Author: Alanna Skuse Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1108843611 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 211
Book Description
Implements stories of surgical alteration to consider how early modern individuals conceived the relationship between body, mind, and self.
Author: Anne Rice Publisher: Ballantine Books ISBN: 0345396936 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 578
Book Description
In a sweeping saga of music and vengeance, the acclaimed author of The Vampire Chronicles draws readers into eighteenth-century Italy, bringing to life the decadence beneath the shimmering surface of Venice, the wild frivolity of Naples, and the magnetic terror of its shadow, Vesuvius. This is the story of the castrati, the exquisite and otherworldly sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices win the adulation of royal courts and grand opera houses throughout Europe. These men are revered as idols—and, at the same time, scorned for all they are not. Praise for Anne Rice and Cry to Heaven “Daring and imaginative . . . [Anne] Rice seems like nothing less than a magician: It is a pure and uncanny talent that can give a voice to monsters and angels both.”—The New York Times Book Review “To read Anne Rice is to become giddy as if spinnning through the mind of time.”—San Francisco Chronicle “If you surrender and go with her . . . you have surrendered to enchantment, as in a voluptuous dream.”—The Boston Globe “Rice is eerily good at making the impossible seem self-evident.”—Time
Author: Helen Berry Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191620181 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 327
Book Description
The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century. In collaboration with the English composer Thomas Arne, he popularized Italian opera, translating it for English audiences and making it accessible with his own compositions which he performed in London's pleasure gardens. Mozart and J. C. Bach both composed for him. He was a rock star of his day, with a massive female following. He was also a castrato. Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible. His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him. There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly. Tenducci's wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performer she could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl. She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel. Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicized and unique marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before. Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the castrato and his wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploring questions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time.
Author: Martha Feldman Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520292448 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 496
Book Description
The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato’s comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy—involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives—whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers—from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini—were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.
Author: Elizabeth Eger Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521768802 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 327
Book Description
The first academic and interdisciplinary volume exploring bluestocking portraiture, performance and patronage in eighteenth-century Britain, opening vistas for future scholarship.
Author: Vivien Shotwell Publisher: Anchor Canada ISBN: 0385678053 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 306
Book Description
"Shotwell lyrically navigates her protagonist through love affairs, heartache and dazzling high-stakes performances. This is an exquisite read for history fans, classical-music lovers and romance aficionados alike." --Chatelaine Vienna Nocturne recounts the turbulent life and brilliantly successful career of young British opera singer Anna Storace, a child prodigy who is taken by her parents to Italy at age thirteen to advance her career. In love with life and wildly ambitious, Anna wants everything--to be famous, to be loved--and this leads her to make some fatal choices. We watch her turn from a carefree young girl to a passionate young woman, and it is during this transformation that her affair with Mozart blossoms. The story of their love, no less powerful for being forbidden, is reminiscent of the passionate thwarted romances described in Loving Frank and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Written in melodious prose by a young author studying opera at Yale, Vienna Nocturne is dramatic story of a woman's battle to find love and fame in an 18th-century world that controls and limits her at every turn.
Author: Tom E. Faulkner Publisher: Boydell & Brewer ISBN: 184383541X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 350
Book Description
How distinctive is the landscape of the North East of England? How far does its distinctive nature contribute to region's identity? These are key questions addressed by this book, drawing on hiterto little-known detail and many new research findings. --
Author: Richard Harvell Publisher: Random House Canada ISBN: 0307358259 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 386
Book Description
Dazzling, enchanting and epic, The Bells is the confession of a thief, kidnapper and unlikely lover — a boy with the voice of an angel whose exquisite sense of hearing becomes both his life's tragic curse and its greatest blessing. Moses Froben was born in a belfry high in the Swiss Alps, the bastard son of a deaf-mute woman banished to the church tower to ring each day the Loudest and Most Beautiful Bells in the land. His life is simple but he is content, until the day his father recognizes Moses's singular sense of hearing and its power to expose his sins. Cast into the world with only his ears to protect and guide him, Moses finds refuge in the choir of the great Abbey of St. Gall and becomes its star singer, only to endure the horrifying act of castration meant to preserve his angelic voice and turn him into a musico. In a letter to his son, Moses recounts his humble birth in eighteenth-century Switzerland and his life as a novice monk, and tells of the two noble friends — and a forbidden lover — whom he cherished during his chaotic years in Mozart's Vienna as apprentice to the great Gaetano Guadagni, and even as he ascended Europe's most celebrated stages as Lo Svizzero. But in this letter he will also reveal the astonishing secrets of his past and answer the question that has shadowed his fame: how did Moses Froben, world-renowned musico, come to raise a son who by all rights he could never have sired?
Author: Helen Berry Publisher: ISBN: 0198758480 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 381
Book Description
The fascinating story of what happened to the orphaned and abandoned children of the London Foundling Hospital, and the consequences of Georgian philanthropy. From serving Britain's growing global empire in the Royal Navy, to the suffering of child workers in the Industrial Revolution, the Foundling Hospital was no simple act of charity.
Author: Joyce Bourne Kennedy Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 392
Book Description
"From Aeneas to Zaida, Who Married Figaro? contains more than 2,500 entries on operatic characters from around the world. Giving details of the composer of each role as well as notable performances, this unique reference book also provides comprehensive synopses for over 200 operas and operettas. It features articles by well-known personalities from the world of opera, including Placido Domingo, Dame Janet Baker, and, new to this edition, Christine Brewer, Susan Bullock, Simon Keenlyside, and Joyce DiDonato. This fully revised edition now contains an appendix of contemporary opera of the last ten years, offering detailed synopses and world premiere cast lists. Up to date, authoritative, and packed with valuable information, this A-Z is an essential book for opera lovers."--BOOK JACKET.
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Author: Alanna Skuse
Author: Anne Rice
Author: Helen Berry
Author: Martha Feldman
Author: Elizabeth Eger
Author: Vivien Shotwell
Author: Tom E. Faulkner
Author: Richard Harvell
Author: Helen Berry
Author: Joyce Bourne Kennedy