福克斯: 歌剧史/FAWKES: History of Opera (The)

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  FAWKES: History of Opera (The)
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福克斯: 歌剧史 / FAWKES: History of Opera (The)
[ 读物介绍 ]
RichardFawkesTHEHISTORY OF OPERARead by Robert Powell Opera,said Dr. Johnson, is an exotic and irrational entertainment. Asalways,the good doctor was right. It is odd for people to spend an evening singing toeach other; often in a language many of the audience cannot understand. But thecombination of music, drama, lights and costumes, when it works, has the powerto move the human heart in a way no other art form can. Peoplecome to opera in different ways. Some, like the tenor José Carreras, first sawMario Lanza on the screen in The Great Caruso and were hooked. Others havediscovered it through Nessun Dorma. But hearing an aria and liking it does notalways make it easy to move on and discover other operas. Thereare, literally, thousands written by thousands of composers. It is for thosepeople who want to know something of the background to opera and how everythingfits together, that this history, tracing the major developments over the pastfour hundred years, has been written. Operabegan at the close of the 16th century in Italy as an experiment by a group ofintellectuals to recreate how they thought the Ancient Greeks must have setwords to music. It soon caught on, spreading throughout Italy and northernEurope, and although Italian opera remained the most popular, other schoolsstarted, in France in particular. Opera singers, especially the castrati,became big stars. It took the reforms of Gluck to put the drama back into operaand pave the way for Mozart and Beethoven. Duringthe early part of the 19th century opera fell into two distinctcategories:Italian or German. Italian opera was dominated by the bel canto composers,Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini; German opera by the Romantics, beginning withWeber. InFrance, elements of both were taken to form grand opera, while a light, lyricopera epitomized by Gounod also began to emerge. The culmination of bothItalian and German opera in the 19th century came with Verdi and Wagner. Risingnationalism throughout Europe at the end of the 19th century caused manycomposers to turn to their folk history and folk music for inspiration. Andthen, as Europe disintegrated and music fragmented, the operas written duringthe first part of the 20th century reflected the changes in a world, which nolonger had any certain values. All the confusing-isms of art were found inopera, from impressionism to atonalism, from electronic music to minimalism.What the end of the 20th century has shown us is that an art form frequentlyderided for being elitist, irrelevant and on its last legs, is not only alivebut also thriving. Today’s composers are just as eager to write opera, as theirpredecessors were two hundred years earlier. Inthe early part of the 19th century a form of light opera emerged inFrance,a mixture of comic opera and vaudeville (which incorporated popular songs anddialogue). This became known as operetta. From France operetta spread toEngland, where its main exponents became Gilbert and Sullivan, to Vienna and tothe United States, paving the way for what we now call the musical. RichardFawkes is a freelance writer and film director. He wrote theaward-winningThe History of Classical Music for Naxos Audio Books and is a regular contributorto Opera Now, BBC Music Magazine and Classical Music. He has written books onopera, his latest, to be published in 1999, being a history of opera on film.He has also written the librettos for two operas one of which, Survival Song,was nominated for an Olivier Award. His credits as a film director include TheOriginal Three Tenors, a documentary about Caruso, Gigli and Bjorling. ABOUTTHE READER ROBERTPOWELL’s portrayal of Jesus in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth won himfour major international awards and a BAFTA nomination. His other film creditsinclude the vivid characterization of Mahler in Ken Russell’s film of thecomposer, Harlequin, Imperative, Tommy, and The Thirty Nine Steps. Histelevision credits include the comedy series The Detectives and his extensivetheater credits include Hamlet, Travesties and Sherlock Holmes - The Musical.