Description
Book SynopsisA study of the many genres and contexts in which Shakespeare and his work have enjoyed a musical afterlife. The fascinating book discusses opera, ballet, and classical symphony alongside musicals, film soundtracks and hip-hop.
Trade Review"
Shakespreare and Music is about afterlives, in quotations, borrowings, citations, adaptations, all of it after Shakespeare’s own lifetime. It is also about reception and interpretation, re-imagining, appropriation, in Verdi of course, Tchaikovsky, Liszt, and then on contemporary films, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn. This is at once a learned book, an original contribution to learning, and a story that lovers of Shakespeare and music will enjoy and profit from. It is a real success: gracefully written, elegant, intelligent, witty."
David Bevington, University of Chicago
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements viii
Prelude 1
1 ‘All That Jazz’: Shakespeare and Musical Adaptation 11
2 Classical Shakespeares 29
3 ‘Shall we dance?’: Shakespeare at the Ballet 59
4 ‘Shakespeare with a contemporary musical twist’ 73
5 Shakespeare in the Opera House 96
6 Giuseppe Verdi and Benjamin Britten:
Case Studies in Shakespearean Opera 112
7 Symphonic Film Scores 135
8 ‘You know the movie song’:
Contemporary and Hybrid Film Scores 159
9 Contemporary Music and Popular Culture 182
Coda 194
Glossary of Musical Terms 198
Bibliography 202
Discography 214
Filmography 219
Index 221
