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Orpheus, Ovid and Opera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Frederick W. Sternfeld
Frederick W. Sternfeld*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Extract

It was in the Shakespeare year of 1964 that I first realized to what extent my work on English stage music lacked foundation and depth without a better knowledge of the practices of dramatic music in Italy. Even at that early stage I recognized that the key plot for intermedi and the first operas was the story of Orpheus which looms so impressively, both in quantity and in quality, at the birth of opera. Indeed, it is a plot that continues to act as a springboard for the imagination of composers of operas and ballets, even after the seventeenth century, as witnessed by the works of Gluck, Offenbach and Stravinsky.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 113 , Issue 2 , 1988 , pp. 172 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 Royal Musical Association

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