The Beginnings of Opera in Europe
Origins, Adaptations, and Cultural Exchange
Edited by Michael Klaper Edited by Nastasia Heckendorff
This is the first book-length publication dealing with the different beginnings of opera in its homeland Italy as well as in other parts of Europe. Its different chapters, written by experts in the field from all over the world, are concerned with diverse regional traditions, literary and musical aspects of the genre, questions of pe
This is the first book dedicated to the early history of opera in Europe from a comparative perspective. It takes into account not only the diverse beginnings of opera in Italy around 1600 (Florence, Rome, Mantua), but also the mechanisms of reception and adaptation of the new genre outside of Italy in the following decades (in the German-speaking realm, and in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania). Questions of genre and its terminology are discussed as well as the history, function, and contents of librettos and their special linguistic and structural devices. Special attention is paid to issues of performance practice, such as the assignation of certain types of roles to certain types of singers, and staging. In order to broaden this perspective, the influence of Spanish 17th-century spoken drama on the early Venetian opera is explored. Furthermore, the beginnings of regional operatic traditions outside of Italy (such as in Spain and France) play a central role, along with the specifically English concept of ‘dramatic opera’, and the question of music in spoken drama. In this way, new and fascinating insights can be gained into opera in its initial phase (roughly from 1600 to 1680), including its development and regional styles, its acceptance or rejection, and the critical discourse surrounding the genre.
- Edited by Michael Klaper
- Edited by Nastasia Heckendorff
Other Titles in this Series
Similar Books
Balthasar Caymox of Nuremberg
Early Modern German Print Publishers: Popular Prints of the Seventeenth Century
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
Councils, Conflicts, Correspondence
Urban Diplomacy in Reval (Tallinn) and Lübeck (c. 1470–1570)
Volume 67
Innovationes Lovanienses: Arts, Law and Theology at the University of Louvain (1425–1797)
Studium Lovaniense: Learning across Borders, 2
Volume 18
John Dunstaple Reading Boethius
John Dunstaple’s Annotations to Boethius’s “De institutione musica” in the Manuscript Oxford, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 118
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Music and Colonialism in Fascist Italy
Identity, Propaganda, and Ethnographic Representation
Volume 13
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Staging the Spectacle of Majesty
Ceremonial, Courtly Space, and Collecting under the Spanish Habsburgs
Volume 9
Students, Scholars and Their Books at the University of Louvain (1425-1797)
Studium Lovaniense: Learning across Borders, 1
Volume 17
