Landscape and Gender in Italian Opera: The Alpine Virgin from Bellini to Puccini (Cambridge Studies in Opera) - Hardcover

Senici, Emanuele

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521834376 ISBN 13: 9780521834377

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Synopsis

In this unusual study, Emanuele Senici explores the connection between landscape and gender in Italian opera through the emblematic figure of the Alpine virgin. In the nineteenth century, operas portraying an emphatically virginal heroine, a woman defined by her virginity, were often set in the mountains, most frequently the Alps. The clarity of the sky, the whiteness of the snow and the purity of the air were associated with the 'innocence' of the female protagonist. Senici discusses a number of works particularly relevant to the origins, transformations and meanings of this conventional association including Bellini's La sonnambula (1831), Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix (1842), Verdi's Luisa Miller (1849), and Puccini's La fanciulla del West (1910). This convention presents an unusual point of view - a theme rather than a composer, a librettist, a singer or a genre - from which to observe Italian opera 'at work' over a century.

About this title

About the Author

Emanuele Senici is University Lecturer in Music at the University of Oxford, where he is a Fellow of St Hugh's College. In 2002 he was awarded the Jerome Roche Prize of the Royal Musical Association. He has edited The Cambridge Companion to Rossini (2004) and co-edits the Cambridge Opera Journal.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521834376
• ISBN 13: 9780521834377
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368