Description
Book SynopsisIt has long been argued that opera is all about sex. Siren Songs is the first collection of articles devoted to exploring the impact of this sexual obsession, and of the power relations that come with it, on the music, words, and staging of opera. Here a distinguished and diverse group of musicologists, literary critics, and feminist scholars address a wide range of fascinating topics--from Salome''s striptease to hysteria to jazz and gender--in Italian, English, German, and French operas from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The authors combine readings of specific scenes with efforts to situate these musical moments within richly and precisely observed historical contexts. Challenging both formalist categories of musical analysis and the rhetoric that traditionally pits a male composer against the female characters he creates, many of the articles work toward inventing a language for the study of gender and opera.
The collection opens with Mary Ann Sma
Trade Review
"Clearly part of the next generation of gender studies in opera, this book will be of interest to scholars and informed amateurs alike."--Library Journal
Table of Contents
Acknowlegments vii Introduction by Mary Ann Swart 3 Through Voices, History by Catht~riuc Clement 17 The Absent Mother in Oprah Seria by Martha Feldman 29 Staging Mozart's Women by Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Mary Hunter, Gretchen A. Wheelock 47 The Career of Cherubino, Or the Trouser Role Grows Up by Heather Hadlock 67 Elisabeth's Last Act by Roger Parker 93 Body and Voice in Melodrama and Opera by Peter Brooks 118 Ulterior Motives: Verdi's Recurring Themes Revisited by Mary Ann Smart 135 Melisande's Hair, or the Trouble in Allemonde: A Postmodern Allegory at the Opera-Comique by Katherine Bergeron 160 Opera: Two or Three Things I Know about Her by Lawrence Kramer 186 Staging the Female Body: Richard Strauss's Salome by Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon, M.D. 204 "Soulless Machines" and Steppenwolves: Renegotiating Masculinity in Krenek's Jonny spiel auf~ by Joseph HHenry Auner 222 "Grimes Ia at His Exercise": Sex, Politics, and Violence in the Librettos of Peter Grimes by Phillip Brett 237 Notes 251 Indexs 295
