Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera

Operatic works by Italian composers of the nineteenth century have undergone countless transformations since their premieres, shifting shape in response to a variety of new geographic, temporal, technological, and performative contexts. These enduring works by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, and their contemporaries have myriad stories to tell. Fashions and Legacies reconstructs a selection of these stories, exploring ways in which operatic works have been reshaped and revived throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. While focusing on how these works have been altered, the thirteen contributors in this book also respond to fundamental questions: how has this music retained - or sacrificed - its powerful messages in the face of deconstruction and recontextualization over time and place? What happens to these operas once they have escaped control of their authors? The contributions of singers, stage directors, conductors, and other theatrical personalities stand front and center of the volume.

1. Introduction: Italian opera's fashions and legacies Hilary Poriss; 2. Viardot sings Handel (with thanks to George Sand, Chopin, Meyerbeer, Gounod, and Julius Rietz) Ellen T. Harris; 3. Partners in rhyme: Alphonse Royer, Gustave Vaëz, and foreign opera in Paris during the July Monarchy Mark Everist; 4. Verdian opera in the Victorian parlor Roberta Montemorra Marvin; 5. I falsi Puritani: the opera's early history in Italy Fabrizio Della Seta; 6. To the ear of the amateur: performing Ottocento opera piecemeal Hilary Poriss; 7. Peeping at pachyderms: convergences of sex and music in France around 1800 Jeffrey Kallberg; 8. Aida and nine readings of 'empire' Ralph P. Locke; 9. Comic sights: stage directions in Luigi Ricci's autograph scores Francesco Izzo; 10. Staging and form in Giuseppe Verdi's Otello Andreas Giger; 11. Stanislavski's La bohème (1927) David B. Rosen; 12. What is tradition? Will Crutchfield; 13. Epilogue: the art of 'translation' John Mauceri.

Operatic works by Italian composers of the nineteenth century have undergone countless transformations since their premieres. This volume explores the ways in which operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, and their contemporaries have been reshaped and revived throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

Roberta Montemorra Marvin is Director of the Institute for Italian Opera Studies at the University of Iowa, where she is also a Research Fellow and an Associate Professor.
Hilary Poriss is Assistant Professor at Northeastern University.