Opera and sovereignty
Subtitle: transforming myths in eighteenth-century Italy
By: Martha Feldman.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 545
ISBN-13: 9780226241128; 9780226241135
Subjects: Opera -- Italy -- 18th century.; Mythology, Classical, in opera.; Opera -- Social aspects -- Italy -- 18th century.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: value: Evenings at the opera. Opera seria, sovereignty, performance ; Ritual and event ; Magic and myth ; Public opinion ; Evolutions ; Crisis and involution; value: Arias : form, feeling, exchange. Ritornello form as rhetorical exchange ; The singer as Magus ; Rubbing into magic ; Frame; value: Programming nature, Parma, 1759 : first case study. Enter nature ; Remaking viewers ; Cruel Phaedra! : Ippolito ed Aricia ; Pastoral redemption, or The old order restored ; Appendix : decree on audience behavior, Parma, October 4, 1749; value: Festivity and time. Time and the calendar ; Festive realms, festive spaces ; Unbridling the Holy City ; Laughter, ridicule, critique ; Nature revisited ; Appendix : edict on abuses in the theater, Rome, January 4, 1749; value: Abandonments in a theater state, Naples, 1764 : second case study. Compounds of royalty ; The sack of the beggars and the gift of the king ; Didone abbandonata : agonism and exchange ; Apocalyptic endings; value: Myths of sovereignty. Of myth and the mythographer ; Themistocles, hero ; History as myth ; Sovereigns and two heroes ; The exemplary prince and the loyal son : Artaxerxes and Arbaces ; The conquering lover-king : Alexander the Great ; A hapless emperor : Hadrian ; Proud hero and imperial autocrat : Aetius and Valentinian III ; The king cometh ; Bataille's sovereigns : a postscript on identification; value: Bourgeois theatrics, Perugia, 1781: third case study. A theater for the middle class ; What class is our genre? : reworking Artaserse ; Whether purses or persons ; Toward the ideology of a bourgeoisie ; Appendix : Annibale Mariotti's speech to the Accademia del Teatro Civico del Verzaro, December 31, 1781; value: Morals and malcontents. Dedications to ladies ; Conversations and femiuomini ; Regarding the senses : continuity, accordance, truth ; The family of opera; value: Death of the sovereign, Venice, 1797: fourth case study. The death of time ; Opera in a democratic ascension ; Pratile, June 4 ; La morte di Mitridate ; Summer season : Caesar, Brutus, and Joan of Arc ; Moralizing the spectator.