract This article presents a literary genealogy of the titular character in Verdi's Aida. While scholars have explored the opera's resonances with late nineteenth-century conceptions of Orientalism, Blackness and the imagined ‘East’, Aida's etymology and character traits reflect a much broader archetype that extends back a century from its 1871 premiere. Her name is not Egyptian or Ethiopian but Greek, and her backstory was modelled on characters named ‘Haidée’ and ‘Haydée’ who appeared in works by Lord Byron and Alexandre Dumas fils, as well as in a celebrated opéra comique by Daniel Auber. Aida was thus an assemblage of ready-made character archetypes and scenarios rather than an author's sui generis depiction of non-Western culture. An intertextual reading of Aida offers a broader perspective on alterity in the nineteenth century, which eschewed geographical specificity for archetypes, quotations and allusions. It also offers another way to confront claims of authenticity made by current-day defenders of brownface in Verdi's work.
{"title":"Verdi, Auber and the Aida-type","authors":"Jacek Blaszkiewicz","doi":"10.1017/S0954586722000118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586722000118","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article presents a literary genealogy of the titular character in Verdi's Aida. While scholars have explored the opera's resonances with late nineteenth-century conceptions of Orientalism, Blackness and the imagined ‘East’, Aida's etymology and character traits reflect a much broader archetype that extends back a century from its 1871 premiere. Her name is not Egyptian or Ethiopian but Greek, and her backstory was modelled on characters named ‘Haidée’ and ‘Haydée’ who appeared in works by Lord Byron and Alexandre Dumas fils, as well as in a celebrated opéra comique by Daniel Auber. Aida was thus an assemblage of ready-made character archetypes and scenarios rather than an author's sui generis depiction of non-Western culture. An intertextual reading of Aida offers a broader perspective on alterity in the nineteenth century, which eschewed geographical specificity for archetypes, quotations and allusions. It also offers another way to confront claims of authenticity made by current-day defenders of brownface in Verdi's work.","PeriodicalId":42672,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Opera Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"157 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44978010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1017/s0954586722000271
{"title":"OPR volume 34 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0954586722000271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954586722000271","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42672,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Opera Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"f1 - f2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42049369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1017/S0954586722000192
John Kapusta
Abstract Despite the advent of voice studies, opera scholars have yet to develop a thoroughgoing conversation about one of the most familiar elements of operatic vocal culture: voice type (categories such as soprano, tenor and the like). To address this, I suggest opera scholars analyse ideologies of voice type: the complex of ideas and practices that guide how individuals understand voice types and their relevance to the operatic experience. I devote the main part of this article to a historical case study of ideologies of voice type in action, focusing on Maurice Ravel, his 1911 opera L'heure espagnole, and the relatively obscure voice type Ravel assigned to Ramiro, the opera's male protagonist, the baryton-Martin. I argue that the characteristically modern ideology of voice type Ravel adopted in L'heure espagnole was unusual for its time and that this helps explains the work's reception.
{"title":"Ideologies of Voice Type and Ravel's L'heure espagnole","authors":"John Kapusta","doi":"10.1017/S0954586722000192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586722000192","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Despite the advent of voice studies, opera scholars have yet to develop a thoroughgoing conversation about one of the most familiar elements of operatic vocal culture: voice type (categories such as soprano, tenor and the like). To address this, I suggest opera scholars analyse ideologies of voice type: the complex of ideas and practices that guide how individuals understand voice types and their relevance to the operatic experience. I devote the main part of this article to a historical case study of ideologies of voice type in action, focusing on Maurice Ravel, his 1911 opera L'heure espagnole, and the relatively obscure voice type Ravel assigned to Ramiro, the opera's male protagonist, the baryton-Martin. I argue that the characteristically modern ideology of voice type Ravel adopted in L'heure espagnole was unusual for its time and that this helps explains the work's reception.","PeriodicalId":42672,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Opera Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"211 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45794658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1017/s0954586722000283
{"title":"OPR volume 34 issue 2 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0954586722000283","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954586722000283","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42672,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Opera Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"b1 - b2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42999119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1017/S0954586722000106
P. Sasser
Abstract In 1888, Norwegian newspapers eagerly announced the arrival of ‘Miss Gina Oselio’, who was returning to Norway ‘after seven years of staying abroad’. Oselio (Ingeborg Aas (1858–1937)) had achieved tremendous success as an opera singer in Europe and her performance on the Norwegian concert stage did not disappoint. Her new popularity positioned the singer as a member of the country's cultural elite and introduced a new complexity to her operatic identity. Unlike other Norwegian musicians who were treated primarily in terms of their nationality, her ‘Norwegianness’ had been largely incidental during her career. Oselio's private papers, however, offer new insights into the complex relationship between the singer and the nation. Together with her reception history, these materials invite a fresh examination of Oselio's position in fin-de-siècle Norwegian musical life. They show how she cultivated her career and her identity outside Norway, as well as her deliberate decision to assert her ‘Norwegianness’. They demonstrate the roles that Oselio wished to occupy on the country's stages and how other Norwegians responded to these roles. Ultimately, they document a period of transition, as artists, critics and audiences sought to determine the place that opera would occupy within the nation.
{"title":"Gina Oselio and Opera in Fin-de-Siècle Norway","authors":"P. Sasser","doi":"10.1017/S0954586722000106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954586722000106","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 1888, Norwegian newspapers eagerly announced the arrival of ‘Miss Gina Oselio’, who was returning to Norway ‘after seven years of staying abroad’. Oselio (Ingeborg Aas (1858–1937)) had achieved tremendous success as an opera singer in Europe and her performance on the Norwegian concert stage did not disappoint. Her new popularity positioned the singer as a member of the country's cultural elite and introduced a new complexity to her operatic identity. Unlike other Norwegian musicians who were treated primarily in terms of their nationality, her ‘Norwegianness’ had been largely incidental during her career. Oselio's private papers, however, offer new insights into the complex relationship between the singer and the nation. Together with her reception history, these materials invite a fresh examination of Oselio's position in fin-de-siècle Norwegian musical life. They show how she cultivated her career and her identity outside Norway, as well as her deliberate decision to assert her ‘Norwegianness’. They demonstrate the roles that Oselio wished to occupy on the country's stages and how other Norwegians responded to these roles. Ultimately, they document a period of transition, as artists, critics and audiences sought to determine the place that opera would occupy within the nation.","PeriodicalId":42672,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Opera Journal","volume":"34 1","pages":"183 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48368870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1017/S0954586722000210
J. Doe
Abstract This article examines the production and reception history of C. S. Favart's La fête du château, commissioned by a French noblewoman, the Marquise of Monconseil, to mark her granddaughter's inoculation against smallpox in 1766. The first half of the article situates the vaudeville comedy at the Bagatelle (Monconseil's private theatre), underscoring the gendered tropes that had accrued to the disease in the late eighteenth century and the function of elite sociability in promoting its prevention. The second half of the article reconstructs the public trajectory of the work, which was presented at Versailles after the controversial inoculation of Louis XVI in 1774. Notably, the agent behind this theatrical public-health campaign was the queen, Marie Antoinette. A consideration of La fête du château's popularity and influence broadens our understanding of the conditions under which ancien-régime opera took on political meaning, as well as the role of women patrons and consumers in this process.
摘要本文考察了C.S.Favart的La fête du château的生产和接受历史，该作品由法国贵族蒙康塞尔侯爵夫人委托创作，以纪念她的孙女在1766年接种了天花疫苗。文章的前半部分将杂耍喜剧放在Bagatelle（蒙康塞尔的私人剧院），强调了18世纪末这种疾病产生的性别隐喻，以及精英社交在促进预防方面的作用。文章的后半部分重建了这部作品的公共轨迹，1774年路易十六接种疫苗后，这部作品在凡尔赛宫展出。值得注意的是，这场戏剧性的公共卫生运动背后的代理人是女王玛丽·安托瓦内特。考虑到La fête du château的受欢迎程度和影响力，我们可以更深入地了解古代制度歌剧具有政治意义的条件，以及女性赞助人和消费者在这一过程中的作用。
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Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1017/S0954586721000124
E. Jacobson
Abstract This article takes its cue from the claim, made both in 1831 and in our own time, that Bellini's La sonnambula is a pastoral opera. Frustratingly difficult to define, the term ‘pastoral’ is at once both musical and literary, able to attach itself to everything from madrigal to oratorio to symphony across four hundred years. This article explores the various meanings of pastoral specific to the early nineteenth century and argues that its currency in music analysis today – as a topic, as a mode – is of little use when attention falls on the music of Italian opera. It concludes with an extended analysis of Bellini's handling of cadences in both La sonnambula and his other operas, insisting that it is here, in Italian composers’ repeated affirmation of the conventions of tonality, that the pleasures promised by the pastoral can be enjoyed today as much as they were two hundred years ago.
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Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1017/s0954586722000209
{"title":"OPR volume 34 issue 1 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0954586722000209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954586722000209","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42672,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Opera Journal","volume":" ","pages":"b1 - b2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45955158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1017/s0954586722000179
{"title":"OPR volume 34 issue 1 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0954586722000179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954586722000179","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42672,"journal":{"name":"Cambridge Opera Journal","volume":" ","pages":"f1 - f2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47967973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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