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  • The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century: 1800-1920

    The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century by Cowgill, Rachel; Poriss, Hilary;

    1800-1920

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      • Publisher's listprice GBP 122.50
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    Product details:

    • Publisher OUP USA
    • Date of Publication 12 July 2012

    • ISBN 9780195365870
    • Binding Hardback
    • No. of pages416 pages
    • Size 163x236x27 mm
    • Weight 700 g
    • Language English
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    Short description:

    The Arts of the Prima Donna assembles a star-studded yet well-balanced cast of contributors, whose essays combine theoretical approaches to text and narrative, and current theory on gender, performativity, and the commodification of the female body, with the growing understanding of the lives, careers, and performances of the female opera singer.

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    Long description:

    Female characters assumed increasing prominence in the narratives of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera. And for contemporary audiences, many of these characters - and the celebrated women who played them - still define opera at its finest and most searingly affective, even if storylines leave them swooning and faded by the end of the drama. The presence and representation of women in opera has been addressed in a range of recent studies that offer valuable insights into the operatic stage as cultural space, focusing a critical lens at the text and the position and signification of female characters. Moving that lens onto the historical, The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century sheds light on the singers who created and inhabited these roles, the flesh-and-blood women who embodied these fabled "doomed women" onstage before an audience.
    Editors Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss lead a cast of renowned contributors in an impressive display of current approaches to the lives, careers, and performances of female opera singers. Essential theoretical perspectives reflect several broad themes woven through the volume-cultures of celebrity surrounding the female singer; the emergence of the quasi-mythical figure of the diva; explorations of the intricate and sundry arts associated with the prima donna, and with her representation in other media; and the diversity and complexity of contemporary responses to her. The prima donna influenced compositional practices, determined musical and dramatic interpretation, and affected management decisions about the running of the opera house, content of the season, and employment of other artists - a clear demonstration that her position as "first woman" extended well beyond the boards of the operatic stage itself.
    The Arts of the Prima Donna in the Long Nineteenth Century is an important addition to the collections of students and researchers in opera studies, nineteenth-century music, performance and gender/sexuality studies, and cultural studies, as well as to the shelves of opera singers and enthusiasts.

    The essays offer a rich variety of approaches to the prima donna, and the quality of scholarship and writing is high. Together they reveal the contradictory views of the prima donna in different times and places, the ideologies of gender that shaped perception, and the challenges these singers presented to traditional male/female power dynamics.

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    Table of Contents:

    Introduction
    Rachel Cowgill and Hilary Poriss
    PART ONE: PROMOTION AND IMAGE-MAKING
    Chapter 1. Divas and Sonnets: Poetry for Female Singers in Teatri arti e letteratura
    Francesco Izzo
    Chapter 2. Idealizing the Prima Donna in Mid-Victorian London
    Roberta Montemorra Marvin
    Chapter 3. Prima Donnas and the Performance of Altruism
    Hilary Poriss
    Chapter 4. Staging Scandal with Salome and Elektra
    Joy H. Calico
    Chapter 5. Screening the Diva
    Mary Simonson
    Chapter 6. The Prima Donna's Art of Politics
    James R. Currie
    INTERLUDE 1: The Prima Donna Creates
    Julian Rushton
    PART TWO: FANTASY AND REPRESENTATION
    Chapter 7. Gautier's "Diva": The First French Use of the Word
    James Q. Davies
    Chapter 8. Artistic Experiment and the Reevaluation of the Prima Donna in George Moore's Evelyn Innes
    Grace Kehler
    Chapter 9. Ars moriendi: Reflections on the Death of Mimi
    Helen Greenwald
    Chapter 10. Lakmé's Echoing Jewels
    Gurminder Kaur Bhogal
    INTERLUDE 2: Breath's End: Opera and Mortality
    Terry Castle
    PART THREE: CULTURES OF CELEBRITY
    Chapter 11. "Attitudes with a Shawl": Performance, Femininity, and Spectatorship at the Italian Opera in Early Nineteenth-Century London
    Rachel Cowgill
    Chapter 12. From Diva to Drama Queen
    Tracy C. Davis
    Chapter 13. The Prima Donna as Opera Impresario: Emma Carelli and the Teatro Costanzi, 1911-1926
    Susan Rutherford
    Chapter 14. "In Imitation of My Negro Mammy": Alma Gluck and the American Prima Donna
    Susan C. Cook
    Chapter 15. "The Finest Voice of the Century": Clara Butt and Other Concert-Hall and Drawing-Room Singers of Fin-de-siècle Britain
    Sophie Fuller
    Chapter 16. Galli-Curci Comes to Town: The Prima Donna's Presence in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
    Alexandra Wilson
    Index

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