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Apollo's Angels
Apollo's Angels is a major new history of classical ballet. It begins in the courts of Europe, where ballet was an aspect of aristocratic etiquette and a political event as much as it was an art. The story takes the reader from the sixteenth century through to our own time, from Italy and France to Britain, Denmark, Russia and contemporary America. The reader learns how ballet reflected political and cultural upheavals, how dance and dancers were influenced by the Renaissance and French Classicism, by Revolution and Romanticism, by Expressionism and Bolshevism, Modernism and the Cold War. Homans shows how and why 'the steps' were never just the steps: they were a set of beliefs and a way of life. She takes the reader into the lives of dancers and traces the formal evolution of technique, choreography and performance. Her book ends by looking at the contemporary crisis in ballet now that 'the masters are dead and gone' and offers a passionate plea for the centrality of classical dance in our civilization. Apollo's Angels is a book with broad popular appeal: beautifully written and illustrated, it is essential reading for anyone interested in history, culture and art.
Opera on Stage
The History of Italian Opera marks the first time a team of expert scholars has worked together to investigate the Italian operatic tradition in its entirety, rather than limiting its focus to individual eras or major composers and their masterworks. Including both musicologists and historians of other arts, the contributors approach opera not only as a distinctive musical genre but also as a form of extravagant theater and a complex social phenomenon-resulting in the sort of panoramic view critical to a deep and fruitful understanding of the art. Opera on Stage, the second book of this multi-volume work to be published in English-in an expanded and updated version-focuses on staging and vie...
Opera, Theatrical Culture and Society in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples
The operatic culture of late eighteenth-century Naples represents the fullest expression of a matrix of creators, practitioners, theorists, patrons, and entrepreneurs linking aristocratic, public and religious spheres of contemporary society. The considerable resonance of 'Neapolitan' opera in Europe was verified early in the eighteenth century not only through voluminous reports offered by locals and visitors in gazettes, newspapers, correspondence or diaries, but also, and more importantly, through the rich and tangible artistic patrimony produced for local audiences and then exported to the Italian peninsula and abroad. Naples was not simply a city of entertainment, but rather a cultural ...
Eleonora Duse
A new biography, the first in two decades, of the legendary actress who inspired Anton Chekhov, popularized Henrik Ibsen, and spurred Stanislavski to create a new theory of acting based on her art and to invoke her name at every rehearsal. Writers loved her and wrote plays for her. She be-friended Rainer Maria Rilke and inspired the young James Joyce, who kept a portrait of her on his desk. Her greatest love, the poet d’Annunzio, made her the heroine of his novel Il fuoco (The Flame). She radically changed the art of acting: in a duel between the past and the future, she vanquished her rival, Sarah Bernhardt. Chekhov said of her, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Looking at Duse, I re...
Califfa
"Irene Corsini, known as Califfa, has experienced poverty from the day she was born, but has faced the hardships with the ready humor, shrewd common sense and innate resilience characteristic of her people. She has had to face tragedy with the death of her only son, Attilio, and is trapped in her marriage to the despondent and wretched Guido. When Guido is killed during a strike, Califfa is left alone more than ever." "Annibale Doberdo has risen from modest beginnings to become the richest and most powerful man in the city of Emilia. But there has been a price to pay: forty years of acquiescent cooperation with his wife, Clementina, who comes from a higher social background, in stifling his own personal principles and the ideals of his youth. The victim of a marriage that has long since become an empty farse, surrounded by yes-men and parasites and with no real friends, Doberdo's future looks as bleak as Califfa's."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The Chicago Reporter
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Maria Callas
There is nothing that this book doesn't say about this great and irreplaceable last opera diva.
