Leonora's Last Act : : Essays in Verdian Discourse / / Roger Parker.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Parker, Roger,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2014]; ©1998
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Studies in Opera ; 31
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (208 p.) :; 4 halftones 2 line illus. 46 music exs.

In these essays, Roger Parker brings a series of valuable insights to bear on Verdian analysis and criticism, and does so in a way that responds both to an opera-goer's love of musical drama and to a scholar's concern for recent critical trends. As he writes at one point: "opera challenges us by means of its brash impurity, its loose ends and excess of meaning, its superfluity of narrative secrets." Verdi's works, many of which underwent drastic revisions over the years and which sometimes bore marks of an unusual collaboration between composer and librettist, illustrate in particular why it can sometimes be misleading to assign fixed meanings to an opera. Parker instead explores works like Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La forza del destino, and Falstaff from a variety of angles, and addresses such contentious topics as the composer's involvement with Italian politics, the possibilities of an "authentic" staging of his work, and the advantages and pitfalls of analyzing his operas according to terms that his contemporaries might have understood. Parker takes into account many of the interdisciplinary influences currently engaging musicologists, in particular narrative and feminist theory. But he also demonstrates that close attention to the documentary evidence--especially that offered by autograph scores--can stimulate equal interpretive activity. This book serves as a model of research and critical thinking about opera, while nevertheless retaining a deep respect for opera's continuing power to touch generations of listeners.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- CHAPTER ONE. On Reaching the Beguiled Shore -- CHAPTER TWO. "Va pensiero" and the Insidious Mastery of Song -- CHAPTER THREE. "Insolite forme," or Basevi's Garden Path -- CHAPTER FOUR. Leonora's Last Act: La forza del destino -- CHAPTER FIVE. Falstaff and Verdi's Final Narratives -- CHAPTER SIX. Reading the livrets, or the Chimera of "Authentic" Staging -- CHAPTER SEVEN. Lina Kneels; Gilda Sings -- CHAPTER EIGHT. Leonora's Last Act: It trovatore