Opera in context
Subtitle: essays on historical staging from the late Renaissance to the time of Puccini
By: edited by Mark A. Radice.
Contributors: Radice, Mark A.
Publisher: Amadeus Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Portland, Or
Language: eng
Number of pages: 410
Subjects: Opera -- Production and direction
Description: These essays by respected scholars examine representative operatic production from diverse national schools and periods, documenting the history of operatic staging using the words of composers and their contemporaries from diaries, letters, and writings of the day. Historical performance practice and other purely musical matters are considered as well as the elements of stagecraft, including scenery, costumes, and lighting.

Together these essays form a comprehensive history of the staging techniques of opera production over the centuries, from Purcell to Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Puccini. Eyewitness accounts will create a new awareness of the defining effects of the original theaters upon familiar operas. Producers, directors, set designers, conductors, and singers will find a wealth of practical and inspiring information.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 371-395) and index.
Table of contents: title: Dalle macchine; title: la maraviglia : Bernardo Buontalenti's Il rapimento di Cefalo at the Medici Theater in 1600 / by Massimo Ossi; title: Opera and ballet in seventeenth-century French theaters : case studies of the Salle des machines and the Palais royal theater / by Barbara Coeyman; title: Theater architecture at the time of Henry Purcell and its influence on his "dramatick operas" / by Mark A. Radice; title: Handel's Haymarket Theatre / by Mark Stahura; title: Mozart and two theaters in Josephinian Vienna / by Malcolm S. Cole; title: The Neues Schauspielhaus in Berlin and the premiere of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz / by E. Douglas Bomberger; title: Paradise found : the Salle Le Peletier and French grand opera / by Karin Pendle and Stephen Wilkins; title: Verdi's operas and Giuseppe Bertoja's designs at the Gran teatro La Fenice, Venice ; Richard Wagner and his search for the ideal theatrical space / by Evan Baker; title: Realism on the opera stage : Belasco, Puccini, and the California sunset / by Helen M. Greenwald.