bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Self‐organized patterns in the workplace: Obstacles to awareness
Authors: Henning Pamela Buckle
Published: August 2008

Self‐organized patterns of behaviour in the workplace can help or hinder corporate performance. To effectively handle such patterns, a manager must learn to detect them. However, detecting self‐organized patterns is difficult. Drawing from a grounded theory study, this paper examines obstacles to consciousness of self‐organized workplace patterns, which result in such patterns being misinterpreted or overlooked. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Modest systems psychology: A neutral complement to positive psychological thinking
Authors: Hogan Michael J.
Published: August 2008

The positive psychology movement has recently reconfigured the thinking of psychologists by bringing to the forefront of enquiry a scientific focus on positive emotions, character strengths, and human virtue, the ultimate aim of which is to further our understanding of human nature and optimize our potential for a good life. This paper proposes a modest systems psychology as a neutral complement to positive psychological thinking in an effort to facilitate a systems view on action optimization. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Ruthenium‐catalyzed carbonylative cycloaddition reactions involving carbonyl and imino groups as assembling units
Authors: Chatani Naoto
Published: August 2008

This paper describes carbonylative cycloaddition reactions catalyzed by Ru3(CO)12. Ru3(CO)12 was found to catalyze an intramolecular Pauson–Khand‐type reaction. Carbonylative cycloaddition reactions involving a carbonyl group in aldehydes, ketones, and esters as a two‐atom assembling unit were also achieved in the presence of Ru3(CO)12 as the catalyst. The reaction of 5‐hexyn‐1‐al and 6‐heptyn‐1‐al derivatives with CO in the presence of Ru3(CO)12 resulted in cyclocarbonylation from which bicyclic α, β‐unsaturated lactones were obtained. Intermolecular [2 + 2 + 1] carbonylative cycloaddition of alkenes, ketones, and CO was also catalyzed by Ru3(CO)12 as the catalyst to give saturated γ‐lactone derivatives. Simple ketones were not applicable, but ketones having a CO or CN group at the α‐position served as a good substrate. These reactions could be extended to carbonylative cycloaddition of the corresponding imines leading to γ‐butyrolactam derivatives. The [4 + 1] carbonylative addition of α,β‐unsaturated imines leading to unsaturated γ‐lactams was achieved with Ru3(CO)12. © 2008 The Japan Chemical Journal Forum and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Chem Rec 8: 201–212; 2008: Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI 10.1002/tcr.20149
Lithium nitrides as sustainable energy materials
Authors: Gregory Duncan H.
Published: August 2008

Lithium nitride is an exceptional yet simple compound with remarkable properties that can be tuned with judicious chemical modifications. A unique structure coupled with high ionic mobility present both a fundamental model and an advanced material for energy applications, involving either storage of charge (lithium) or storage of hydrogen. In the former case, and as an electrode material, the system can be modified to increase defects and the number of charge carriers, both ionic and electronic. In so doing, one can create anodes of high reversible capacity. In the latter context, tailoring structure, microstructure, and composition has profound effects on both the amount of hydrogen one can store in the solid state and the rate at which this process (uptake and release) can be achieved. © 2008 The Japan Chemical Journal Forum and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Chem Rec 8: 229–239; 2008: Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI 10.1002/tcr.20151
Oxidation using activated carbon and molecular oxygen system
Authors: Hayashi Masahiko
Published: August 2008

This paper describes the utility of an activated carbon–molecular oxygen system, not only in the oxidation of benzylic and allylic alcohols, but also in the direct carbonylation at the benzylic position. The preparation of a variety of heteroaromatic and aromatic compounds, including substituted pyridines, pyrazoles, benzoxazoles, benzimidazoles, benzothiazoles, 2‐substituted imidazoles, indoles, pyrimidin‐2(1H)‐ones, and anthracenes, by oxidative aromatization using the activated carbon–molecular oxygen system is also discussed. © 2008 The Japan Chemical Journal Forum and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Chem Rec 8: 252–267; 2008: Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI 10.1002/tcr.20152
Advanced and intelligent technologies for reliable operation of power systems and electricity markets
Authors: Yokoyama Ryuichi , Oyama Tsutomu , Yorino Naoto , Ishikawa Tadao , Mori Hiroyuki , Hiyama Takashi
Published: August 2008

Deregulation of power industries is still progressing in many countries, aiming at reduction of the electricity price, diversity of customer diverse choices, services and promotion of new business and keeping supply reliability. Many countries are testing this notion in anticipation of lower power prices through open competition.

In such a competitive situation, it is necessary for suppliers to take on the responsibility of keeping supply reliability at the load end in order to prevent outages, for instance, independent power producers (IPP) placing distributed generations (DGs) close to the load or conventional utilities utilizing advanced and intelligent system operation/control technologies that are costly. Usually, customers pay one price for power that is good enough for ordinary use, therefore not necessarily highly consistent in quality of voltage, current, frequency or reliability. However, if customers desire better quality power, additional fees are added according to the particular characteristics desired, thus customers are supplied with this type of better power that they choose.

Under such a worldwide new trend in power systems and markets, this article is edited for the purpose of introducing the most advanced technologies and the newest issues related to reliable and stable operations of power markets and systems in the competitive environment. © 2008 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Application of decentralized control for remote power system stabilization by installing renewable energy power plant
Authors: Senjyu Tomonobu , Omine Eitaro , Hayashi Daisuke , Sekine Hideomi , Funabashi Toshihisa
Published: August 2008

The generating power of wind turbines varies in proportion to the cube of wind speed, hence, they cannot supply constant power and this causes fluctuations in frequency and voltage. This article presents a methodology for controlling grid frequency, hydrogen volume, and terminal bus voltage. This system consists of diesel generators, wind turbines, and load. Aqua electrolyzer and fuel cells are introduced in order to control grid frequency, voltage, and hydrogen volume. By applying H∞ control, frequency, voltage fluctuation, and hydrogen volume, controls are achieved. H∞ decentralized controllers are designed and installed for diesel generators, aqua electrolyzers, and fuel cells in series. In order to verify the effectiveness of the suggested system, MATLAB/SIMULINK is used for simulation. © 2008 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Determination of the optimal control parameters of voltage regulators installed in a radial distribution network
Authors: Hayashi Yasuhiro , Hanai Yuji , Matsuki Junya , Fuwa Yoshiaki , Mori Kenjiro
Published: August 2008

This paper presents a new computation method to determine simultaneously the optimal parameters of several voltage regulators such as the load‐ratio control transformer (LRT) and step voltage regulator (SVR) installed in a radial distribution network. The proposed method determines a combination of their control parameters by minimizing the weighted sum of deviations of line voltage from the upper and lower voltage limits and the amounts of voltage violations by referring to the stored data measured by IT switches, which are sectionalizing switches with sensors installed in the distribution feeder. The optimization algorithm is based on particle swarm optimization (PSO), which is one of the nonlinear optimization methods, by using the concept of swarm intelligence. In order to confirm the validity of the proposed method, numerical simulations are carried out on a distribution network model. © 2008 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Multicriteria transmission congestion management by load curtailment and generation redispatch in a deregulated power system
Authors: Mohd Isa Aishah , Niimura Takahide , Yokoyama Ryuichi
Published: August 2008

This paper proposes a multiple‐criteria approach to transmission congestion management in a deregulated power system. Congestion in a transmission system can result in very high locational prices of electricity determined by marginal costs from optimal power flow solutions under the pool model. In heavily congested conditions, physical transmission congestion can be relieved by curtailing a small portion of the non‐firm transactions. The resultant marginal‐cost‐based electricity prices should drastically decrease. Multicriteria performance indices are introduced so that both load and supplier can express their levels of acceptance with the congestion management process, and the system operator can select the most effective and desirable congestion relief measures. The proposed approach is tested on a modified IEEE 30 bus system. © 2008 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Experimental multi‐objective evaluation of radial and loop distribution network configuration using distribution network equipment
Authors: Sakai Shigekazu , Hayashi Yasuhiro , Kawasaki Shoji , Matsuki Junya , Fuwa Yoshiaki , Mori Kenjiro
Published: August 2008

In this paper, we propose an experimental multiobjective evaluation method based on the use of distribution network equipment to evaluate distribution network configuration candidates with distributed generators (DGs), such as photovoltaic generation systems and wind power generation systems, by hourly changing states of sectionalizing switches satisfying constraints of voltage and line current limit. In the proposed experimental multiobjective evaluation method, the optimal network configuration is determined by using multiobjective evaluation based on total distribution loss rate, maximum voltage total harmonic distortion, and maximum voltage imbalance rate in order to reduce distribution loss and to keep power quality. The proposed method is applied to radial and loop distribution network configurations by using an experiment of scaled‐down three‐phase distribution network with 1 bank distribution transformer, 5 distribution lines, 5 sectionalizing switches, 12 single‐phase loads, and 5 DGs. © 2008 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Dynamics of soil respiration in sparse Ulmus pumila woodland under semi‐arid climate
Authors: Jin Hong‐Mei , Sun Osbert Jianxin , Luo Zhong‐Kui , Liu Jin
Published: August 2008

Sparse Ulmus pumila woodlands play an important role in contributing to ecosystem function in semi‐arid grassland of northern China. To understand the key attributes of soil carbon cycling in U. pumila woodland, we studied dynamics of soil respiration in the canopy field (i.e., the projected crown cover area) and the open field at locations differing in distance (i.e., at 1–1.5, 3–4, 10, and >15 m) to tree stems from July through September of 2005, and measured soil biotic factors (e.g., fine root mass, soil microbial biomass, and activity) and abiotic factors [e.g., soil water content (SWC) and organic carbon] in mid‐August. Soil respiration was further separated into root component and microbial component at the end of the field measurement in September. Results showed that soil respiration had a significant exponent relationship with soil temperature at 10‐cm depth. The temperature sensitivity index of soil respiration, Q10, was lower than the global average of 2.0, and declined significantly (P < 0.05) with distance. The rate of soil respiration was generally greater in the canopy field than in the open field; monthly mean of soil respiration was 305.5–730.8 mg CO2 m−2 h−1 in the canopy field and 299.6–443.1 mg CO2 m−2 h−1 in the open field from July through September; basal soil respiration at 10°C declined with distance, and varied from ~250 mg CO2 m−2 h−1 near tree stems to <200 mg CO2 m−2 h−1 in the open field. Variations in soil respiration with distance were consistent with patterns of SWC, fine root mass, microbial biomass and activities. Regression analysis indicated that soil respiration was tightly coupled with microbial respiration and only weakly related to root respiration. Overall, variations in SWC, soil nutrients, microbial biomass, and microbial activity are largely responsible for the spatial heterogeneity of soil respiration in this semi‐arid U. pumila woodland.
Clinical Experience of a Microvascular Venous Coupler Device in Free Tissue Transfers
Authors: Chang Kao‐Ping , Lin Sin‐Daw , Lai Chung‐Sheng
Published: August 2008

Most free flap failures result from technical problems in performing vascular anastomoses, such as endothelial intima lacerations, distortion of the vessels, and unequal intersuture distances. These incorrect practices can lead to thrombosis formation and, ultimately, flap failure. Solving this problem is a challenging issue for all micro‐reconstructive surgeons. In the last decade, a vascular anastomotic coupler instrument was developed and reported on. We review our recent experiences of free tissue transfer using this vascular coupler device, and discuss how venous problems can be overcome with its aid. We believe the excellent patency rate of the coupler may minimize the well‐described problems of venous thrombosis in the challenging field of free tissue reconstructions.
COMPLETE CONVERGENCE FOR WEIGHTED SUMS OF SEQUENCES OF AANA RANDOM VARIABLES
Authors: CAI GUANG-HUI , GUO BAO-CAI
Published: August 2008

Let Xn, n ≥ 1 be an asymptotically almost negatively associated (AANA) sequence of random variables. Some complete convergence and Marcinkiewicz–Zygmund type strong laws of large numbers for an AANA sequence of random variables are obtained. The results obtained generalize the results of Kim, Ko and Lee (Kim, T. S., Ko, M. H. and Lee, I. H. 2004. On the strong laws for asymptotically almost negatively associated random variables. Rocky Mountain J. of Math. 34, 979–989.).
GENUS 2 SEMI-REGULAR COVERINGS WITH LIFTING SYMMETRIES
Authors: FUERTES YOLANDA , MEDNYKH ALEXANDER
Published: August 2008

In this paper, we obtain algebraic equations for all genus 2 compact Riemann surfaces that admit a semi-regular (or uniform) covering of the Riemann sphere with more than two lifting symmetries. By a lifting symmetry, we mean an automorphism of the target surface which can be lifted to the covering. We restrict ourselves to the genus 2 surfaces in order to make computations easier and to make possible to find their algebraic equations as well. At the same time, the main ingredient (Main Proposition) depends neither on the genus, nor on the order of the group of lifting symmetries. Because of this, the paper can be thought as a generalisation for the non-normal case to the question of lifting automorphisms of a compact Riemann surface to a normal covering, treated, for instance, by E. Bujalance and M. Conder in a joint paper, or by P. Turbek solely.
DOUBLE HILBERT TRANSFORMS ALONG POLYNOMIAL SURFACES IN R3
Authors: PATEL SANJAY
Published: August 2008

We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition on a polynomial P(s, t) so that the (global) double Hilbert transforms along polynomial surfaces (s, t, P(s, t)) in R3 are bounded on Lp for 1 < p < ∞.
AN INEQUALITY RELATED TO THE GEHRING–HALLENBECK THEOREM ON RADIAL LIMITS OF FUNCTIONS IN THE HARMONIC BERGMAN SPACES
Authors: PAVLOVIĆ MIROSLAV
Published: August 2008

For a function u harmonic in the unit disk , there holds the inequality

where p > 0 and β > −1, and
.
ON THE SOLVABILITY OF BILINEAR EQUATIONS IN FINITE FIELDS
Authors: SHPARLINSKI IGOR E.
Published: August 2008

We consider the equation

over a finite field q of q elements, with variables from arbitrary sets
$\cA,\cB, \cC, \cD \subseteq \F_q$. The question of solvability of such and more general equations has recently been considered by Hart and Iosevich, who, in particular, prove that if

for some absolute constant C > 0, then above equation has a solution for any λ ∈ q*. Here we show that using bounds of multiplicative character sums allows us to extend the class of sets which satisfy this property.
BOUNDARY VALUE PROBLEMS VIA AN INTERMEDIATE VALUE THEOREM
Authors: HERZOG GERD , LEMMERT ROLAND
Published: August 2008

We use an intermediate value theorem for quasi-monotone increasing functions to prove the existence of the smallest and the greatest solution of the Dirichlet problemu″ +f(t,u) = 0,u(0) = α,u(1) = β between lower and upper solutions, wheref:[0,1] ×E→Eis quasi-monotone increasing in its second variable with respect to a regular cone.
RATIONAL POINTS ON CERTAIN DEL PEZZO SURFACES OF DEGREE ONE
Authors: ULAS MACIEJ
Published: August 2008

Let$f(z)=z^5+az^3+bz^2+cz+d \in \Z[z]$and let us consider a del Pezzo surface of degree one given by the equation$\cal{E}_{f}\,{:}\,x^2-y^3-f(z)=0$. In this paper we prove that if the set of rational points on the curveEa,b:Y2=X3+ 135(2a−15)X−1350(5a+ 2b− 26) is infinite then the set of rational points on the surface ϵfis dense in the Zariski topology.
EXISTENCE AND MULTIPLICITY OF SOLUTIONS FOR A NEUMANN PROBLEM INVOLVING VARIABLE EXPONENT GROWTH CONDITIONS
Authors: BOUREANU MARIA-MAGDALENA , MIHĂILESCU MIHAI
Published: August 2008

In this paper we study a non-linear elliptic equation involvingp(x)-growth conditions and satisfying a Neumann boundary condition on a bounded domain. For that equation we establish the existence of two solutions using as a main tool an abstract linking argument due to Brézis and Nirenberg.
POLYNOMIAL DECAY FOR SOLUTIONS OF HYPERBOLIC INTEGRODIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
Authors: BÁRTA T.
Published: August 2008

We consider a linear integrodifferential equation of second order in a Hilbert space and show that the solution tends to zero polynomially if the decay of the convolution kernel is polynomial. Both polynomials are of the same order.
BOUNDS ON THE DIMENSION OF MANIFOLDS WITH INVOLUTION FIXING Fn ∪ F2
Authors: PERGHER PEDRO L. Q. , FIGUEIRA FÁBIO G.
Published: August 2008

Let Mm be a closed smooth manifold with an involution having fixed point set of the form Fn ∪ F2, where Fn and F2 are submanifolds with dimensions n and 2, respectively, where n ≥ 4 is even (n < m). Suppose that the normal bundle of F2 in Mm, μ → F2, does not bound, and denote by β the stable cobordism class of μ → F2. In this paper, we determine the upper bound for m in terms of the pair (n, β) for many such pairs. The similar question for n odd (n ≥ 3) was completely solved in a previous paper of the authors. The existence of these upper bounds is guaranteed by the famous 5/2-theorem of Boardman, which establishes that, under the above hypotheses, m ≤ 5/2n.
Salieri's Così fan tutte
Authors: Brown Bruce Alan , Rice John A.
Published: August 2008

The several contradictory, and even apologetic, explanations that were put forward concerning the origins of Mozart's Così fan tutte, ossia La scola degli amanti in the years following its première in 1790 reflect both the dearth of hard information concerning the commission to Mozart, and the unease with which the post-Josephinian era greeted this most unsettling of comic operas. One of the composer's first biographers, Franz Xaver Nêmetschek, wrote:

In the year 1789 in the month of December Mozart wrote the Italian comic opera Cosi fan tutte, or ‘The School for Lovers’; people are universally amazed that this great genius could condescend to waste his heavenly sweet melodies on such a miserable and clumsy text. It was not in his power to refuse the commission, and the text was given expressly to him.
Not with a bang but a whimper: The death of Liszt's Sardanapale
Authors: Hamilton Kenneth
Published: August 2008

Few things are more comforting to those with a tendency to procrastination than the knowledge that the fault is hardly unique. Few examples of procrastination are as magnificently extended, or should offer more solace to an author who has missed a deadline, as the history of Liszt's Sardanapale. Not only is the protracted gestation of this ultimately abandoned opera fascinating in its own right, and central to our view of Liszt's early Weimar years; it also illustrates a familiar maxim that in music, as in other human activities, the amount of talk is often in inverse proportion to the action.
Benjamin Britten, Owen Wingrave and the politics of the closet; or, ‘He Shall Be Straightened Out at Paramore’
Authors: McClatchie Stephen
Published: August 2008

Benjamin Britten's television opera, Owen Wingrave, first broadcast on the BBC on 16 May 1971, is probably the least known of his sixteen operatic works. Based on an equally obscure tale of the same name by Henry James, it concerns the last scion of a military family who decides to abandon his calling and embrace pacifism. After fierce family opposition and disinheritance, Owen agrees to spend the night in a haunted room in the family mansion of Paramore – a room in which an ancestor was found dead ‘without a wound’ after accidentally killing his son while disciplining him. Several hours later, his body is discovered – dead, without a wound, like that of his forbear. Despite the compeffing nature of the story, Owen Wingrave has never found a secure place in the Britten canon, largely owing to a lingering dissatisfaction aroused by the ending. In what follows, I should like to explore this dissatisfaction and propose a context within which to approach the opera.
What is a musical drama?
Authors: Dahlhaus Carl
Published: August 2008

‘Dramaturgy’ is one of those vogue words to which frequent use lends the appearance of being increasingly well understood, whereas the wear and tear to which it is subjected actually makes it ever harder to understand. When a word has lost almost all meaning through overuse, the simplest way to make it usable again is, of course, to try to restore its original meaning. It should be possible to agree that dramaturgy is the composition of dramas tout court, and there can be no serious objection if that basic definition is understood to include the theories and principles of dramatic composition (as Lessing did in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie). In that sense ‘dramaturgy’ is to drama what ‘poetics’ is to poetry: it denotes the essential nature of the categories that form the basis of a drama and can be reconstructed in a dramatic theory.
Return of the native: Japan inMadama Butterfly/Madama Butterflyin Japan
Authors: Groos Arthur
Published: August 2008

By all accounts the premiere of Puccini'sMadama Butterflyat the Metropolitan Opera on 11 February 1907 was a triumphant success, with the presence of the composer adding special lustre to the brilliant performance of a distinguished cast. Amidst the general acclamation, however, a foreign visitor named Jihei Hashiguchi raised a dissenting voice in a letter to a local newspaper:

I can say nothing for the music ofMadama butterfly. Western music is too complicated for a Japanese. Even Caruso' celebrated singing does not appeal very much more than the barking of a dog in faraway woods.
Hugo Wolf and the operatic Grail: The search for a libretto
Authors: Youens Susan
Published: August 2008

The pre-history of a nineteenth-century composer's first opera often required labours more arduous and frustrating, more time-consuming by far, than the work of composition itself: the search for a suitable libretto or the source from which a libretto could be fashioned. The chronicle of Beethoven's travails before work on hisSchmerzenskindcould begin, his rejection of plays and poets both before and after the Bouilly-Sonnleithner text ofFidelio, is not the only instance of its kind. Later composers with operatic ambitions and without a court-sponsored coterie oflibrettistihad an even harder time. The difficulty of locating a good text was not the only or even the principal reason for Brahms's famous quip, ‘Better to marry than to write opera’, but it was certainly a contributing factor and a stumbling block for others. For those who, unlike Wagner, did not trust their own poetic skills, the doleful refrain, ‘A good poet is hard to find’, was a leitmotif more insistent than anything in theRing.
Liszt, Wagner and Heinrich Dorn'sDie Nibelungen
Authors: Leverett Adelyn Peck
Published: August 2008

Heinrich Dorn, conductor, composer and critic in mid-nineteenth-century Germany, was well known to his contemporaries as a man who disliked Wagner's music. He himself always claimed to have given Wagner every chance: ‘Sensible people who do not set themselves blindly either for or against Wagner's music’, he would comment, ‘cannot but admit that he is the greatest of living composers’. Yet his reviews of Wagner's work invariably ended in querulous diatribes against what he considered Wagner's refusal to supply the necessities of good operatic composition – lively plot, singable melody and if not traditional then at least recognisable forms – in works that, moreover, were far too long. ‘Individual moments seize one’, Dorn wrote after attending dress rehearsals for the Munich première ofTristan and Isolde, ‘but they are, as so often in Wagner's music, oases in a vast desert. … The second act ofTristanseemed to drag on even more endlessly than the first, and at last I found myself in such an apathetic condition that I almost turned and bit my neighbour … just to be delivered from the prevailing circumstances’.
On Dante and Italian music: Three moments
Authors: Petrobelli Pierluigi
Published: August 2008

We publish here, in slightly altered versions, three lectures given by Pierluigi Petrobelli in Autumn 1988 as Chair of Italian Culture at the University of California, Berkeley. The terms of the Chair, established in 1928, state that the person entrusted with the post should ‘lecture in illustration and interpretation of Italian culture’.
‘O cieli azzurri’: Exoticism and dramatic discourse in Aida
Authors: Seta Fabrizio Della
Published: August 2008

The use of semiotic methods and concepts in analytical studies of opera has not yet produced the results that the variety of communicative levels in musical theatre might lead us to expect. If, to repeat a frequently cited formulation by Pierluigi Petrobelli, ‘various systems work together in opera, each according to its nature and laws, and the result of the combination is much greater than the sum of the individual forces’, it seems likely that the difficulty of applying this principle may in fact be directly related to the multiplicity of ‘systems’ involved. Only theoretical enquiries that go beyond differentiating expressive levels can hope to arrive at a more satisfactory concept of this ‘system of systems’, and thus apply it in a useful way. The problem is of course too vast to be developed here; however, because the following reading of Aida involves such theoretical considerations, it may be useful to make explicit some basic difficulties involving polytextuality in opera.
Opera talk: A philosophical ‘phantasie’
Authors: Kivy Peter
Published: August 2008

The train of thought that I wish to pursue here was initiated by Edward T. Cone's recent essay ‘The World of Opera and its Inhabitants’. To the extent that my views diverge from his I suppose I may be taken for a critical adversary. But I prefer to think of the present effort as more a continuation and development of Professor Cone's ideas than an attempt to refute or criticise them. It is in the spirit of ongoing research rather than the more common one, in my profession, of philosophical confrontation that I offer remarks on the general questions, as posed by Cone: ‘How does the world of opera differ from other dramatic worlds? Who are the people that inhabit it, and what sorts of lives do they lead there?’ More particularly, my question is: What is the nature of operatic utterance? How are operatic characters ‘saying’?

In the first section of my paper I will present Professor Cone's answers to these questions. In the second I will go on what will appear, no doubt, to be a completely tangential excursion into R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of art. But in the final two sections I will try to weave these two seemingly disparate strands together into an answer of my own to the questions that Professor Cone has so insightfully raised. Perhaps ‘an answer of my own’ is too strong a phrase to use, implying something more like disagreement than is actually the case. So a better way of describing my whole enterprise, and the final sections especially, is ‘variations on a theme by Cone’.
Some representations of opera seria in opera buffa
Authors: Hunter Mary
Published: August 2008

It is becoming increasingly usual to think of music of the Classical period as conveying its meanings at least in part through a rhetoric of topoi. According to this model, such elements as rhythm, texture and melody evoke both musical and extra-musical ‘echoes’. Woven into the structure of the music, these echoes form a collage of connotations from which meaning can be inferred. As a genre of its time, opera buffa is in no way exempt from this ‘combinatorial’ process, or its corollary system of associative meaning. Indeed, every level of meaning in opera buffa arises from the combination and recombination of textual, musical and dramatic elements. For example, the characters, plot types and comic riffs of opera buffa are often drawn from the commedia dell'arte; we also find stories from folk tales and fairy tales, and from fashionable novels and spoken theatre. We find gestures and scenes from opera seria and tragédie lyrique, as well as quotations from and allusions to other opere buffe. The music also ranges widely in stylistic origin and reference, moving from low comedy to elevated coloratura, from bland neutrality to affecting sentimentality, and from extended expressions of a single emotion to lightning changes in Affekt. Thus the rhetoric of topoi characteristic of instrumental music of the period is included within a structure of reference and resonance that invokes textual and dramatic ‘sources’ as well as musical ones. Opera buffa is, in other words, a fundamentally intertextual genre.
Woman as image and narrative in Wagner's Parsifal: A case study
Authors: Emslie Barry
Published: August 2008

In much nineteenth-century European art ‘The Woman’ appears as an essentially symbolic figure saturated with ‘higher’ significance. Perhaps only in those literary forms that depend heavily on narrative does ‘she’ have any real chance of escaping a passive role. Otherwise, the female figure was used by male artists in an almost de-personalised manner that invariably emphasised abstract characteristics. At times The Woman is ‘elevated’ – so it would have appeared – to the highest symbolic level: to Liberty, Virtue, Humanity, Science, Art, Europa, etc. ‘She’ is, in aesthetic production, frequently a normative and seldom a narrative figure. Indeed her status as the former helps preclude her from active participation in the latter, so that even in narratives she often appears merely to observe the stories in which she is nominally involved. In artistic discourse, her best chance of liberation from an essentially symbolic identity and of breaking into the realm of active ‘life’ is to assume those qualities that lie most at odds with her conventional, morally uplifting status. The ‘bad’ woman – whore, temptress, manipulator of men – has a better chance than her ‘good’ Doppelgänger of playing a role rather than of merely assuming an ideological part.
Distant sounds – Fallen music: Der ferne Klang as ‘woman's opera’?
Authors: Franklin Peter
Published: August 2008

Wagnerian gestures were from the outset translations onto the stage of the imagined reactions of the public – the murmurings of the people, applause, the trumpet of self-confirmation or waves of enthusiasm. In the process their archaic muteness, their lack of language, proves its worth in a highly contemporary instrument of domination.
Newly discovered sketches for Puccini's Turandot at The Pierpont Morgan Library
Authors: Atlas Allan W.
Published: August 2008

Among the Puccini materials at The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (hereafter NYpm), there is a single folio that contains three previously unknown sketches for Puccini's final opera, Turandot. No doubt the sketches have escaped notice up to now because the folio on which they appear had inadvertently been included with a large series of sketches and drafts devoted to another of Puccini's operas, La fanciulla del West. The folio was included in the collection catalogued as Koch 989, where it stood as Item No. 8 among a series of twenty other folios and/or bifolios (forty-five pages of music in all) that transmit both preliminary sketches and more fully developed short-score continuity drafts for La fanciulla. Now, thanks to J.
A plan of the Pantheon Opera House (1790–92)
Authors: Price Curtis , Milhous Judith , Hume Robert D.
Published: August 2008

The Pantheon Opera remains among the least known of the major theatrical ventures in eighteenth-century London. It came into being amidst the conspiracies that flourished after the King's Theatre, Haymarket, was destroyed by fire in June 1789. Conceived as a kind of English Court Opera, the Pantheon was backed at enormous expense by the Duke of Bedford and the Marquis of Salisbury. It struggled through the 1790–91 season, accumulating ruinous debts, and then on 14 January 1792 it too burned to the ground, just four nights into its second season.
Constructing the Oriental ‘Other’: Saint-Saëns'sSamson et Dalila
Authors: Locke Ralph P.
Published: August 2008

Opera is rich in works that construct visions of the non-Western world and its inhabitants: Rameau'sLes Indes galantes, Mozart'sDie Entführung aus dem Serail, Bizet'sLes Pêcheurs de perles, Verdi'sAida, Strauss'sSalome, Puccini'sTurandot. In these operas the representation of what recent critical theory calls ‘the Other’ is most clearly announced in the basic plot, in characters' names, and in costumes, sets and props. But to what extent do the libretto and the music also participate in this project?

The question easily lends itself to a narrower formulation: to what extent do these operas signal Otherness – Turkishness, Indianness, Chineseness and so on – through musical materials that depart from Western stylistic norms or even reflect specific musical practices of the region in question? Scholars and critics have repeatedly posed the problem in these terms, only to find themselves frustrated by three limitations: general stylistic aberrations are often applied indiscriminately by composers to vastly different geographical settings; borrowed tunes and the like tend to lose distinctive features by being uprooted and transplanted; and whole stretches of these operas are written in an entirely Western idiom.
Cone's and Kivy's ‘World of Opera’
Authors: Rosen David
Published: August 2008

‘If music is a language, who is speaking?’ asked Edward T. Cone on the first page ofThe Composer's Voice(1974), later turning to such questions as ‘does a vocal persona [whether protagonist of a song or character in an opera] know he is singing?’ And does that persona hear the accompaniment? Cone's answer then was that ‘Consciously, he neither knows that he is singing nor hears the accompaniment; but his subconscious both knows and hears’.
Operatic ambiguities and the power of music
Authors: Rosand Ellen
Published: August 2008

‘Pur sempre su le nozze canzoneggiando vai.’ Arnalta's remark to Poppea (L'incoronazione di Poppea, Act II scene 10), occasioned by Poppea's lyrical exultation over the death of Seneca, provokes the closing sententia of Edward T. Cone's recent exploration of the ambiguous world of opera and its inhabitants. Translating the nurse's comment as ‘You're forever going around singing songs about your wedding’, Cone concludes that ‘this is just what characters in opera do: they go around singing songs all the time’.
Piccinni's Iphigénie en Tauride: ‘Chant périodique’ and dramatic structure
Authors: Schmierer Elisabeth
Published: August 2008

For my part, I cannot cease admiring the intelligence with which Monsieur Piccinni has led the audience from sentiment to sentiment, from interest to interest; how he has graduated the effect of his music – how one feels not only each scene but also its connection with the general tone of the subject; how all the airs, all the recitatives, all the ballets, all the choruses tend to refer to the whole, how all these individual groups eventually form a total group in which everything agrees, everything is true, in which each detail sets off those surrounding it. That is worthy to be called genuine dramatic music.
Wagner and the post-modern
Authors: Deathridge John
Published: August 2008

On 16 September 1989 a national British newspaper, The Independent, carried a full page advertisement placed by Technics for their latest ‘Hi-Fi Midi System for Music Lovers’, the CDX3. At the top of the page, Wagner's furrowed brow and glaring eyes, slightly askance, stared out as if insisting on, though not quite peremptorily demanding, a close reading of the text beneath. The text began as follows (comments in square brackets are mine):

To hear what he [Wagner] intended a hi-fi system has to be perfectly composed.
Gilda seduced: A tale untold
Authors: Hudson Elizabeth
Published: August 2008

A natural starting point for a critical reading of Verdi's Rigoletto might be the protagonist's ‘Cortigiani, vil razza dannata’ in Act II: an utterance around which much of the emotional intensity of the opera is centred. Rigoletto's outburst can be discussed to great advantage in terms of current musicological fashion, as it alters conventional forms in fascinating and provocative ways, and to great dramatic effect. Yet such an approach presupposes that the key to understanding operas lies in their Great Moments – those passages of intense musical expression that tend to be quoted in movies and television commercials. Of course these moments are a crucial aspect of our delight, and can be a rich source for interpretative ventures. But there is more to opera: various levels of meaning invite our exploration and enjoyment; hermeneutic ‘secrets’ lurk behind seemingly ‘trivial or irrelevant’ passages, and can lead to new perspectives on familiar works.
Janáček's speech-melody theory in concept and practice
Authors: Wingfield Paul
Published: August 2008

No aspect of Janáček's operas has been publicised more widely than their alleged use of ‘speech melodies’. Indeed, most commentators now assume thea prioriexistence of speech melodies in the composer's operas. However, only John Tyrrell has explored the matter in depth, and many basic questions about Janáček's speech-melody theory and practice remain unanswered. What follows is an attempt to investigate in detail one of the most prominent, and most misrepresented, issues of Janáček opera analysis. A brief initial digression into the principal characteristics of spoken Czech is unavoidable.
Literary motifs, musical form and the quest for the ‘Sublime’: Cherubini'sEliza ou le Voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard
Authors: Fend Michael
Published: August 2008

A common feature of Cherubini's Parisian operas of the 1790s is the displacement of one or more of the protagonists. They are out of sorts with their environment, experiencing a need to escape that prevents the traditional unity of place from focusing the drama. The heroine ofLodoïska(1791)isimprisoned in a tower; inEliza ou le Voyage aux glaciers du Mont St BernardFlorindo travels to Mont St Bernard to forget his beloved Eliza, who pursues him and saves him from suicide. For the heroine ofMédée(1797), Corinth represents unhappiness: she returns to her former home only to take revenge. InLes deux Journées(1800), Armand and Constance flee Paris to save their lives; even in the comic operaL'Hôtellerie portugaise(1798) the central location serves merely as a rendez-vous for the two lovers on their way to evade the wicked plans of Donna Gabriele's stepfather. These operas do not, in other words, unfold in reassuring environments where characters feel at home; nor are there neutral backgrounds that enable the drama to concentrate on personal interaction. What is more, although placing protagonists in such unhappy circumstances is widespread in late eighteenth-century opera, and ‘rescue operas’ in particular, it is at least arguable that Cherubini exploited their restlessness in a uniquely successful manner.
Opera and verismo: Regressive points of view and the artifice of alienation
Authors: Corazzol Adriana Guarnieri
Published: August 2008

Although the term ‘verismo” emerged in both literature and opera during roughly the same period (in novels and spoken theatre around the 1870s, in opera around the 1890s), the modern tendency has been to regard this as a coincidence of little consequence. However, it is perhaps worth returning to the question in light of recent studies in literary verismo, some of which offer new perspectives and even contribute to a re-definition of operatic verismo. I shall start, then, from the hypothesis that a new comparison between these two types of verismo may lead to a common definition.
Singing Brecht vs. Brecht singing: Performance in theory and practice
Authors: Kowalke Kim H.
Published: August 2008

During the last hour we spoke about the transformation of opera into music drama, and I explained the concept of theGesamtkunstwerk. So that nobody has any excuses, I'll write on the blackboard once more the names of

Richard Wagner

Richard Strauss

Now we come to a new chapter. You'll remember that I read to you from Wagner's texts. They always dealt with gods and heroes and curious concepts like forest murmur, magic fire, knights of the Grail, etc., which you found rather strange. Then there were some difficult thought processes, which you were unable to follow, and also certain things that you could not yet comprehend and are as yet none of your business. None of this was of much interest to you't want to go to sleep. You want to hear music you can comprehend without special explanation, music you can readily absorb and sing with relative ease. … Nowadays there are matters of greater interest to all, and if music cannot be placed in the service of society as a whole, it forfeits its right to exist in today's world.
The queen as king: Refashioning Semiramide forSeicentoVenice
Authors: Heller Wendy
Published: August 2008

‘From Nino and Semiramide, rulers of Assyria, was born a son who carried the name of his father, and so resembled his mother that the people could distinguish them only by means of masculine and feminine clothing.’ Thus begins theargo-mentoto the librettoLa Semiramide, produced in Venice at the Teatro SS Giovanni e Paolo for the 1670–71 season. The gender ambiguity described in theargomentois evident in the portrait of Semiramide from the frontispiece of that libretto (see Fig. 1). She sits alone at her dressing table, adorning her hair with roses in anticipation of her lover's arrival. She admires herself in the mirror, eternal symbol of female vanity. Her bare breasts and navel contrast strikingly with the metal shield that girds her chest. A high-topped military sandal is displayed prominently beneath the folds of her skirt. Prior to assuming the male disguise that she will wear for much of the opera, Semiramide is already pictured in a manner that is warlike and sexually dangerous, challenging and seductive. This mixture of male and female attributes is critical to her new guise as a Venetian heroine.
Meyerbeer and Mercadante? The reception of Meyerbeer in Italy
Authors: Wittmann Michael
Published: August 2008

‘First performed in 1840 and praised by Liszt for its orchestration and workman-ship, the score does not deny Meyerbeerian influence. The present recording, which sounds as if it has been taken from a live performance in the theatre, has a first-class cast and is altogether fascinating.’ The object of this encomium is La vestale by the Italian composer Saverio Mercadante (1795–1870), the first commercial recording of which was issued on CD in 1989. The quotation, taken from a leading record magazine, seems representative of the response that recordings of Mercadante's works can currently expect: scarcely a single review fails to mention Meyerbeer's positive influence on Mercadante. But how far is one in fact justified in linking these two composers?
Rossini the aesthetician
Authors: Fabbri Paolo
Published: August 2008

Like many composers of his period – and not just Italians – Rossini in his creative phase was no theorist: he was a practitioner, exclusively devoted to his craft. Theory was at one with practice; thinking fused with doing. It is thus fruitless to search Rossini's writings for some account of his poetics during his career in the opera house, and this not so much because he lacked time to provide one, involved though he was in hectic production schedules, but because his mental framework militated against it. He never discussed these matters in a treatise, never produced a formal plan of action for his work, and scarcely raised the subject even when writing to friends and colleagues. A systematic search through his correspondence bears little fruit, the sole exceptions being two letters from 1868 to Lauro Rossi and Filippo Filippi.
Russian musical orientalism: A postscript
Authors: Taruskin Richard
Published: August 2008

In a little study of the orientalist trope denoting sensuality (nega ) in nineteenth-century Russian opera, ‘“Entoiling the Falconet”: Russian Musical Orientalism in Context’ (this journal, 4 [1992], 253–80), I closed by observing that Chaikovsky, one among major Russian composers of his time, seemed immune to the lure of the East, and that his only orientalising numbers were two late and insignificant items: the Arabian Dance in The Nutcracker and the Moorish physician Ibn-Hakia's aria in the one-act opera Iolanta, which shared a double bill with The Nutcracker on their joint premiére during the last year of the composer's life (18/30 December 1892).
Exoticism and politics: Beaumarchais' and Salieri's Le Couronnement de Tarare (1790)
Authors: Betzwieser Thomas
Published: August 2008

Not least because of its librettist, Tarare (1787) ranks among the most interesting ‘reform’ operas of the eighteenth century. The work was by no means unique among such efforts at the Académie Royale de Musique, but it undoubtedly had the greatest impact after the Piccinni controversy at the end of the 1770s, in part because Beaumarchais was untiring in his efforts to promote the new opera – a task at which he was far superior to his librettistic colleagues. He presented his new operatic conception in a detailed preface to the libretto (‘Aux Abonnés de l'Opéra’), the central point of which was to emphasise the mixture of conventional genre traditions, in particular of serious and comic elements.
Visions of Medea: Musico-dramatic transformations of a myth
Authors: Russo Paolo
Published: August 2008

On 13 March 1797, Cherubini'sMédéewas given its première at the Théâtre Feydeau in Paris. The opera was designed to be atragédie lyriquewith all the trappings: only the hostility directed towards young composers (Cherubini, but also Méhul and Le Sueur) during the Terror and the Directory had prevented its performance at the city's first theatre, the Académie Royale de Musique (briefly re-christened the Théâtre de la République et des Arts after the Revolution). Although Cherubini's opera followed the conventions ofopéra comique(most important, of course, the use of spoken dialogue), it also bore significant traces of late eighteenth-centuryopera seriadramaturgy. This generic eclecticism placedMédéein the midst of an aesthetic tangle, an early manifestation of nineteenth-century opera's strained but still powerful connection to eighteenth-century conventions.