Elements in Musical Theatre – serie
Visar alla böcker i serien Elements in Musical Theatre. Handla med fri frakt och snabb leverans.
16 produkter
16 produkter
Kickstarting Italian Opera in the Andes
The 1840s and the First Opera Companies
Häftad, Engelska, 2023
222 kr
Skickas
During the 19th century, Italian opera became truly transatlantic and its rapid expansion is one of the most exciting new areas of study in music and the performing arts. Beyond the Atlantic coasts, opera searched for new spaces to expand its reach. This Element discusses about the Italian opera in Andean countries like Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia during the 1840s and focuses on opera as a product that both challenged and was challenged in the Andes by other forms of performing arts, behaviours, technologies, material realities, and business models.
The Revue in Twentieth-Century Budapest
From Cosmopolitan Night-Clubs to Stalinist Dogma
Häftad, Engelska, 2025
226 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Since the introduction of modern revues in 1925, the genre faced near-constant political scrutiny in Budapest. Yet by the 1930s, the city had become the capital of Central European cosmopolitan nightlife. The closure of Hungary's borders after World War II ended any hope of reclaiming this international status. Under communism and the Stalinist totalitarian regime, the revue-despite its popularity-remained politically stigmatized. For the first time, entertainment was treated as a cultural matter rather than merely a law enforcement issue, but it was forced to conform to ideological expectations. Three attempts to legitimize the genre in the 1950s ultimately failed, shaping the trajectory of live entertainment in the era. By the 1960s, revues were officially accepted, yet their cultural significance had faded amid the rise of new entertainment forms.
226 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Since 1997, revivals have moved operetta away from the nostalgic performance style of the mid twentieth century, returning to its original satirical spirit grounded in ironic mockery of political and social norms and institutions. This Element compares productions of Offenbach's Belle Hélène and Kálmán's Herzogin von Chicago, considering their choices with regard to plot, text, performance style, music, and costumes and sets. In every case, there is some reinterpretation involved. Satire of times, places, and current politics can be found. Some versions tweak the original while others expand and alter it in a full Regietheater approach, often influenced by a postmodern aesthetic. Directors and performers perceive an opportunity to recreate the central experience of operetta - but is that defined as the original text, Dionysian pleasure, or absurdist theater? The genre lives on mostly through creative approaches to revival.
Singing Zarzuela, 1896-1958
Approaching Portamento and Musical Expression through Historical Recordings
Häftad, Engelska, 2024
239 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
In the last few years, digitizations and reissues of historical recordings of Spanish zarzuela - from wax cylinders in the 1890s to long-play records in the 1950s - have revealed a range of contrasting vocal performance styles. By focusing on portamento, this Element sets the foundations for a contextually sensitive history of vocal performance practices in zarzuela. It takes stock of technological changes and shifts in commercial strategies and listening habits to reveal what the recorded evidence tells us about the historical development of portamento practices and considers how these findings can allow us to reconstruct the expressive code of zarzuela as it was performed in the late nineteenth century and how it transformed itself throughout the next half century. These transformations are contextualized alongside other changes, including the make-up of audiences, the discourses about the genre's connection to national identity and the influence of other musical-theatrical genres and languages.
Singing Zarzuela, 1896-1958
Approaching Portamento and Musical Expression through Historical Recordings
Inbunden, Engelska, 2024
771 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
In the last few years, digitizations and reissues of historical recordings of Spanish zarzuela - from wax cylinders in the 1890s to long-play records in the 1950s - have revealed a range of contrasting vocal performance styles. By focusing on portamento, this Element sets the foundations for a contextually sensitive history of vocal performance practices in zarzuela. It takes stock of technological changes and shifts in commercial strategies and listening habits to reveal what the recorded evidence tells us about the historical development of portamento practices and considers how these findings can allow us to reconstruct the expressive code of zarzuela as it was performed in the late nineteenth century and how it transformed itself throughout the next half century. These transformations are contextualized alongside other changes, including the make-up of audiences, the discourses about the genre's connection to national identity and the influence of other musical-theatrical genres and languages.
The Revue in Twentieth-Century Budapest
From Cosmopolitan Night-Clubs to Stalinist Dogma
Inbunden, Engelska, 2025
701 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Since the introduction of modern revues in 1925, the genre faced near-constant political scrutiny in Budapest. Yet by the 1930s, the city had become the capital of Central European cosmopolitan nightlife. The closure of Hungary's borders after World War II ended any hope of reclaiming this international status. Under communism and the Stalinist totalitarian regime, the revue-despite its popularity-remained politically stigmatized. For the first time, entertainment was treated as a cultural matter rather than merely a law enforcement issue, but it was forced to conform to ideological expectations. Three attempts to legitimize the genre in the 1950s ultimately failed, shaping the trajectory of live entertainment in the era. By the 1960s, revues were officially accepted, yet their cultural significance had faded amid the rise of new entertainment forms.
701 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Gypsy, the groundbreaking 1959 Broadway musical by Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents, introduced the world of musical theater to one of the most formidable female characters ever to strut onto the stage: Madam (Momma) Rose. She embodies the archetypal "stage mother" whose lifelong journey to achieve fame, enacted vicariously through her daughters and their vagabond life across America, drives her to a "madness" akin to that of the quintessential operatic madwoman. Her famous mad scene, "Rose's Turn," demonstrates the many analytical possibilities intrinsic to this character definition. The creators of Gypsy's Rose thus showcased the "Broadway musical madwoman" type: a female character who, like her foremother the operatic madwoman, is rife with gendered complexity that creates a fascinating opportunity for feminist analytical study. This Element's two-pronged approach uses the frameworks of feminist theory and musicological analysis to consider the importance, legacy, and reception of Rose's journey.
226 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Gypsy, the groundbreaking 1959 Broadway musical by Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents, introduced the world of musical theater to one of the most formidable female characters ever to strut onto the stage: Madam (Momma) Rose. She embodies the archetypal "stage mother" whose lifelong journey to achieve fame, enacted vicariously through her daughters and their vagabond life across America, drives her to a "madness" akin to that of the quintessential operatic madwoman. Her famous mad scene, "Rose's Turn," demonstrates the many analytical possibilities intrinsic to this character definition. The creators of Gypsy's Rose thus showcased the "Broadway musical madwoman" type: a female character who, like her foremother the operatic madwoman, is rife with gendered complexity that creates a fascinating opportunity for feminist analytical study. This Element's two-pronged approach uses the frameworks of feminist theory and musicological analysis to consider the importance, legacy, and reception of Rose's journey.
701 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Since 1997, revivals have moved operetta away from the nostalgic performance style of the mid twentieth century, returning to its original satirical spirit grounded in ironic mockery of political and social norms and institutions. This Element compares productions of Offenbach's Belle Hélène and Kálmán's Herzogin von Chicago, considering their choices with regard to plot, text, performance style, music, and costumes and sets. In every case, there is some reinterpretation involved. Satire of times, places, and current politics can be found. Some versions tweak the original while others expand and alter it in a full Regietheater approach, often influenced by a postmodern aesthetic. Directors and performers perceive an opportunity to recreate the central experience of operetta - but is that defined as the original text, Dionysian pleasure, or absurdist theater? The genre lives on mostly through creative approaches to revival.
Between Speech and Song
Aspects of Hybrid Voice in Twentieth-Century German Opera
Häftad, Engelska, 2026
267 kr
Kommande
At the turn of the twentieth century, operatic singing in the German-speaking world remained deeply influenced by the Italian tradition, which implied a lyrical vocal style that prioritised technical precision, tonal beauty, and expressive clarity. From the 1910s onward, composers increasingly and systematically explored vocal techniques that blurred the boundary between speech and song, referred to here as the 'hybrid voice'. These approaches emerged from a complex interplay of symbolic, aesthetic, political, and philosophical influences and reflect a search for more diverse and individualised modes of vocal expression. This Element examines the hybrid voice in four seminal works of German modernism: Alban Berg's Wozzeck, Kurt Weill's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten, and Adriana Hölszky's Bremer Freiheit. By situating each work within its historical and stylistic context, it traces a broader musical trajectory in German opera from expressionism and new objectivity to the postwar avant-garde.
Between Speech and Song
Aspects of Hybrid Voice in Twentieth-Century German Opera
Inbunden, Engelska, 2026
861 kr
Kommande
At the turn of the twentieth century, operatic singing in the German-speaking world remained deeply influenced by the Italian tradition, which implied a lyrical vocal style that prioritised technical precision, tonal beauty, and expressive clarity. From the 1910s onward, composers increasingly and systematically explored vocal techniques that blurred the boundary between speech and song, referred to here as the 'hybrid voice'. These approaches emerged from a complex interplay of symbolic, aesthetic, political, and philosophical influences and reflect a search for more diverse and individualised modes of vocal expression. This Element examines the hybrid voice in four seminal works of German modernism: Alban Berg's Wozzeck, Kurt Weill's Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten, and Adriana Hölszky's Bremer Freiheit. By situating each work within its historical and stylistic context, it traces a broader musical trajectory in German opera from expressionism and new objectivity to the postwar avant-garde.
A Huge Revolution of Theatrical Commerce
Walter Mocchi and the Italian Musical Theatre Business in South America
Häftad, Engelska, 2020
239 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
In the first third of the twentieth century, South America became the most important market for many European theatrical companies. When Italy found itself in various theatrical crises, Walter Mocchi created a transoceanic theatrical empire, using his business acumen to craft viable solutions. While his efforts were most visible in the sphere of opera, he played an extremely significant role in the promotion and circulation of popular forms of musical theatre (such as operetta) and staged world premieres of works by Italian superstars in Argentina (such as Mascagni's Isabeau), thus offering an early example of what Stephen Greenblatt calls 'cultural mobility'.
"Why Aren't They Talking?"
The Sung-Through Musical from the 1980s to the 2010s
Häftad, Engelska, 2022
239 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
In the American musical theater, the most typical form of structuring musicals has been the book musical, in which songs interrupt spoken dialogue and add means to depict characters and dramatic situations. After 1980, a form of structuring musicals that expands upon the aesthetic conventions of the book musical came to prominence. Sung-through musicals challenged the balance between talking and singing in musical theater in scripts that are entirely or nearly entirely sung. Although often associated with British musicals, this Element focuses on American sung-through musicals composed and premiered between 1980 and 2019. Their creative teams have employed specific procedures and compositional techniques through which music establishes characterization and expression when either very little or nothing is spoken and thus define how the musical reinvented itself toward and in the twenty-first century.
239 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
Although nineteenth-century legislation had tried to ensure a precise separation between genre and institution for Parisian music in the theatre, it had inadvertently laid out a field on which the politics of genre could be played out as agents and actors of all types deployed various forms of artistic power. During the Second Empire, from 1854 until 1870, the state took over day-to-day control of the Opéra in ways that were without precedent. Every element of the Opéra's activity was subjugated to the exigency of Empire; the selection or artists, works and more general questions of artistic policy were handed over to politicians. The Opéra effectively became a branch of government. The result was a stagnation of the Opéra's repertory, and beneficiaries were the composers of larger-scale works for competing organisations: the Opéra Comique and the Théâtre Lyrique.
West Side Story in Spain
The Transcultural Adaptation of an Iconic American Show
Häftad, Engelska, 2022
239 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
West Side Story first became famous in Spain when the Robert Wise film opened there in 1962, the version remaining popular for decades. Brief international tours came to various cities in Spain in the 1980s, but their presence did not diminish memory of the film, which played a major influence on the country's first stage adaptation of the show in 1996. Directed by Ricard Reguant and produced in Barcelona by Focus, the production also toured. After another international tour played in three Spanish cities in summer 2009, the Madrid company SOM Produce mounted a rendition in 2018 directed and choreographed by Federico Barrios, the first Spanish stage version based on the original 1957 staging. This Element compares the adaptations of the 1996 and 2018 versions in detail, illuminating issues encountered when translating a musical for another culture.
239 kr
Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar
As a legacy of the Habsburg Empire, performances of Jacques Offenbach's musical stage works played an important role in Budapest musico-theatrical life in the twentieth century. However, between the collapse of the Empire and the 1956 anti-Soviet revolution, political ideologies strongly influenced the character of these productions, when they took place. Public performances of Offenbach's works were prohibited between 1938 and 1945 and they became the bases for propagandadistic adaptations in the 1950s. This element explores how the local operetta tradition and the vogue of operettas featuring composers as characters during the interwar period were also important factors in how Offenbach's stage works were performed in mid-twentieth century Budapest in versions that sometimes bore little resemblance to the originals.