Sentimental Opera: Questions of Genre in the Age of Bourgeois Drama (Cambridge Studies in Opera) - Softcover

Castelvecchi, Stefano

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1108461832 ISBN 13: 9781108461832

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Sentimental Opera is a study of the relationship between opera and two major phenomena of eighteenth-century European culture - the cult of sensibility and the emergence of bourgeois drama. A thorough examination of social and cultural contexts helps to explain the success of operas such as Paisiello's Nina as well as the extreme emotional reactions of their audiences. Like their counterparts in drama, literature and painting, these works brought to the fore serious contemporary problems including the widespread execution of deserters, the treatment of the insane, and anxieties relative to social and familial roles. They also developed a specifically operatic version of the dominant language of sensibility. This wide-ranging study involves such major cultural figures as Goldoni, Diderot and Mozart, while refining our understanding of the theatrical genre system of their time.

About this title

About the Author

Stefano Castelvecchi is Lecturer in Music at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John's College. He has published critical editions of works by Rossini and Verdi and various articles on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian opera. His edition of Abramo Basevi's The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi (1859) is forthcoming.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108461832
• ISBN 13: 9781108461832
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 297