Dramma Giocoso

The three Mozart/Da Ponte operas offer an inexhaustible wellspring for critical reflection, possessing a complexity and equivocation common to all great humane works. They have the potential to reflect and refract whatever locus of contemporaneity may be the starting point for enquiry. Thus, even postmodern and postmillennial concerns, far from seeming irrelevant to these operas, are instead given new perspectives by them, whilst the music and the dramatic situations have the multivalency to accept each refreshed pallet of interpretation without loss of their essential character. These operas seem perennially ‘new'. In exploring the evergreen qualities of Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro, this collection of studies does not shun approaches that have foundations in established theory, but refracts them through such problems as the tension between operatic tradition and psychological realism, the co-existence of multiple yet equal plots, and the antagonism between the tenets of tradition and the need for self-actualization. In exploring such themes, the authors not only illuminate new aspects of Mozart's operatic compositions, but also probe the nature of musical analysis itself.

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

- Julian Rushton
'By their arias shall ye know them': characterization in aria-based opera

- Stefan Rohringer
Don Ottavio and the history of the tenor voice

- Sergio Durante
Don Giovanni then and now: text and performance

- James Webster
The Act IV Finale of Le nozze di Figaro: Dramatic and Musical Construction

PERSONALIA

COLOPHON

Format: Edited volume - paperback

Size: 240 × 150 × 10 mm

144 pages

ISBN: 9789058678454

Publication: April 25, 2012

Series: Geschriften van het Orpheus Instituut/Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute 10

Languages: English

Stock item number: 66140

Darla Crispin is a pianist and musicologist tracing perspectives from artistic research. Formerly an ORCiM Research Fellow, she is currently Associate Professor of Musicology at the Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH), Oslo.

James Webster is Goldwin Smith Professor of Music at Cornell University. He is the author of Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony and the Idea of Classical Style.

Julian Rushton is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Leeds and Chairman of the Editorial Committee of Musica Britannica.

Sergio Durante is Director of the Department of Art and Music History at the University of Padua.

Stefan Rohringer is Professor of Music Theory at Hochschule für Musik und Theater München.