Vincenzo Bellini and the Aesthetics of Early Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera

Notes ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 112
Author(s):  
William Ashbrook ◽  
Simon Maguire
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Vincenzo Bellini

In Praise of Convention: Formula and Experiment in Bellini's Self-Borrowings

2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Smart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Empty Space ◽  
The Self ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Bel Canto ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
As If

In the 1880s, the realization that Bellini had extensively reused melodies from early or unfinished works in his most famous operas provoked a small aesthetic crisis in Italy. Although today such reuse of material is no longer looked upon as a scandalous breach of compositional integrity, scholars have been slow to examine Bellini's self-borrowings for clues to the evolution of his style or to his attitudes toward the relations between melody and drama. Most of Bellini's self-borrowings show the composer simplifying his melodies, reducing harmonic and melodic variety as if to distance himself from bel canto convention. At the same time, melodic convention is essential to understanding the borrowings, a fact that becomes particularly obvious in those cases where dramatic parallels between the two contexts of a melody are obscure or nonexistent. For example, the recasting of a cheerful cabaletta in Zaira as a lament in I Capuleti e i Montecchi relies on a resemblance between melodic figures conventionally used to imitate tears or laughter-but also critiques those conventions. An allusive relationship between refrains in Il pirata and I puritani similarly derives its logic more from a shared musical evocation of solitude and empty space than from any overt dramatic resemblance between the two scenes. The article argues that for Bellini self-borrowing was entangled with the looser techniques of allusion and reliance on melodic convention. For this reason, study of the self-borrowings provides a model for engaging with the musical language of early nineteenth-century Italian opera, redressing the tendency to dismiss its musical detail as "merely" conventional and thus unworthy of analysis.

‘Stage music’ in early nineteenth-century Italian opera

1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Zoppelli
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mikhail Bakhtin ◽  
Social Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Modern Novel ◽  
Opposite Pole

It has become commonplace to assume that language and style in Italian opera are not a unified phenomenon, easily comparable with the language and style of a purely musical work. Rather they constitute the various elements of a plurilinguistic interplay in which the opposite pole from ‘the author’ is the characters: those figures whose personality, function and social condition command an individual musical language. Musical expression is determined by an interaction of the author's discourse with the fictive discourse of characters; even when one or the other seems to dominate, there remains an important, implicitly dialogic element, one that can sometimes be inferred solely from a sense of discordant context. In many instances, therefore, operatic discourse suggests analogies with the ‘dialogic’ nature of the modern novel posited by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin.

Meyerbeer'sIl crociato in Egitto: mélodrame, opera, orientalism

1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Everist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Early History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Giacomo Meyerbeer ◽  
History Of

Il crociato in Egittowas the last in a series of Italian operas written by Giacomo Meyerbeer between 1817 and 1824. Although hisEmma di ResburgoandMargherita d'Anjouhad been successful in Venice and Milan, it wasIl crociatothat put Meyerbeer in the first rank of internationally renowned composers of Italian opera. The work's contemporary popularity makes it an important element in the history of early nineteenth-century Italian opera, and the abundant source material that survives for the opera permits a reconstruction of its early history. Furthermore, the publication in facsimile of a copyist's score from the première at La Fenice and the recording of the work by Opera Rara have encouraged a modern revaluation.

A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decorations

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fruit Trees ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Teaching Aids ◽  
Scientific Teaching ◽  
Glass Marble ◽  
History Of ◽  
By Products ◽  
Wax Models

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.

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