1,721,079 research outputs found
Producing Stars in dramma per musica
No full textStars were perhaps more crucial to dramma per musica than to any other musical enterprise in Italy during the eighteenth century. Yet modern research on eighteenth-century singers generally fails to provide any methodology for how stars were produced, and how they interacted with the works they performed.1 This essay seeks to fill this gap. I will first outline influential twentieth-century theories in musicology on the relationship between the vocalist and the dramma per musica. I will then examine the means by which scholars in other disciplines recognise stars both as historical phenomena and as signifying elements within productions. Finally, I will suggest methods for applying theories about star production to dramma per musica in a manner that fits the historical conditions of this repertory
"The Stage's Glory": John Rich (1692-1761)
No full textJohn Rich (1692-1761) was a profoundly influential figure of the eighteenth-century London stage. As producer, manager, and performer, he transformed the urban entertainment market, creating genres and promotional methods still with us today. This volume gives the first comprehensive overview of Rich's multifaceted career, appreciation of which has suffered from his performing identity as Lun, London's most celebrated Harlequin. Far from the lightweight buffoon that this stereotype has suggested, Rich—the first producer of The Beggar's Opera, the founder of Covent Garden, the dauntless backer of Handel, and the promoter of the principal dancers from the Parisian opera—is revealed as an agent of changes much more enduring than those of his younger contemporary, David Garrick. Contributions by leading scholars from a range of disciplines—theatre, dance, music, art, and cultural history—provide detailed analyses of Rich's productions and representations. These findings complement Robert D. Hume's lead article, a study that radically alters our perception of Rich
Beyond 'The Beggar’s Opera': John Rich and English Ballad Opera
No full textThis chapter outlines the signiicance of ballad opera in the career of John Rich. John Rich helped father the genre, agreeing to mount John Gay's Beggar's Opera after Drury Lane rejected this work. Thereafter, however, Rich was unable to maintain his hold over the ballad opera market, despite the popularity of the Beggar's Opera. This was not for want of ingenious experiements, which inlcluded his continued support of John Gay, and crafting a second ballad opera, The Cobler's Opear, around the staf of the Beggar's Opera, Lavinia Fention
In Tune, BBC Radio 3: 'Berta Joncus in conversation with Sean Rafferty about her book Kitty Clive, or The Fair Songster'
No full textSean Rafferty presents a lively mix of music and arts news with live performance in the studio from mezzo-soprano Clara Mouriz with Jaume Santonja Espinós. The viol consort Fretwork join us too, and author Berta Joncus chats to Sean about her new book Kitty Clive, or The Fair Songster
‘His Spirit is in Action Seen’: Milton, Mrs Clive and the Simulacra of the Pastoral in Comus
No full textThis article explores the relationship between Drury Lane's most popular eighteenth-century masque, Comus (1738), and the contemporary fashions in politics, literature and recreation that informed it. On one level, the masque was a revival honouring Milton, the author of its libretto, in a manner consistent with his eighteenth-century reception: as a genius whose merit was just being recognized, and as a patriot hero whose incorruptibility mirrored the aspirations of those pledging allegiance to 'British' values.
On another level, however, the pastoral entertainment seems to have been mainly concerned with popular notions of female propriety and the challenges posed to those notions by the production's star soprano, Kitty Clive. Titillation was assured by interpolated musical scenes which had little to do with the libretto but much to do with composer Thomas Arne's mastery of the discursive techniques of ballad farce. The personality cult around Clive, the 'Goddess of Mirth', imposed upon the masque hermost celebratedmusical characterizations (both in the type of song and in the specific lyrics sung) to grant full voice to her flaunting of social codes.
The overwhelming success of Comus caused the masque to be reinvented as a public diversion at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens by its owner, John Tyers. A Milton statue was erected in the gardens to preside over 'musical downs', where instrumentalists played hidden behind bushes to the north of 'The Temple of Comus'. Recontextualizing Comus at Vauxhall, Tyers created a site (nicknamed the 'Rendezvous of Cupid') in which lovers could further explore the transgressions of Mrs Clive's musical scenes within a simulated pastoral myth
Scoring for Celebrity: The Authority of the Vocalist in Love in a Village (1762)
Full text linkIn pastiche opera, the art of the star trumped that of the author, as Love in a Village, the eighteenth-century London stage’s most popular comic opera, richly evidences. My research as lead editor for the critical edition (Bärenreiter, 2016) reveals the defining contributions of its principal tenor, John Beard. As a star, and the new manager of Covent Garden, Beard used this opera to advance his reputation for both performance and directorship.
Love in a Village was designed around Beard’s “line,” a metacharacter constructed on stage and off; it created new lines for the sopranos Charlotte Brent and Isabella Hallam. Beard chose to adapt The Village Opera (1729), likely because it featured two sentimental heroines. Beard hired the arranger Edward Toms (not Thomas Arne as earlier believed), known for tailoring music to singers. As in its ballad opera original, the wordbook accommodated atomized, liminal musical numbers for singers to represent their fictional characters and themselves. The character of Hawthorn, newly invented for Beard, led the musical finales. It gave Beard the chance to enact, with his dog Phillis, his reputation as a clubbable, honest, virile English gentleman. Hawthorn’s music is a deft cross-section of Beard’s repertory, with one air from his rival Thomas Lowe. For Brent and Hallam, Toms arranged Italian music performed by London’s reigning prima donnas, giving the young English first ladies a chance to eclipse their Italian counterparts. Framed by a plot in which they were intimatefriends, Brent and Hallam also enacted concord, countering the “rival queens” topos habitually ascribed to twinned sirens. Love in a Village heralded the elevated taste by which Beard, as manager, sought to distinguish Covent Garden. The wordbook’s humble origins were hidden. The music was polite, taken from Handel, and from theatre and pleasure garden repertory. Only low characters sang common tunes, although even these melodies, because seemingly Scottish, carried a whiff of fashion. In repertoire, Love in a Village became a staple for launching debutante sopranos, proving the effectiveness of its design for the production of stars and of musical taste
Music as Social and Cultural Practice: Essays in Honour of Reinhard Strohm
No full textThe linking theme of the essays collected here is the intersection of musical work with social and cultural practice. Inspired by Professor Strohm's ideas, as is fitting in a volume in his honour, leading scholars in the field explore diverse conceptualizations of the 'work' within the contexts of a specific repertory, over four main sections. Music in Theory and Practice studies the link between treatises and musical practice, and analyses how historical writings can reveal period views on the 'work' in music before 1800. Art and Social Process: Music in Court and Urban Societies looks at the social and cultural practices informing composition from the late Renaissance until the mid-eighteenth century, and interrogates current notions of canon formation and the exchange between local and foreign traditions. Creating an Opera Industry focuses on how genre and artistic autonomy were defined in operas from diverse eras and countries, explaining the role of literature and politics in this process. Finally, The Crisis of Modernity treats nineteenth-century music, offering new models for 'work' and 'context' to challenge reigning theories of the meaning of these terms
Recommended from our members
Good for the garden: the composition of Handel’s Ariodante
No full textAn outline of the circumstances of the composition and performance of Handel's Ariodante, his new opera for his first season at Covent Garden Theatre in 1734-
- …
