Waiting for Verdi
：Opera and Political Opinion in Nineteenth-Century Italy, 1815-1848
Publication subTitle ：Opera and Political Opinion in Nineteenth-Century Italy, 1815-1848
Author： Smart Mary Ann
Publisher： University Of California Press
Publication year： 2018
E-ISBN: 9780520966574
P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780520276253
Subject： J616 声乐理论
Keyword： 歌剧、歌舞剧音乐,歌剧,音乐流派及其研究
Language： ENG
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Description
The name Giuseppe Verdi conjures images of Italians singing opera in the streets and bursting into song at political protests or when facing the firing squad. While many of the accompanying stories were exaggerated, or even invented, by later generations, Verdi's operas—along with those by Rossini, Donizetti, and Mercadante—did inspire Italians to imagine Italy as an independent and unified nation. Capturing what it was like to attend the opera or to join in the music at an aristocratic salon, Waiting for Verdi shows that the moral dilemmas, emotional reactions, and journalistic polemics sparked by these performances set new horizons for what Italians could think, feel, say, and write. Among the lessons taught by this music were that rules enforced by artistic tradition could be broken, that opera could jolt spectators into intense feeling even as it educated them, and that Italy could be in the vanguard of stylistic and technical innovation rather than clinging to the glories of centuries past. More practically, theatrical performances showed audiences that political change really was possible, making the newly engaged spectator in the opera house into an actor on the political stage.
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