Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: opera studies today
- Part One Institutions
- Part Two Constituents
- 4 ‘Too much music’: the media of opera
- 5 Voices and singers
- 6 Opera and modes of theatrical production
- 7 Opera and the technologies of theatrical production
- Part Three Forms
- Part Four Issues
- Further reading
- Index
- References
5 - Voices and singers
from Part Two - Constituents
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2012
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: opera studies today
- Part One Institutions
- Part Two Constituents
- 4 ‘Too much music’: the media of opera
- 5 Voices and singers
- 6 Opera and modes of theatrical production
- 7 Opera and the technologies of theatrical production
- Part Three Forms
- Part Four Issues
- Further reading
- Index
- References
Summary
The singer is the defining feature of opera: the living crucible in which music, drama and spectacle coalesce into a single art form. The history of opera was thus shaped in part according to changing concepts about the singer – about his or her relationship with each of opera’s constituent arts; about ideas of vocal and dramatic virtuosity; about the singer’s place within the hierarchy of the opera house and the gaze of the spectator. In the discourses around opera, the singer is considered both as an embodied musical performer, and also in more abstract terms as pure ‘voice’. Modern opera studies draws on both aspects in its exploration of the singer’s art and performance practice, the social history of the singer, and the investigation of the singer as cultural phenomenon.
Initially, however, the singer was largely ignored during the awakening of critical interest in opera in the 1980s. Despite an opening article by John Rosselli in the first edition of the Cambridge Opera Journal in 1989, it was not until the mid-1990s that English-language scholarship began to take the same interest in the singer as was already evident in continental Europe, albeit from rather different methodological perspectives. This chapter explores various aspects of both historical and contemporary approaches to the singer in relation to voice, text, spectacle, technology, the operatic market place and the audience.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies , pp. 117 - 138Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012
References
comments on how recent critical approaches to opera have ‘opened up formerly unrespectable and even unmentionable aspects of the genre’. Taruskin, The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), p. 225.Google Scholar
, Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), p. 232.Google Scholar
, Listening, trans. C. Mandell (Ashland, OH: Fordham University Press, 2007), pp. 40–3.Google Scholar
, Practical Reflections on the Figurative Art of Singing (1777), trans. P. Buzzi (Boston, MA: Gorham Press, 1912), p. 49.Google Scholar
, On Singers and Singing, trans. Leopold Simoneau (1913–14; Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1990), p. 47.Google Scholar
, ‘The Operatic Scandal of the Singing Body: Voice, Presence, Performativity’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 16/3 (2004), pp. 283–306; 306.Google Scholar
, The Angel’s Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera, trans. Arthur Denner (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 93–106.Google Scholar
Giovanni Andrea Bontempi, Historia musica (Perugia: Costantini, 1695), p. 110.
, A Song of Love and Death: The Meaning of Opera (London: Chatto and Windus, 1987), p. 52.Google Scholar
, ‘“La voce è grata assai, ma…”: Monteverdi on Singing’, Early Music, 22/1 (February 1994), pp. 7–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Handel and His Singers: The Creation of the Royal Academy Operas, 1720–1728 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 186.Google Scholar
, ‘Ersatz Ditties: Adriana Ferrarese’s Susanna’, in Remaking the Song: Operatic Visions and Revisions from Handel to Berio (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 42–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Il “do di petto”: dissacrazione di un mito’, Il saggiatore musicale, 3 (1996), pp. 105–49.Google Scholar
, Singing in Style: A Guide to Vocal Performance Practices (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006)Google Scholar
, ‘Beggar at the Door: The Rise and Fall of Portamento in Singing’, Music and Letters, 87/4 (2006), pp. 523–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 142–3, 225–6, 235–6, 266Google Scholar
, ‘Some Observations Concerning Baroque and Modern Vibrato’, Performance Practice Review, 5/1 (1992), pp. 90–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Free Voice: A Guide to Natural Singing (New York: Joseph Patelson Music House, 1965), pp. 170–86.Google Scholar
, Solutions for Singers: Tools for Performers and Teachers (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 121–7.Google Scholar
(ed.), Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words, trans. Henry E. Krehbiel (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1905), p. 48.Google Scholar
, Treatise on the Art of Singing (1840–47), ed. A. García (London: Leonard & Co., 1924), pp. 33, 66.Google Scholar
, Observations on the Florid Song, trans. John Ernest Galliard (1743; repr. London: William Reeves, 1967), p. 86.Google Scholar
, A Language of Its Own: Sense and Meaning in the Making of Western Art Music (University of Chicago Press, 2009), p. 128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2007), pp. 77–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Verdi’s Aida: The History of an Opera in Letters and Documents (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978), p. 139.Google Scholar
, The Artwork of the Future, trans. W. Ashton Ellis (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), Vol. I, p. 103.Google Scholar
, On Playing the Flute (1752), trans. and ed. Edward R. Reilly, 2nd edn (London: Faber and Faber, 2001), p. 56.Google Scholar
, ‘Reading Libretti and Misreading Opera’, in Opera, Sex and Other Vital Matters (University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 36.Google Scholar
, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 10–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 63.Google Scholar
, ‘The Perception of Singing’, in Diana Deutsch (ed.), The Psychology of Music (London: Elsevier, 1999), pp. 171–214; 178–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , ‘Environmental Influences’, in Richard Parncutt and Gary McPherson (eds.), The Science and Psychology of Music Performance: Creative Strategies for Teaching and Learning (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 17–30; 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘The Musical Art of Infant Conversation: Narrating in the Time of Sympathetic Experience, Without Rational Interpretation, Before Words’, Musica Scientiae, 12 (2008), pp. 15–46; 16–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘If Music is the Food of Love, What About Survival and Reproductive Success?’, Musicae Scientiae, special issue (2008), pp. 169–95; 174.
, ‘Voice: A Pathway to Consciousness as “Social Contact to Oneself”’, Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Science 42/1 (2008), pp. 92–113; 100–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Neuroscience and Intrinsic Psychodynamics: Current Knowledge and Potential for Therapy’, in Jenny Corrigall and Heward Wilkinson (eds.), Revolutionary Connections: Psychotherapy and Neuroscience (London: Karnac Books, 2003), pp. 53–78; 76.Google Scholar
, ‘Le jeu du chanteur dans l'esthétique spectaculaire de l'opéra lulliste’, in Jacqueline Waeber (ed.), Musique et geste en France de Lully à la Révolution: études sur la musique, le théâtre et la danse (Berne: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 43–54Google Scholar
, Verdi’s Theater: Creating Drama Through Music, trans. Gilda Roberts (University of Chicago Press, 2008), pp. 292–3Google Scholar
, Actors and Singers, trans. W. Ashton Ellis (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995)Google Scholar
and , Dialogues (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 22–5.Google Scholar
The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (London and Toronto, ON: Associated University Presses, 1985).Google Scholar
, Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Music in London 1890–1894, 3 vols. (London: Constable & Co., 1932), Vol. III, p. 227.Google Scholar
, My Path Through Life, trans. Alice B. Seligman (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1914), p. 72Google Scholar
(ed.), Technologies of the Diva (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
, ‘The Record of Singing: A Brief Overview of a Monumental Project’, The Opera Quarterly, 7/1 (1990), pp. 31–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to Studying Recorded Musical Performance (London: CHARM, 2009)Google Scholar
and , ‘Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane’, TDR: The Drama Review, 54/1 (2010), pp. 14–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farinelli Il Castrato (dir. Gérard Corbiau, 1994)
, ‘The Afterlife of Maria Callas’s Voice’, The Musical Quarterly, 88 (2006), pp. 35–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Porn Style? Space and Time in Live Opera Videos’, The Opera Quarterly, 26/1 (Winter 2010), pp. 63–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a Profession (Cambridge University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Opera and Concert Singers: A Bibliography of Biographical Materials (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985)Google Scholar
Classical Singers of the Opera and Recital Stages: A Bibliography of Biographical Materials (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994)
, Opera Singers in Recital, Concert and Feature Film (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999)Google Scholar
, Études biographiques sur les chanteurs contemporains, précédées d'une esquisse sur l'art du chant (Paris: Just Tessier, 1840)Google Scholar
, The Prima Donna: Her History and Surroundings from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century (London: Remington, 1888).Google Scholar
, ‘Reading Lind Mania: Print Culture and Nineteenth-Century Audiences’, Book History (1998), pp. 94–106.
, My Golden Age of Singing, ed. E. Johnston and W. Moran (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1998).Google Scholar
, Portrait of a Castrato: Politics, Patronage, and Music in the Life of Atto Melani (Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar
, ‘Verdi, Victor Maurel and Fin-de-siècle Operatic Performance’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 19/1 (2007), pp. 59–84; 63.Google Scholar
, The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon, trans. Margaret Crosland (London: Souvenir, 1998)Google Scholar
, Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History, trans. John A. Broadwin and Shelley L. Frisch (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001).Google Scholar
, ‘On Ancient and Modern Tragedy’ (1714), in Enrico Fubini (ed.), Music and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe: A Source Book, trans. Bonnie J. Blackburn (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 49.Google Scholar
, Opera Observed: Views of a Florentine Impresario (University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 114.Google Scholar
, ‘“An Infinity of Factions”: Opera in Eighteenth-Century Britain and the Undoing of Society’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 9/1 (March 1997), pp. 1–19Google Scholar
(Anon., Confessions of Madame Vestris, in a series of familiar letters to Handsome Jack (London: New Villon Society, 1891))Google Scholar
(Anon., Aus den Memoiren einer Sängerin (1862), translated as Pauline, the Prima Donna (London and New York: Erotika Biblion Society, 1898)).Google Scholar
, ‘Isabella Colbran: appunti per una biografia’, Bollettino del Centro Rossiniano di Studi, 38 (1998), pp. 17–55Google Scholar
, A Documentary Study of Giuditta Pasta on the Opera Stage (Italy), PhD dissertation (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services, 2000)Google Scholar
, ‘La cantante delle passioni: Giuditta Pasta and the Idea of Operatic Performance’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 19/2 (July 2007), pp. 107–38Google Scholar
, Maria Malibran: A Biography of the Singer (University Park and London: Pennsylania State University Press, 1979)Google Scholar
, ‘Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient: Wagner’s Tragic Muse’, in Maggie Gale and Vivien Gardner, Women, Theatre and Performance: New Histories, New Historiographies (Manchester University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
(ed.), Voix d'opéra: écrits de chanteurs du XIXe siècle (Paris: Michel de Maule, 1988)Google Scholar
, ‘Il “do di petto”’; Gregory Bloch, ‘The Pathological Voice of Gilbert-Louis Duprez’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 19/1 (2007), pp. 11–31.Google Scholar
, The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 222–30.Google Scholar
, African American Concert Singers Before 1950 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), pp. 5–9.Google Scholar
, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 56.Google Scholar
, ‘“Di Pallade ha l'ardir, d’Ebe il sembiante”: Immagini di interpreti musicali attraverso stampe celebrative’, in Giuseppe Adani (ed.), Vita musicale in Emilia Romagna (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 1985), pp. 184–215.Google Scholar
Il censore universale dei teatri, 97 (5 December 1829), pp. 386–7.
Colonel James Henry Mapleson, The Mapleson Memoirs: The Career of an Operatic Impresario 1858–1888, ed. (London: Putnam, 1966), p. 42.Google Scholar
, Erminia Frezzolini: Grandeur e Décadence (1818–1884) (Orvieto: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Orvieto and Orvieto Arte Cultura Sviluppo, 2006), pp. 206, 218.Google Scholar
- 1
- Cited by