Read more
Opera in Transnational Contexts: Circulating Identities and Cultures sheds important light onto the travels of operatic works and the types of cultural exchanges that occurred as a result of the music, composers, singers, impresarios, and others moving from one locale to another between the late eighteenth and twentieth centuries.
Contributors reveal how complex constructions of identity and cultural value have been forged through the circulation, production, translation, adaptation and reception of different operatic and non-operatic genres. Engaging with decolonial agendas in North Africa, postcolonial and imperial history in Latin America, cultural dissonances and hegemonic aspirations in Japan, localities and peripheries from the old world to Australia, and the centrality of Europe in historiographies of opera, chapters examine the dynamics and multifaceted effects of transnational mobility.
The book will not only be important for opera studies, musicology, and music and voice studies, but also for researchers in history, art history, literary studies, translation, and cultural studies.
List of contents
IntroductionSection One: Identity, Adaptation, Genre
1. Opera and Modernity in Independent Latin America (1820-1825),
2. Reception and Creation of Musical Theatre in the Arab World: A Decolonial Approach,
3. Nation and Adaptation in Eighteenth-Century Swedish Opera
Section Two: Networks and Impresarios: The Mechanics of the Business
4. Consuming Operetta: Gender, Genre and the Bandmann Opera Company in Early Twentieth-Century Japan,
5. A Global History of the Italian Opera Industry: from Milan to South America (1840s),
6. Importing and Adapting between Milan and Paris: The Case of Edoardo Sonzogno,
7. Theatre and Soft Power in Fascist Italy: A Place for Opera in the International Arena
Section Three: The Transnational Reception of Singing and Singers
8. Continuities and Fissures in the Cultural Reception of Italian Opera and Singers in Early Twentieth-Century Buenos Aires,
9. Translating Opera in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) and Colombia (Bogotá) in the Nineteenth Century,
10. The Diva and Transnational Singing: Anne Charton-Demeur
Section Four: Repertoires, Production and Localities
11. Transnational Italian Opera Production in Nineteenth-Century Vienna: Aida, a case study,
12. Dreaming of Wagner: Performing Gluck and the Aspiration for a National Theatre in Japan,
13. Adjö Mimi! Margit Rosengren and the Transfer of Popular Musical Theatre to Sweden in the 1920s,
14. Constructing Opera: Transnational Forces in Opera in Australia (1955-1985): A Building, a Diva and Three Musical Directors
About the author
Barbara Gentili is Senior Lecturer and director of the Theatrical Voice Research Centre, University of Surrey.
Paulo M. Kühl is Professor of Art History and History of Opera at the Arts Institute, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil).
Clair Rowden is Professor of Musicology and Head of Music at the School of Culture and Creative Arts (SCCA), University of Glasgow.
