2002-01-01,J. Cuthbert Hadden,Chopin,Hardback,9781904303145,19.99,"First appearing in 1903, this was perhaps the first truly well-balanced account of Chopin as a man and Chopin as a composer, in English. The author describes Chopin's life and activities from his early days in Warsaw to the days he spent in London, Paris, Vienna, and elsewhere. The author gives accounts of the enthusiasm with which Chopin's works were received, early reviews, Chopin's own reactions to the places he visited and the people he saw, and much more.

Also included are numerous letters, a bibliography, a list of Chopin's published works (at the time of writing), and an index.

Although there is no shortage of biographies of Chopin, the present book was written at a time of heightened interest, and is full of the vigour and passion which reveal a more honest perception of the effect the composer has on audiences worldwide than many scholarly accounts do today. Certainly a must for the enthusiast of Chopin, and without doubt a great way for the newcomer to get to know the details about the man behind the music.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2002-01-01,T. H. Finck,Grieg,Hardback,9781904303206,24.99,"The book is declared by its author as the first work with information regarding the life, personality and works of Edvard Grieg in English or German. The author is able to give a thorough account of both Grieg the man, and Grieg the composer with descriptions and analyses of his works. Pictures are painted of Grieg’s life in Germany and Norway; Peer Gynt and the influence of Ibsen; the effect of composers such as Liszt and Wagner; the role of Norwegian folk music; the impression left by the Norwegian countryside; and more. A highly useful inclusion in the volume is a bibliography of works on Grieg in English, French, German, and Norwegian, as well as a complete list of Edvard Grieg’s musical works.
The fact that this is among the earliest books on Grieg coupled with the fact that it was written while Grieg was still alive makes the volume a most necessary addition to any collection of works by and on Grieg. It is indispensable for researchers and scholars of Grieg, and provides a clear and appealing introduction to the newcomer.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2002-01-01,Andy Nercessian,Old Armenian Songs: A Nineteenth Century Compilation by Ghewond Alishan,Hardback,9781904303008,4.99,"Old Armenian Songs: A Nineteenth Century Collection by Ghewond Alishan, edited by Andy Nercessian. Hardback, iii + 90pp, ISBN 1-904303-00-5, EAN 9781904303008, 22 x 14cm, £29.50, $39.00. Includes introduction by Andy Nercessian, songs in original Armenian, songs in original English translation, original and new footnotes, and index.
The collection of songs presented here was first published in 1852 in Venice, as part of a project to preserve Armenian culture. The collection was made from Armenian manuscripts held at the Armenian monastery in San Lazzaro, dating from the 14th to 18th centuries, and is therefore of great value for historical ethnomusicologists, historians, and Armenologists in general. Andy Nercessian introduces the collection, and puts the contents in perspective through annotations which complement the original footnotes made by Ghewond Alishan. 
Some of the songs are well-known folk songs commonly performed by singers and folk musical ensembles in Armenia today, for example, Groung (Crane). In addition, there are wedding songs, laments, songs about foreign oppression, and love songs.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2003-01-01,J. Cuthbert Hadden,Haydn,Hardback,9781904303183,19.99,"James Cuthbert Hadden was a Scottish organist and a writer who wrote biographies of Chopin, Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn. His writing style is both highly accessible and generously endowed with a capacity for information. The present work traces the development of Haydn as a man and Haydn as composer from his early days in Rohrau to his years in Vienna and Eisenstadt, to his London visits, to his last years. Much attention is given to his compositions, but also to such details as his face and features, social habits, humour, piety, industry, and so on. 
A useful inclusion is a catalogue of Haydn’s works, and most readers will find the selection of Haydn’s letters included as an appendix, as well as his last will and testament, highly informative.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2003-01-01,Barbara Kendall-Davies,"Life and Work of Pauline Viardot Garcia, vol. I: The Years of Fame 1836-1863",Hardback,9781904303275,39.99,"The name of Pauline Viardot Garcia was well known during her lifetime, but after her death in 1910, she passed into obscurity. She was born in Paris in 1821, the youngest child of the Spanish tenor, Manuel Garcia; her sister was Maria Malibran, and her brother, Manuel Patrizio, was an eminent teacher of singing. The first volume of her biography ranges from 1836 until 1863 and covers the most important years of her operatic career. Several composers wrote for her, including Meyerbeer, for whom she created Fidès in ‘Le Prophète’; Saint Saëns modelled the role of Delilah on her and Brahms composed the Alto Rhapsody, which she premiered in 1870. She encouraged Gounod to write his first opera, ‘Sapho’, and sang the title role in the premiere at the Paris Opéra and at Covent Garden. Schumann dedicated his Liederkreis Op.24 to Viardot, and Fauré dedicated several of his songs to her. She launched the career of Jules Massenet, and gave valuable assistance to Sullivan, Bizet, Stanford, Arthur Goring Thomas and several other musicians at the beginning of their careers. Although she was not good looking, she had a fascinating personality and great charm and several men fell in love with her, including Alfred de Musset, Gounod, Maurice Sand, Ary Scheffer, Berlioz, and Ivan Turgenev, who loved her devotedly for forty years, although she was married to Louis Viardot for the whole of that time. She was a linguist, artist, composer and talented pianist who studied with Franz Liszt, as well as being a superb singer and actress. Liszt admired her songs and said that she was the first woman composer of genius. Her talent for friendship was great, and she counted Chopin and George Sand as two of her most intimate friends. From 1863 until 1870, she lived in Baden-Baden where she became a celebrated musical hostess, as well as a fine teacher and composer.

This book traces the life and work of one of the most important sopranos of the nineteenth century, Pauline Viardot Garcia. Her influence on figures like Meyerbeer, Turgenev and Liszt alone makes this volume, the first comprehensive biography ever published in English, indispensable to the musicologist with an interest in the nineteenth century.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2004-01-01,Giacomo Meyerbeer,"Complete Libretti of Giacomo Meyerbeer, in the Original and in Translation, in Five Volumes, The",Hardback,9781904303251,249.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the 19th century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime unrivalled by any of his contemporaries.  His four French grand operas  were in the standard repertory of every major opera house of the world between about 1835 and 1910.  But his stage works went into an eclipse after World War I, and from then until about ten years ago were performed only occasionally.  Now a rediscovery and reevaluation of his music dramas seems to be under way.  More performances of his operas have taken place since 1993 than occurred during the previous twenty years.  And this presents a problem for anyone who wants to study the texts of his operas.  Libretti of his early stage works are held by very few libraries in the world and are almost impossible to find, and libretti of his more famous later operas, when found, are invariably heavily cut and reflect the performance practices of a hundred years ago.

This five volume set represents the first time that all of the composer’s texts have been made available in one collection.  Over half of the libretti have not appeared in print in any language for more than 150 years, and one libretto has never been in print before; all of the libretti are offered in the most complete versions ever made available, many with supplementary material appearing in adenda; each libretto is accompanied by a modern English translation; and the entire work is prefaced by an introduction written by renowned Meyerbeer authority Robert Letellier.

This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date edition of Meyerbeer’s operas available. Translations and originals are placed on facing pages so that ease of use is maximised.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2004-06-01,"Anna Czekanowska, Ursula Hemetek, Gerda Lechleitner, and Inna Naroditskaya",Manifold Identities: Studies on Music and Minorities,Hardback,9781904303374,39.99,"The ICTM Study Group “Music and Minorities” was founded officially in 1997 and is thus one of the youngest Study Groups within the ICTM. The volume “Manifold Identities: Studies on Music and Minorities” is a collection of the papers of the second Study Group meeting, which was held in Lublin/Poland, August 25-31, 2002.
Chapters are included on music from Badakhshan, the Roma, the Arvanites of Greece, Albania, Poland, Carpathia, the Belorussians of Poland, Slovakia, France, Germany, Turkey, Croatia, the Sorbians, the Masai, the Andes, Venezuela, the Jews of Poland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Sicily, Azerbaijan, and elsewhere.
The volume is also replete with articles of a theoretical orientation, with a special focus on an ethnomusicological theorisation of issues revolving around minority identities and its relation to music-making and perceiving.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2004-12-01,"Michael Ewans, Rosalind Halton and John A. Phillips",Music Research: New Directions for a New Century,Hardback,9781904303350,39.99,"This book compiles revised versions of a number of the papers originally delivered at the Twenty-Fifth National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, held in Newcastle, New South Wales, between 3 and 6 October 2002. Aside from the three keynote addresses, all the papers published here have been refereed and peer reviewed. Like this publication, the conference was entitled “Music Research: new directions for a new century”. Papers were invited under four main themes: Research through Performance, Music and Society, Music and Technology, and Structure and Context. The three keynote speakers addressed the first three of these, Roy Howat and Suzanne Cusick approaching from different perspectives, respectively, the relationship between performance and research, and the relationship of both to music in society, while Rolf Gehlhaar discussed the many ways in which music can now interface with technology.

List of Contributors
Roy Howat, Marie-Louise CAtsalis, Rosalind Halton, Prudence Dunstone, Jacqueline Ogeil, Daniela Kaleva, Alan Maddox, Ikuno Sako, Johanna Selleck, Patricia Duke, Frank Murphy, John Napier, Suzan Cusick, Katelyn Barney, Elizabeth Mackinlay, Steven Knopoff, Brydie-Leigh Bartleet, Tim Humphrey, Roland Bannister, Antonio ‘Tony’ Colla, Antonio Comin, Gabriela Vardanega, Linda Kouvaras, Jason Geary, David Irving, Anne-Marie Forbes, Peter Freeman, Julia Lu, Deborah Priest, Patricia Shaw, Jennifer Shaw, Rolf Gelhaar, Cathy Cox, Eddy Chong, Ruth Lee Martin, Dennis Collins, Nicholas Routley, Andrew Robbie, Jason Stoessel, John Phillips.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-04-01,Giacomo Meyerbeer,L'Africaine: The Facsimile,Hardback,9781904303442,99.99,"The genesis of Meyerbeer’s last opera, L’Africaine, is something of a legend. He had first considered the subject in 1837 when Scribe presented him with two new drafts, intended to clinch the triumphant successes of Robert le Diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836). The composer began composing Le Prophète immediately, but had the other project ever in his mind. By 1843 a piano score was ready, but the subject as it stood then, concerning Fernando da Soto explorations in West Africa, did not satisfy Meyerbeer. Scribe was asked to rewrite the libretto in 1851, with the hero changed to Vasco da Gama, and focussed on his epic voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India. A new contract was signed in 1857, and the  greater part of the opera was written between 1857 and 1863, in spite of the Meyerbeer’s growing debility. A copy of the  full score was delivered to composer the day before he died on 2 May 1864.
The opera was performed in a version prepared by François-Joseph Fétis a year later, 28 April 1865, and was a glorious posthumous tribute to its creators. It caused tremendous enthusiasm, and became enormously popular, being performed 60 times in the first four seasons, and eventually receiving 485 performances in Paris until the end of the century. In its glorious vocal writing, resplendent orchestral colouring and fragrant exoticism, it was a source of delight to many, like Franz Liszt. Even in the midst of his residency in the hallowed grounds of the Vatican in  May 1865, he was working at Meyerbeer’s last opera: “L’Africaine was the newest sensation of the theatrical music. The heavy brassy Rococo of its strains, its military ensembles, the number of its figurants, as numerous and diverse as a circus train met with upon the road, these worldly contrasts were such a delight to Liszt that his fantasia upon the opera assumed double form and took up two volumes.”1 
L’Africaine also shows a progression, even a deepening, in Meyerbeer’s style, with a melodic language that is more Italianate in concept and line, as if Meyerbeer’s sojourn in Italy in 1856 had it subliminal effects.2 Tunes are more like recitatives in style, and come across as much loftier, more serene and aloof:3 It certainly appealed to the singers of the Golden Age, and during the first part of the twentieth century was a favourite of many great tenors (Caruso, Martinelli, Gigli, Bjorling, Piccaver), and later of Domingo.
This facsimile of the composer’s manuscript is particularly fascinating. It is clear and hardly annotated at all, and uniquely gives us Meyerbeer’s original intentions before the process of editing and adjustment which he always undertook at rehearsals, in response to dramaturgical exigencies and pressures of time.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-04-01,Giacomo Meyerbeer,Robert le Diable: The Facsimile,Hardback,9781904303435,79.99,"Writing to Meyerbeer in 1837 in the eleventh of her famous Lettres d’un voyageur, George Sand observed of the opera Robert le Diable:
“. . .Though you are a musician, you are more a poet than any of us!... It was not long ago that you were on your knees in the sensuous darkness of Saint Mark’s constructing your Sicilian cathedral on a scale even more vast, smothering yourself in Catholic incense at that dark hours when the candles are lit, making the gold and marble walls sparkle until you were overcome and bowed down by the tender and terrible ecstasies of that holy place....You have pieced the impenetrable silence of the tombs and...heard the bitter lamentation of the damned and the threats of the angels of darkness. You have grasped the hidden significance and sublime sorrow of all those strange and sombre allegories. Between the angel and the devil, between the fantastic heaven and hell of the Middle Ages, you have seen man divided against himself, torn between the flesh and the spirit...You have depicted these struggles, these fears and torments, these promises and raptures in solemn, touching strokes, while leaving them cloaked in their poetic symbols...”
These vivid  words, written six years after the triumphant production of Robert le Diable, admirably sum up the power and impact of this important work, the principal operatic expression of French Romanticism. Its première on 21 November 1831 was one of the most sensational in the annals of opera, and its success throughout the nineteenth century universal and enduring. Not only did the composer sum up the various impulses of the splendid French lyrico-dramatic tradition of grand opéra, and introduce widely influential, structural, melodic and orchestral ideas into general operatic currency, but he seemed to address the very soul and aspiration of the people of his age. The opera based on a legend, became a legend in its own right.
The facsimile edition of the manuscript of this famous work, for so long kept private and then thought lost after the Second World War, enables lovers of opera to examine for themselves the compositional procedure of its great and often misunderstood creator. The admired pieces like Bertram’s Évocation, Isabelle’s cavatina of grace, the sensational Ballet of the Nuns in the ruins of a moonlit cloister, the decisive trio of redemption in the last act, can all  be seen at their very inception. Meyerbeer produced a work “that changed the face of opera” (William J. Collins). The  full significance of this score in the history of opera must still be properly assessed.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-04-01,Christine Lucia,The World of South African Music: A Reader,Hardback,9781904303367,39.99,"The present Reader is a selection of texts on South African music which are chosen not only for their importance or the frequency of citations, but with the express purpose of providing the reader with a deep understanding of the music itself. 
Consequently, there are readings that are chosen because they have been influential, but there are also many which, though published, have not enjoyed very wide circulation. There are those which are of obvious historic interest, and others which speak to contemporary issues. Among other things, the volume provides an excellent sense of the varying ideologies and approaches that determine the relationship between author and subject.
The reader is indispensable to scholars and enthusiasts of South African music and it is of great interest to ethnomusicologists more generally. It is also an excellent resource for those who do not have immediate access to harder-to-find articles, and is perhaps most vital to those who are looking to find a way into the world of South African music.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-07-01,"Elizabeth Mackinlay, Denis Collins and Samantha Owens",Aesthetics and Experience in Music Performance,Hardback,9781904303503,39.99,"Drawing upon a wide range of scholarly enquiry into early music, queer musicology, ethnomusicology, performance practice, music education and technology, Aesthetics and Experience in Music Performance provides a lively forum for the articulation of varied perspectives on the role of music, its interpretation and function in contexts supported by those who practice or experience it.

The formal and shorter discussion papers included in this scholarly collection were presented at the National Workshop of the Musicological Society of Australia, held at the University of Queensland, Brisbane in October 2003. The themes of aesthetics and experience are central to this publication and each paper engages in a scholarly dialogue on the technical, expressive and embodied aspects of performance. The papers included in this publication bring together the research of a wide community of scholars (e.g., musicologists, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists and linguists) working in the field of performance studies and collectively reflect the musicological issues being debated in Australia today.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2005-12-01,Mark Yoffe and Andrea Collins,Rock n Roll and Nationalism: A Multinational Perspective,Hardback,9781904303565,34.99,"In the mid-twentieth century, pop music joined classical and folk as an important site of the formation and renewal of nationalism. Rock 'n' Roll and Nationalism: A Multinational Perspective, deals -- in essays on Croatia, Bosnia, England, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Slovenia, and the United States -- with the fascinating interplay between national and nationalistic identities and emotions and the rock music idiom. 
This scholarly enquiry brings together the talents of observers of popular music, including academic and independent scholars, and rock performers and journalists. Though the authors use many methodologies to get at their subjects, they all include thick description of the cultural systems around which rock in the eight different countries is structured. The author’s insights into the detail and nuance of their topics will lead readers to new understanding of the subject of rock and roll and nationalism, and also provide them with a fruitful jumping off point for thoughtful further research. Most of the papers included in this volume were presented at two extraordinary international conferences, Popular Music and National Culture, held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in November 2000 and Crossroads in Cultural Studies, held in Tampere, Finland, in June-July 2002.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-04-01,Giacomo Meyerbeer,Le Prophète: The Manuscript Facsimiles,Hardback,9781904303824,99.99,"Le Prophète is the second panel of Meyerbeer’s Reformation diptych, his darkest and most mysterious opera. It explores issues of  power and religion, fanaticism and faith, betrayal and trust, the demonic forces of history and the witness of little people caught up in them—the ultimate and enduring sacrificial power of love. In some ways it is almost like a political pamphlet or religious tract, and its oppressive but fascinating world can cast a compulsive spell.
The plot is based on the revolt of the Westphalian Anabaptists under the leadership of the Leyden tailor Johann Bockholdt in 1537-38. Meyerbeer, as usual, studied the historical period carefully, and the opera  is especially remarkable for its vivid human portraiture, its psychological realism mixed with religious mysticism, prophecy, dreams, unconscious promptings, telepathy, aspiration, conversion, rich in mythical resonance. The composer  created a sustained atmosphere of menace and gloom by his dark orchestral colouring. This is contrasted with the pastoral escapism and orchestral brilliance of the famous Skaters’ Ballet, a contersign to the actions of cruelty and betrayal that characterize the action.
The draft of a letter by Scribe of 23 April 1836 gives the first clue to a the new opera and its theme: the original title of Les Anabaptistes. However, it  was held back in favour of another new project, L’Africaine (1865), for which a contract was signed, but dissatisfaction with the libretto, as well as the vocal difficulties  of Marie-Cornélie Falcon   meant that in the summer of 1838  Meyerbeer decided to give Le Prophète immediate attention.  Performances planned for the winter season of 1841-42   came to nothing because Meyerbeer could only  prepare a provisional score by the stipulated contractual delivery date (27 March 1841).  All further efforts by the director of the Opéra, Léon Pillet, to conclude a contract came to nothing because in June 1842 Meyerbeer was appointed Prussian Generalmusikdirektor and was consequently tied to his duties in Berlin most of the time.
In December 1843 Meyerbeer further had the opportunity to convince himself that Guilbert Duprez was no longer suitable for the role of Jean.  Only on 1 July 1847, with the departure of Pillet, and under the joint new directorship of Nestor Roqueplan and Edmond Duponchel, was contact with the Opéra resumed.  Eventually Pauline Viardot-Garcia and Gustave-Hippolyte Roger were chosen for the principal roles.  Meyerbeer  began a revision of the libretto with Scribe in early 1848 (focusing especially on the psychological nuances in the tripartite relationship between Jean, Fidès and Berthe, while hardly touching the  depiction of the Anabaptists and the masses). and in early 1848, Emile  Deschamps, who was sworn to secrecy, began putting Meyerbeer’s special requirements into verse. Meyerbeer himself composed new pieces for the opera (while revolution raged on the streets of Paris), and then began a thorough overhaul of the score. 
 
 In actual history, the ""Prophet"" was  a complete wretch whose profligacy cast a stigma on his sect that deprived it of further political status, Yet his rise from a tailor's bench to the throne of ""Zion"" and his subsequent execution in the Münster market place are the stuff of drama. Scribe's character  is, in his own right, an extremely interesting figure, spiritually speaking: he is a genuine man of faith, but also an imposter who is ruthless but not entirely despicable. The depth of his human dilemma is successfully realized. George Bernard Shaw described him as alive and romantic, and there can be no doubt that the composer succeeded in heightening the effect of the drama by his deepening of the hero's psychology. The heart of the action lies in the mysterious, indeed ambiguous nature of the Prophet, and his relationship with his peasant mother, Fidès.   Meyerbeer  forged a magnificent maternal role,  a deeply interesting fictional character, a pious woman, tenderhearted and yet energetic, seeking to save a son she believes she has lost, drawn through torment and abjection, betrayal and scandal, to the exercise of supreme forgiveness and ecstatic self-sacrifice. The composer achieved his master portrait here, and Fides was the progenitor of a line of operatic mothers who are among the noblest conceptions of the lyric stage. 
 Le Prophète is powerful in other ways. The psychology of mass indoctrination is explored. The three Anabaptists are interesting in that they do not  seem to have individual personalities, they speak as one person, something  psychologically very accurate; true religion enables individuals, even in a community, to develop to the fullest and best of their potentiality; sects seek to stamp out individuality and replace it with a controlling idea. This notion really comes over in the score.
The opera was another worldwide success. The beauty of the Breughelesque recreation of sixteenth century Netherlandish scenery and costumes, as well as the glory of the Cathedral Scene, constituted nothing less than an apotheosis in the history of theatrical mise en scène. It was performed 573 times in Paris until 1912, and some individual numbers like the famous Coronation March, the Skaters’ Ballet and the two arias of Fides became extremely popular. The high seriousness of the subject, and the dark sublimity of the music, won for this opera a unique regard: “People of my father’s generation would rather have doubted the solar system than the supremacy of Le Prophète over all other operas” (Reynaldo Hahn).
The manuscript once again shows how Meyerbeer the pragmatic dramatist had to make many musical _adaptations_ to fit in with the stringent temporal regulations of the Paris Opéra, and the exigencies of his soloists. Jean’s role in act 3 was considerably reduced to conserve the singers’ stamina, as was the full version of Berthe’s suicide in act 5, to save on  performing time. Several  scenes of real historical interest (like, the requisitioning of young girls for the  polygamous Anabaptists in act 4), or dramaturgical importance (the longer form of the Bacchanale in act 5 which develops the Anabaptist treachery against their leader) had to be sacrificed. These scenes, and the dark-hued but brilliantly virtuosic overture, should be restored in future performances.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-04-01,Giacomo Meyerbeer,Les Huguenots: The Manuscript Facsimiles,Hardback,9781904303817,99.99,"This huge exploration of faith, tolerance, hatred, extermination, love, loyalty, self-sacrifice and hope in despair, is the first panel of a central diptych on the Reformation, and the heart of the wider tetralogy of Meyerbeer’s grand operas, where issues of power, religion and love are examined in a variety of modes.
For five years after the sensational première of Robert le Diable, Meyerbeer was thought to be resting on his laurels. Instead, he was drudging over a gigantic drama, partly adapted by Scribe from Merimée's Chronique de Charles IX.  It was hardly believed possible that the esrlier success could be repeated. Most of the vivid details gleaned from every available document related to the time, were the composer's contribution to Les Huguenots. The music for this sombre tapestry of the Saint Bartholomew Massacre springs  from the core of the vivid action and creates  a panoramic alternation of moods, that capture the tragedy of religious intolerance and personal anguish in one of the most fraught events in history when some 30,000 French Protestants were murdered during the night of 24 August 1574. Meyerbeer’s music rises to occasion, and reaches sublime heights of music drama, especially in the fourth and fifth acts, with the Benediction of the Catholic Daggers—one of the most electrical scenes in  all opera—the more powerful Love Duet, and the trio of martyrdom in the last moments of the opera. Spectacle  was incorporated in the plot, in Meyerbeer’s concern to conjure up  the couleur locale of those heroic times. The evocation of Marguerite de Valois’s court  at Chenonceaux, the recreation of late Medieval Parisian life with its Gypsy revels and the religionists' riots in the Pré-aux-Clercs, the wedding fete in the Hotel de Nesle, all grow out of the central idea. Meyerbeer was also very successful in his characterizations of individuals: the dreamy idealist Raoul, the passionate and self-sacrificing Valentine, the fanatical and implacable St Bris, the rough stolid Marcel, the elegant and capricious queen, the somewhat flamboyant but always honorable Nevers. All come to life in this score.
The opera became enormously popular, its various arias a touchstone of operatic lyricism, and by 1936 had been performed 1120 times in at the Paris Opéra alone. In spite of its overwhelming dramatic power and instrumental riches of the score, the most significant aspect of the work came to regarded the supremacy of the vocal parts. Performances at the Metropolitan Opera in new York during the 1890s were among the  the most famous  in operatic history. Here performances attained a legendary status, the so-called nuits des sept étoiles (“the Nights of the Seven Stars”), as in 1894 with Nellie Melba, Lillian Nordica, Sofia Scalchi, Jean de Reszke, Edouard de Reszke, Pol Plançon, and Victor Maurel
Once again George Sand summed up with incomparable insight the essence of Meyerbeer’s musico-dramatic achievement.
 
“From stone floors that no Protestant knee ever warms, solemn voices seemed to resound, the tones of a calm, secure triumph and the  expiring sighs and murmurings of a tranquil end, resigned, confident, without death-rattle or lamentation. It was the voice of Calvinist martyrdom, a martyrdom without ecstasy or delirium, a torment where suffering is stifled by austere pride and august certainty... These imaginary hymns naturally assumed in my mind the form of that fine canticle in your opera, The Huguenots; and, while I dreamt I heard the cries of Catholic indignation and a sharp volley of musketry outside, a tall figure passed before my eyes, one of the noblest dramatic figures, one of the loveliest personifications of the idea of faith that art has ever produced in our time: Meyerbeer's Marcel. And I saw that bronze statue standing clothed in buffalo hide, quickened by the divine fire the composer had brought down upon him. I saw him, Maestro, forgive me my presumption, just as he must have appeared to you when you sought him at the uncompromising and steadfast hour of noon under the glowing arches of some Protestant church, vast and luminous as this one. Though you are a musician, you are more a poet than any of us! In what secret recess of your soul, in what hidden treasury of your mind did you find those clear, pure features, that concept, simple as antiquity, true as history, lucid as conscience, strong as faith? ....”
The facsimile edition of the manuscript of this famous work, for so long kept private and then thought lost after the Second World War, enables lovers of opera to examine for themselves the compositional procedure of its great and often misunderstood creator. One can see the extent to which curtailment of the original conception was needed on the eve of the premiere: in the ensembles of both act 1 and 3  Meyerbeer’s complex developments had to be reduced. The ever present problem of censorship also meant that the original idea of depicting Catherine de’ Medici on stage as the instigator of the massacre had to be radically altered and her role substituted by the Comte de Saint Bris. The famous viola d’amore accompaniment to Raoul’s rhapsodic act 1 romance (“Plus blanche que la blanche hermine”) was originally conceived for the cello. The extraordinary Andante amoroso for the central part of the love duet also indicates Meyerbeer’s preparedness to act on a good idea: in this case Adolphe Nourrit’s suggestion that the cantabile be expanded.  To see the MS of such a famous opera is both a moving and stimulating experience.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-06-01,Madeline Smith Atkins,The Beggar’s ‘Children’: How John Gay Changed The Course Of England’s Musical Theatre,Hardback,9781904303961,29.99,"A harsh satire of Eighteenth Century London life, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera is a piece well known by students of literature and music. Gay's composition spawned a new genre of musical works called ""ballad opera"" whose popularity rapidly caused the decline of Italian opera in London. These well-received ballad operas dominated London's musical theatre from 1728 until the middle of the Eighteenth Century. No other author has looked beyond The Beggar's Opera to analyze the plots of any of these imitative works and their music. The book concentrates on these ‘children’, or descendants.

The author describes a number of ballad operas which proliferated on the heels of the success of The Beggar's Opera. Ballad opera gradually matured into a pastoral, bucolic form (comic opera) and eventually into a highly sophisticated type of musical work (burletta). Several samples of each type of work chosen from the performances most frequently given in London are discussed in depth. These analyses include musical examples from the original scores and evaluations of the dramatic and musical aspects of each work. With the exception of The Beggar's Opera, none of these works or similar ones has previously been the subject of detailed analysis and evaluation.


“How John Gay Changed the Course of England’s Musical Theatre” sheds fresh light on the less familiar ballad operas of the Eighteenth Century.       Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera created such a demand for musical satire that original music began to be composed for English comic works.

 …Edmund Miller, Chairman of the English Department, C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University


This is an engaging and unique look at a piece of operatic history out of the mainstream.  It invites the reader to explore works that he may not know, along with the milieu in which these musical gems became popular.

…Kathryn Smith, General Director, Tacoma Opera


Dr. Atkins provides an insightful study of Eighteenth Century ballad opera ranging from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera with its political satire and burlesque of Italian opera to the comic operas and burlettas which rounded out the century.  This highly readable exposition includes examples of the tuneful airs, and explains the plots of the most popular works of the period.  It will delight both musical and literary scholars.

…Patricia Azar, Associate Editor, Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton


Madeline Atkins has given us a thorough and intelligent study of Eighteenth Century popular English musical theater, and the seminal role of The Beggar’s Opera in its development.  With the inclusion of numerous musical examples, abundant historical details, and deft, clear analyses, this book is an excellent introduction to a delightful musical genre and period.  Atkins successfully accomplishes both of her aims:  she informs us about an overlooked yet important era of musical history and she convinces us to want to hear it again for ourselves, and she does it artfully and skillfully.

…Barry Sherman, Associate Professor of Communications, St. John’s University",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2006-09-01,Robert P. McParland,Music and Literary Modernism: Critical Essays and Comparative Studies,Hardback,9781904303534,34.99,"In Music and Literary Modernism, the intersections of music, literature and language are examined by an international group of scholars who engage in studies of modernist art and practice. The essays collected here present the significant place of music in the writing of T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, James Weldon Johnson, Mina Loy, Stephen Mallarme, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein,Wallace Stevens and Virginia Woolf, as well as the importance of literary art for composers such as George Antheil, Pierre Boulez, Olivier Messaein, and The Beatles. Contributors explore the role of music and literary modernism in the postmodern sublime, sound and ""music"" in language, the uneasy alliance of jazz and pop song in high modernist work, the Beatles as modernists, and other topics.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier and Marco Clemente Pellegrini,Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Guide to Research,Hardback,9781847181251,59.99,"This Guide has resulted from years of research on the papers and music of Giacomo Meyerbeer, and aims to provide a bibliographical aid and point of reference for further research. The first part presents the private papers connected to the composer and his principal librettist, Eugène Scribe—both archival and printed, with working papers and correspondence, as found in Berlin, Paris and some of the famous libraries of the world. The body of Part 2 draws together all the known resources on Meyerbeer's life and historical reputation—from full scale biographies and entries in reference books, through critical discussions to website resources to records of symposia. The third part provides material about his background with its unique mixture of Jewish and Prussian elements, the powerful role of the city of Berlin in his life and work. The fourth part lists bibliographic material for Meyerbeer's music, looking at his operas, grouped as German, Italian and French, with each individual entry providing a record of the scores available, both modern and historical, the various arrangements made from the operas during the heyday of their popularity, reviews of modern performances, discography, and bibliography of studies and publications pertinent to the wider cultural and historical contexts of the works.
The next two sections constitute an extended record of material pertinent to the contemporaries of Meyerbeer. In the fifth section are select bibliographies of composers, authors, artists, performers, politicians, those who played some part in the composer's life, or anyone of significance in his wider contemporary circumstances. This is continued in the sixth part where the cultural and aesthetic elements of the composer's milieu, or life in the theatre during seventy years of the nineteenth century, are listed. The seventh part adds a bibliography of social and historical background, where the incidental issues of Judaism in nineteenth-century Europe, and the wider political, historical and geographical circumstances of Meyerbeer's life, his relentless travelling, and closely recorded experiences in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, England, and Austria. The eighth section provides a thematic key to this extensive material.
Part 9 provides an extended tripartite series of lists of the published scores, arrangements and some special studies of Meyerbeer over the period 1820 to 2005—in alphabetical, chronological and thematic ordering. The last two sections furnish the modern equivalent of this record of Meyerbeer and his compositions, showing in Part 11 the list of performances of his operas since the Second World War, and in Part 12, listing the recordings of the operas, both commercial and private, for the same period. The thirteenth and last section is iconographical, pictures that represent an interesting survey of the popular response to Meyerbeer in the 19th century.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-03-01,John Wall,"Music, Metamorphosis and Capitalism: Self, Poetics and Politics",Hardback,9781847181336,29.99,"The essays in this volume look at various kinds of music from a number of perspectives, including the socio-political, the aesthetic and the psychological. The music under discussion here is diverse but fits loosely into the categories rock-pop, new music, rap, metal and music video, with the caveat that much of the music discussed here is historically layered and engages self-consciously in the deconstruction of music genres. If there is an interpretative theme that links these essays, it is that of the cultural embeddedness of music. At the same time, and this is perhaps the single most important challenge taken up in these essays, this variable cultural studies approach embraces fully the aesthetic dimension of music, construing it as that which resists and articulates the signifying function of symbolic systems of meaning. Music is seen here as the kind of social critique that traces out its own phenomenological and structural pathways in such a way that, in the end, it is critical hermeneutic theory itself that comes under scrutiny. By way of reference (and perhaps indebtedness), the non-signifying property of music discussed variably in this volume is the same as that which was brought into relief in the terminologically contradictory title of Theodor Adorno’s masterwork, Aesthetic Theory.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,"Rhonda Dass, Anthony Guest-Scott, J. Meryl Krieger and Adam Zolkover",Over the Edge: Pushing the Boundaries of Folklore and Ethnomusicology,Hardback,9781847181046,39.99,"Through their search to achieve a sense of academic identity the authors in this volume have brought us new textures and ideas from their research to help us all in our creation and location of spaces we can claim as our own. 

Working within the traditions of academic scholarship, we are reformulating what we see and presenting it in a previously unexplored perspective of connections and possibilities. Through our presentation of this view, we are asserting a new location for the academic identity negotiation that will challenge and reinforce our positioning within scholarly endeavors. The articles contained in these pages are themselves markers of identity produced within and created to define the academic culture. 

From this base of academic tradition, the essays contained in this volume share grounding in the exploration of culturally produced markers of identity pulling from various academic disciplines. Through the examination of the performance of identity markers, each scholar develops and reveals connections that we may utilize in our ever-expanding perspective of scholarly subjects and approaches.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-04-01,Dafni Tragaki,Rebetiko Worlds,Hardback,9781847181503,39.99,"Rebetiko Worlds invites the reader to share the experience of rebetiko music-making in the city of Thessaloniki today. It aims at representing an ethnographic world made of diverse realities united by the melancholic sounds of rebetiko songs. Rather than a musicological account on rebetiko music, this ethnography is about the human encounters happening in certain rebetiko venues of the Ano Poli area in Thessaloniki. How do people perceive, practice, feel and imagine rebetiko song—a music tradition coming from the beginning of the 20th century—today? What are the worldviews embodied and inspired in the context of the ongoing rebetiko performances? And, how may the exploration of rebetiko revivalist culture convey understandings of broader music-cultural orientations defining contemporary Greek society? 
This ethnography is primarily interested in knowing contemporary rebetiko culture as a ‘lived experience’. It captures instances of the life-worlds of the people involved in the rebetiko revival, which unravel the ways local traditions are re-defined in the context of the nostalgic re-invention of ‘ethnic’ music in postcolonial times. On this level, the representation of the discourses and aesthetics associated with rebetiko performances today instigate further interpretations of local cultural trends, the visions of ‘our’ future triggered by the mythicized representations of ‘our’ past.
Beyond a window to the rebetiko worlds of today, this book recounts the story of an ethnographer engaged in fieldwork ‘at home’. It aims at communicating the dynamics of reflexivity shaping the ethnographic self by proposing an understanding of the fieldwork experience as a ‘special ontology’. In this way, it reveals the various dilemmas, moments of enthusiasm and moments of despair lived in the process of research in an attempt to illuminate the poetics of the subjective cultural knowledge. Rebetiko Worlds incites the reader to share the poetics of ethnographic ‘fiction’ and interpretation and, through this, the gradual ‘making’ of the ethnomusicologist in the field.",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-06-01,Steve Dillon,"Music, Meaning and Transformation: Meaningful Music Making for Life",Hardback,9781847182135,34.99,"Music, Meaning and Transformation: meaningful music making for life, examines the musical experiences that students find meaningful and the ways in which teachers, parents and community music leaders might provide access to meaningful music education. This is particularly relevant today because school music often fails to provide sustainable access to music making for life, health and wellbeing beyond school. This book seeks to reframe the focus of music education within a pragmatist philosophy and provide a framework that is culturally and chronologically inclusive. 
The approach involves an intensely personal music teachers’ journey that privilege the voices of students and teachers of a music making community and sets these against rigorous long termed qualitative methodologies.

Music education is shifting focus away from music as an object and process towards the meaning experienced by the student personally, socially and culturally. This is an important and fundamental issue for the development of philosophy for pre-service and practicing music teachers and community music project leaders. The focus now needs to be upon the 98% who could have music as a significant expressive force in their lives as a means of facilitating social inclusion, for mental health and well being and to have access to the sense of belonging that community music making can bring as a lifelong activity. The book aims to provide a comprehensive guide to music education that leads to a music education for all for life. This book emphasises the maker in context examining: the student as maker, the teacher as builder and designer and the school as village. 

The relationship between music making, education and health and well being has been and is the subject of many research projects and national and international reviews. Seldom though in these studies has there been any attempt to identify the qualities of successful and sustainable interactions with music making, the qualities of good teaching and good teaching practice. The focus of this book is to provide simple but effective tools for evaluating and testing the meaning evident in a music-making context, identify the modes of engagement and establish the unique expressive music making needs of twenty first century communities.

For further information see <a href=""http://savetodisc.net"">http://savetodisc.net</a>


","""I found this book inspiring, and allowed myself to stop at different places of interest in order to critically explore and further enjoy them. In my view, the major innovation of Dillon's book is his departure for developing his vision of music education through children. He is interested in examining children's unique outlook of their musical experiences and the relevance of this experience to their lives, and factors that enable children to develop self-contained dialogue with music through listening, performing, and creating...Dillon's inspiring journey runs in parallel tacks in the field of music education, thereby widening its horizon.""

Lia Laor, Levinsky College of Education, Israel, Volume 11, Review 2 - Feb 2010.
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-08-01,Isabella van Elferen,Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day,Hardback,9781847182470,34.99,"Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day presents an interdisciplinary approach to an important aspect of Gothic texts, films, and music: that of rewriting. From the eighteenth-century Gothic novel to present-day vampire films and Goth music, the genre is characterised by its nostalgic reflection on past worlds, narratives, and identities. Gothic nostalgia is often accompanied by a transgressive drive, resulting in perversions of the rewritten past—the modern vampire is no longer embodied evil but an attractive dandy, while Goth subcultures reflect on Victorian aesthetics but pervert them by adding fetishist elements. Gothic nostalgia transforms the past, turning it upside down, foregrounding its background, and corrupting its order.
In this volume an international group of philosophy, literature, film, and music scholars investigates the instrumental role of nostalgia and perversion in the Gothic’s rewriting of the past. If elements of both nostalgia and perversion are operative in Gothic rewriting, how are they connected? How do they play out in differing media? How do they change audiences’ views on the relationships between binaries such as past and present, other and self, and norm and deviation?
Nostalgia or Perversion brings together the early Gothic novel, present-day female and black Gothic literature, Goth subculture and music, and the imagery of horror films and comic books, thus broadening the definition of ‘Gothic’ from a literary genre to a gesture of pervasive cultural criticism. The interdisciplinary analysis of nostalgia and perversion in Gothic rewriting uncovers wholly new insights into the artistic and social functions of the Gothic, making the volume useful to both scholars and students. As the essays reflect on academic as well as popular texts and media, it is also accessible to general readers. 

""Nostalgia or Perversion provides a sophisticated analysis of how the Gothic radically rewrites the past, not as nostalgia but as a calculated act of transgression. The past and how its reconstructions break down the boundaries between real and unreal, and normal and abnormal, is examined across a range of different media, including novels, films, comic books, television and music. The essays in this collection also address how this issue shapes Gothic formulations of race, sexuality, and gender. Both ambitious in scope and focused and rigorous in its analysis, this book provides a critically important re-evaluation of the Gothic tradition.""
—Andrew Smith, University of Glamorgan (UK).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-10-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,Giacomo Meyerbeer: The Non-Operatic Texts,Hardback,9781847182876,44.99,"The fame of Giacomo Meyerbeer is associated principally with the operatic stage, but he wrote for the voice extensively in other genres as well, including non-operatic stage works, occasional public works, sacred music, choral music and songs, This volume collates and presents, in the original and in English translation, as many of these texts as have been published, or whose manuscripts have proved accessible to the editors.

There are six parts devoted to the various genres . Part 1  looks at the non-operatic stage works, the dramatic cantata he wrote at the beginning of his Italian period Gli Amori di Teolinda (1817), the masque written for Prussian court festivities Das Hoffest zu Ferrara (1842), and songs included in plays.

Part 2 is devoted to the occasional works Meyerbeer was asked to write throughout his life, twelve cantatas  born out of commissions to celebrate dynastic events and to praise the deeds of  famous men. Their festive purposes mark anniversaries of illustrious figures (like Guttenberg, Frederick the Great, Schiller, Rauch), commemorate events in national life like the Wars of Liberation recalled in the choral soliloquy, the  Bayerische Schützen Marsch (1831, to words by King Ludwig I of Bavaria), or  the visit of Queen Victoria to the Rhine in 1845, or the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary of the King and Queen of Prussia in 1854. Linked to these are the  part songs for male chorus given in Part 4, a ubiquitous German choral tradition; most of them were written for the Friends of the Berlin Singakademie, and used the themes so typical of communal merrymaking and affirmation—unity, friendship, patriotism, homeland, hunting: 

Part 3 surveys the texts for  sacred music,  from the early oratorio Gott und die Natur (1811) to the canticle Ineffable splendeur de la gloire eternelle drawn from Thomas à Kempis (1862-3). The young composer’s skills and serious endeavours were demonstrated by the song cycle using seven religious odes by  Klopstock (Sieben Geistliche Gesänge, 1812, revised 1841)—an  early involvement with religious texts that continued intermittently throughout his life, and manifested itself preeminently in his eight-part setting of Psalm 91 (1853) and his beautiful choral version of the Our Father (1857).

Meyerbeer also wrote songs consistently, from his six Italian ariettas of 1810 to a canon for two voices completed in December 1862. These Lieder, mélodies and canzonette reflected the circumstances of his career, the various cultural milieux he moved in. They also helped to keep his name in the public eye in the wake of his great operatic successes, gaining popular currency by  publication in musical journals. Part 5 provides the words of 54 of the 83 songs that are listed in his diaries. 

These texts are  given a visual dimension by some 36 illustrations, mostly the beautifully engraved titles pages of many of the published works.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Jane Edwards,Music: Promoting Health and Creating Community in Healthcare Contexts,Hardback,9781847183514,34.99,"Playing live music with people who are ill to promote optimal states of health and well being is as at least as enduring as the written historical record. This book explores applications of music in healthcare with reference to the research and applied work in the disciplines of music therapy, music sociology and music psychology. Authors from six countries present aspects of healthful and health creating experiences in music participation, providing theoretical and philosophical reflections on music’s capacities for creating community, promoting health and delivering patient-centred care in a range of contexts.



","
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-11-01,Patricia Spence Rudden,Singing for Themselves: Essays on Women in Popular Music,Hardback,9781847183453,39.99,"Singing for Themselves: Essays on Women in Popular Music is a fresh look at a topic that has attracted increasing interest in recent years. In this collection, scholars from a number of disciplines look at various artists and movements and come to some new conclusions about the ways in which female artists have contributed to the past four decades of pop, rock, blues and punk. From new looks at major artists Etta James, Laura Nyro and Patti Smith to later figures Ferron, Bjørk, and Melissa Etheridge, these chapters suggest new ways to view—and hear—music that is already part of our culture. 

Essays on the Indigo Girls, Dixie Chicks and Destiny’s Child prove that the girl-groups tradition is alive and well, but with additional new dimensions, and a three-essay section on Joan Jett and the Riot Grrrls phenomenon sheds new light on their implications for feminist artistic expression. The final piece, an annotated bibliography of academic writing on women in rock, helps make this collection a useful addition to the library of students of popular music, while the solid research and accessibility of the text make this a good choice for the general reader as well as the seasoned scholar.


""If you think that adoration of certain pop music is a guilty pleasure, not worthy of higher intellectual aspirations, then Singing For Themselves offers absolution. It's far from trivial to ponder the Tao of Canadian singer Ferron, the classical allusions of Laura Nyro's lyrics, the postfeminist booty-shaking of Destiny's Child, or the historical milieu that turned Jamesetta Hawkins into blues great Etta James. Reading these essays made me want to go right back to the music - feeling wiser, yes, but also validated in the desire to go as deep as any song or singer can take me.""

Michele Kort, author of Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro, and senior editor at Ms. magazine


""I've read Singing for Themselves:  Essays on Women in Popular Music, and am happy to provide an endorsement.  

Singing for Themselves is a consistently interesting collection of new essays on women and popular music.  The collection is all the more welcome for being so current.  It mixes essays on recent phenomena (such as electronic/punk group Le Tigre and the Dixie Chicks' stirring of political controversy) with new perspectives on canonical figures like Patti Smith or Etta James.  The essays gathered here are written with clear commitments, but all are marked by care and scholarly rigour.  I found the interdisciplinary breadth of Singing for Themselves refreshing; new avenues for research are opened up here, and new theoretical paradigms are explored.""

Will Straw, PhD, Acting Director, McGill Institute for the Study of Canada Associate Professor, Department of Art History and Communication Studies


""Opening this book was like opening the door onto a surprise party.  Everyone I've ever wanted to meet was in there, including myself!""
Ferron




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Anna Hoefnagels and Gordon E. Smith,"Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology: Canadian Perspectives, Past and Present",Hardback,9781847183668,34.99,"Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology: Canadian Perspectives, Past and Present features the proceedings of the Fiftieth Annual Conference of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music / La Société Canadienne pour les Traditions Musicales (formerly the Canadian Folk Music Society / La Société canadienne de musique folklorique) that took place in November, 2006 in Ottawa at Carleton University and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. 

This publication showcases the diversity of music research currently being conducted by folk and traditional music specialists, ethnomusicologists, and practicing musicians in Canada. The papers are organized in five sections according to common themes in contemporary research in ethnomusicology and folk music studies, and each section is preceded by a short introduction which highlights the section’s theme(s) as well as the individual papers. 

Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology: Canadian Perspectives, Past and Present confirms the rich history of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music, a history that comprises enormous changes in scholarly research, musical practice, emergent technologies, changes in doing fieldwork, and shifting identity boundaries over the past fifty years. This volume is intended as a contribution to published literature on ethnomusicological and folklore research in Canada, creating a new resource of historical, contemporary, and scholarly relevance that will appeal to academics and music enthusiasts alike.    

""Canadian ethnomusicologists' expertise in the realm of First Nations musics, and Anglo, Celtic and French folksong repertories is already well established. This volume shows us the breadth of cultural territory with which 21st-century Canadian scholars of music and scholars of Canadian musics are now engaged, as well as their theoretical and methodological sophistication. ""
—Kati Szego, School of Music, Memorial University 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Reader,Hardback,9781847183880,44.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer remains an enigma. Until the First World War he was one of the most famous of all composers.   this Reader hopes to reflect something of the immense fame, prestige and love in which this composer was once held, the voices of doubt and dismissal that began to be heard even in his lifetime, and the enduring witness to his fame and worth evinced by those who have continued to believe in him in the face of the encroaching collective disparagement. Since the centenary of his death in 1964, there has been growing  rediscovery of his life and re-evaluation of his art. While the revival of his work is not universal, at least a slow but steady process of recovery and exploration has begun.
	
The forty contributions chosen for this Reader follow a chronological course, from the days of Meyerbeer’s international acclaim after the premieres of his first two French operas, through the critical discussion of his art that began to take place during the mid-years of the nineteenth century, to the growing hostility induced by the advent of Wagner and his ideological following. The line of enquiry then leads into the dark days after the First World War when critical hostility was at its peak, on to the more reflective mood emerging during the 1950s, to the period of reassessment heralded by the centenary of his death in 1964. Finally, it surveys the critical rediscovery that was initiated by the bicentenary of his birth in 1991, a process that is still developing apace.
	 
The Reader also presents a series of portraits of the composer, and some images from his operas, an icongraphical commentary running parallel to the texts.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2007-12-01,"Colin Ripley, with Marco Polo and Arthur Wrigglesworth",In the Place of Sound: Architecture | Music | Acoustics,Hardback,9781847183750,34.99,"In early June 2006, a group of over one hundred artists and researchers met for a three-day conference in the Architecture Building at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, to discuss—from as many different viewpoints as possible—the varying relationships between sound and space. This conference was part of soundaXis, a city-wide festival involving most of Toronto’s new music community and organised by the Toronto Coalition of New Music Presenters. Out of the lively discussions at this conference, two primary themes emerged: the fraught condition of the relationship between sound as space, and the problematic role of representation and its twin, translation, in any discussion of this relationship.

This book presents thirteen essays taken from the conference which address one, or both, of these primary themes. In addition, seven graphic essays have been included which present projects in which architects explicitly take on sound as a generating material in their designs. 

The resulting chapters in the book provide a diverse and, hopefully, provocative collection of ideas and images. They are meant not so much as a comprehensive study of the sound|space nexus—such a study may not actually be possible—but as a place to begin the discussion. 




",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Ludwig Minkus,The Ballets of Ludwig Minkus,Hardback,9781847184238,39.99,"The composer Ludwig Minkus represents one of music’s biggest mysteries. Who was he? Hardly anything is known about him, and yet he occupied an influential position in the theatres of the Imperial ballet in late nineteenth-century Russia. He has been recognised as a predecessor of Tchaikovsky, but as a musician is commonly held to have been so feeble as to be beneath contempt.

Yet despite the scorn heaped on him, and his consequent obscurity, Minkus is far from being forgotten. Since the early 1960s his name has slowly begun to re-surface. Two works, Don Quixote (1869) and La Bayadère (1877), have been presented in their entirety for the first time to new audiences all over the world. The musical and dramatic power of both ballets has taken people by surprise. The stories have a very real human appeal, the choreography attracts the admiration of balletomanes, and the music, with its rhythm, verve, and beauty of melody, holds attention and engages the heart wherever it is heard.

This introduction seeks to discover something more behind the blank façade of Minkus’s life and work. What do we actually know about him as a man and as an artist? Are we able to apprehend his oeuvre as a whole, and how much can we establish from the available material? What is the nature of the music he created for those few works that have survived the years, and that have come to the fore again recently to delight those who have ears to hear?

This study includes iconography from the life and times of the composer, many musical examples from his works, and a comprehensive bibliography and discography.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-01-01,Robert Letellier,Wirt und Gast oder aus Scherz Ernst: Lustspiel mit Gesang in zwei Aufzügen,Hardback,9781847184436,59.99,"The subject-matter of Meyerbeer’s second opera Wirt und Gast, or Aus Scherz Ernst (also called Alimelek), written in Munich in 1812, was taken from a tale in The Arabian Nights. The story of the man who would be sovereign, if only for one day, so frequently treated in the literature of all nations. The opera is an example of   the Oriental or “Turkish” operas which were so popular in Germany during the second third of the eighteenth century.  
	. The orchestra includes, besides the strings, doubled wood-wind, and threefold percussion, only two horns, two trum­pets, and one trombone.
	While Meyerbeer’s contemporaries were puzzled by the far-­fetched singularity of the Alimelik music, and the work had no success in Stuttgart and Vienna (6 January 1813; 20 October 1814), Weber had the insight to recognize its true significance. He produced it   Prague on 20 October 1815, and praised the ""active, alert imagination, the well-nigh voluptuous melody, the correct declamation, the entire musical attitude."" He was also impressed by the instrumentation: “It is surprisingly combined, interwoven with great delicacy, and consequently demands almost the care of a quartet performance.” Weber’s enduring admiration meant that he again produced the work in Dresden years later (1820), when he pointed out how this early opera  “bears witness to the composer's singular emotional capacity.” 
This edition reproduces the original Stuttgart MS, reflecting cuts made in the first performance.





","­Meyerbeer shows astonishing maturity for a composer of twenty-one. Not only the psychic state of the leading characters, but also the conflict of the entire plot, is presented  in concentrated style by the aid of recurrent themes. “The specifically romantico-psycho­logical modification of the leading-motive is met with here for the first time, i.e., two years before Wagner's birth” (Edgar Istel).



",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,Robert Letellier,EIN FELDLAGER IN SCHLESIEN: Singspiel in drei Aufzügen In Lebensbildern aus der Zeit Friedrich den Großen,Hardback,9781847184610,79.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer returned to his native city of Berlin from Paris in 1842 to take up his new position of Generalmusikdirektor to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. He was invited to compose a new work for the festive occasion of the reopening of the opera house on 7 December  1844, on a theme  celebrating the king's famous ancestor, Frederick the Great?  Eugene Scribe provided the text, in secret,  and Ludwig Rellstab translated it.  

Feldlager  was Meyerbeer’s first opera in 30 years on a less serious topic, and  using spoken dialogue.—in other words a Singspiel. Especially in the first and third acts, it is possible to see the influence of lighter composers, especially Lortzing and Auber. But much of the second act, especially the tremendous finale,  is in the style of the grand operas.  

Successful as Feldlager was in Berlin with the brilliant Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, Meyerbeer  never considered its narrowly patriotic themes suitable for export.  Edouard Hanslick pointed out that in no other of Meyerbeer’s works was the German nation so directly engaged, and emphasized the  homely, comfortable tone that permeates the music of the score.
	
The overture and much of act 2 was adapted for Meyerbeer’s and Scribe’s opéra comique, L’Étoile du Nord (1854).  Several melodies have become famous because of Constant Lambert’s adaptation of them for the ballet Les Patineurs (16 February 1937). The fame of the beautiful cantabile melody of the third movement has spread all over the world, and is known to so many who remain ignorant of its true provenance—in the finale of Feldlager, where it accompanies Vielka’s dream-vision and becomes a celebration of peace and the promise of wonderful things to come.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,Robert Letellier,"Giacomo Meyerbeer: 'Alimelek, oder Die beiden Kalifen'",Hardback,9781847184580,79.99,"The subject-matter of Meyerbeer’s second opera Wirt und Gast, or Aus Scherz Ernst (also called Alimelek), written in Munich in 1812, was taken from a tale in The Arabian Nights. The story of the man who would be sovereign, if only for one day, so frequently treated in the literature of all nations. The opera is an example of   the Oriental or “Turkish” operas which were so popular in Germany during the second third of the eighteenth century.  
	The orchestra includes, besides the strings, doubled wood-wind, and threefold percussion, only two horns, two trum¬pets, and one trombone.
	While Meyerbeer’s contemporaries were puzzled by the far-¬fetched singularity of the Alimelik music, and the work had no success in Stuttgart and Vienna (6 January 1813; 20 October 1814), Weber had the insight to recognize its true significance. He produced it   Prague on 20 October 1815, and praised the ""active, alert imagination, the well-nigh voluptuous melody, the correct declamation, the entire musical attitude."" He was also impressed by the instrumentation: “It is surprisingly combined, interwoven with great delicacy, and consequently demands almost the care of a quartet performance.” Weber’s enduring admiration meant that he again produced the work in Dresden years later (1820), when he pointed out how this early opera  “bears witness to the composer's singular emotional capacity.”   
This facsimile edition contains the composer's entire conception of the work, restoring material cut from the first performance.
	¬Meyerbeer shows astonishing maturity for a composer of twenty-one. Not only the psychic state of the leading characters, but also the conflict of the entire plot, is presented  in concentrated style by the aid of recurrent themes. “The specifically romantico-psycho¬logical modification of the leading-motive is met with here for the first time, i.e., two years before Wagner's birth” (Edgar Istel).



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-02-01,Robert Letellier,Jephtas Gelüdbe Oper in drei Aufzügen,Hardback,9781847184634,79.99,"Meyerbeer’s first opera, Jephtas Gelübde, has a libretto by the German academic Alois Schreiber, based on a Biblical theme taken from chapters 11-12 of the Book of Judges.   The conflict between paternal love and love of country intrinsic to this scenario was also chosen by Meyerbeer as the basic theme of his opera, and is reflected in the overture, a symphonic anticipation of the essential features of the action.  	

The opera, whose final rehearsals were conducted by the composer in person, was admirably produced by the Munich Court Opera on 23 December 1812, but on account of its novelty met with indifference, so that it was withdrawn. A newspaper report did, however, observe: “A delicate sensibility, united to a profound and mature insight into the workings of the impassioned human heart, is manifested through¬out in a grand and elevated style that gives promise of something great  in the future.” This score contains the  seeds of the whole of Meyerbeer’s future development. It is impossible to conceive of Meyerbeer's progress to mastership without the Jephta score. 

Meyerbeer was  responding to the heritage of his predecessors—the Handel of the oratorios (in the depiction of grandiose biblical drama), and the Gluck of the tragédie lyrique (in the depth of both public and private emotional exploration), but also alert to issues in contemporary opera, like the Rescus Motif and development of the villain. There is also evidence of Meyerbeer’s famed orchestral virtuosity and imagination already at work. In his psychological exploration, Meyerbeer already begins to use thematic tagging and forshadowing most imaginatively, and  points the way  far beyond Gluck, in the direction of Weber-Wagner






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-05-01,E. Michael Richards and Kazuko Tanosaki,Music of Japan Today,Hardback,9781847185624,39.99,"Music of Japan Today examines cross-cultural confluences in contemporary Japanese art-music through multiple approaches from twenty international composers, performers, and scholars. Like the format of the MOJT symposia (1992-2007) held in the United States, the book is in two parts.  In Part I, three award-winning Japanese composers discuss the construction of their compositional techniques and aesthetic orientations. Part II contains nineteen essays by scholars and creative musicians, arranged in a general chronological frame.  The first section discusses connections of the music and ideas of Japanese composers during the time surrounding the Second World War to Japan’s politics; section two presents recent perspectives on the music and legacy of Japan’s most internationally renowned composer, Toru Takemitsu (1930-96).  Section three investigates innovative, cross-cultural uses of Japanese and Western instruments (grouped by common instrumental families - voice, flutes, strings), shaped by historical traditions, physical design, and acoustic characteristics and constraints. Section four examines computer music by mid-career composers, and the final section looks at four current Japanese societies, within and “off-shore” Japan, and their music:  spirituality and wind band music in Japan, avant-garde sound artists in Tokyo, Japanese composers in the UK, and the role of cell phone ringtones in the Japanese music market.

","

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-06-01,"David Cooper, Christopher Fox and Ian Sapiro",CineMusic?  Constructing the Film Score,Hardback,9781847185938,34.99,"What has been described as second generation film musicology is both building on, and challenging the orthodoxies of, the pioneering work of scholars who published in the final two decades of the twentieth century. CineMusic? Constructing the Film Score is representative of this new scholarship, approaching the construction of the film score from a number of perspectives, from the primarily practical to the more abstract and theoretical. The films that form the basis of these reflections are similarly diverse, from art-house to mainstream, classical to postmodern. 

This volume includes essays by established and upcoming scholars and practitioners as well as interviews with two of the UK’s most influential film composers—Trevor Jones (Mississippi Burning, Brassed Off!, Notting Hill, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Michael Nyman (The Draughtsman’s Contract, The Piano, Gattaca, The Libertine). An afterward by Anahid Kassabian proposes a number of areas that are ripe for further exploration. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-09-01,Jack Boss and Bruce Quaglia,Musical Currents from the Left Coast,Hardback,9781847186423,39.99,"Musical Currents from the Left Coast, edited by Jack Boss and Bruce Quaglia, presents a timely snapshot of the analytical concerns and methodologies that have proliferated throughout the current moment in North American music theoretical circles. The repertoire spanned within this volume is extensive. It covers music from J.S. Bach through the late 19th Century and continues finally to the modernist, avant garde, and post-modernist repertoire of the past century. Previously neglected aspects of musical structure, such as rhythm and meter, are presented here on equal footing with the traditional preoccupations of harmony and thematic process. Meter in particular is treated in great depth here: it is explored from the perspectives of both listener and performer and treats repertoire as diverse as Bach, Chopin, traditional African music and the popular music throughout the world that has disseminated from that tradition. 

The music and ideas of composer Arnold Schoenberg are central to many of the essays presented here. Schoenberg’s oft remarked upon masterpiece, Klavierstuck, Op.11, No.1, forms the focus of an entire section of the book. Four notable Schoenberg scholars of the younger generation revisit this seminal work on the eve of its centenary in order to reflect not only upon the work itself, but also upon the prodigious discourse that has surrounded it since nearly the date of its composition. More broadly, Schoenberg’s compositional and analytical concerns resonate through many of the other essays presented here, too. His concepts of “The Musical Idea” and “Developing Variation” are treated extensively in relation to the music of Anton Webern and Johannes Brahms, respectively. Musical Currents from the Left Coast will be of great interest to any individuals and institutions with an investment in the contemporary discourse of music theory and will be of special interest to scholars beyond that field who are also engaged with the work of Arnold Schoenberg. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Robert Letellier,Emma di Resburgo:  Melodramma eroico in due atti;  Poesìa di Gaetano Rossi Musica di Giacomo Meyerbeer,Hardback,9781847188977,49.99,"Meyerbeer’s third Italian opera, Emma di Resburgo (Emma of Roxburgh) was premiered at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice on 26 June 1819 only three months after Semiramide had appeared at Turin, and scored a success that far surpassed that of both of its predecessors. It was indeed the work that established Meyerbeer's reputation in Italy, and extended it even beyond the Alps into Germany. 
	It was also the opera that brought him into close contact with Rossini, the most important figure of the second decade of the century, whose work was a major influence on all his contemporaries, Meyerbeer included. Rossini’s Eduardo e Cristina was given on 24 April and Emma on 26 June. Both operas triumphed, and the two composers became very good friends, a relationship that was to continue later in Paris. Meyerbeer’s opera went on to be staged in Venice, Milan, Genoa, Florence and Padua. Translated into German, it was given in Vienna, Dresden, Frankfurt, Berlin and Stuttgart, and even reached Warsaw in 1821.
	The story of Emma di Resburgo concerns dynastic rivalry in Lowland Scotland at the time of the Norman conquest; its libretto was the third written for Meyerbeer by Gaetano Rossi. The text covers the same material as that of one of Méhul's operas Héléna (1803). Mayr had also set this plot as Elena as recently as 1814, as an opera-semiseria, re-adapted for La Scala in the autumn of 1816, where Meyerbeer may well have heard it. The action of Emma, transferred from Provence to Scotland, takes place in the Castle of Tura and in Glasgow, and predates by three months Rossini's Walter Scott opera, La donna del lago (Naples, San Carlo, 24 September 1819), which is set in the Scottish Highlands. 
	With its focus on a wild and violent Scotland, and with its themes of kidnap and usurpation, disguise and impersonation, lost relationships and restored fortunes, condemnation and rescue, Emma makes its own contribution to Italian Romantic opera. Meyerbeer’s fluent and beautiful appropriation of the Rossinian idiom is given a further dimension by the composer’s technical mastery and richness of invention, particularly evident in relation to the treatment of the Romantic subject. The new musical colours, appearing here even before similar developments in Rossini’s La donna del lago, are not used in the depiction of nature, but in the realistic situational transposition of the drama. This is particularly forward-looking in the big tableaux: the Chorus of Judges, rightly admired in its day, through-composed as an integral part of the action, and the graduated act 1 finale, dramatic in its contrasts. The sombre Death March in the act 2 finale, with its writing for the bassoons, looks forward to Meyerbeer’s French operas. The lieto fine, or happy ending of the opera,  looking back to the eighteenth century, is still infused with the old ideals of the Enlightenment, typified in the clemency shown in the end by the tyrant. However, Meyerbeer had learned to infuse this Utopian spirit, so characteristic of a past epoch, with the vibrant new sensibility so characteristic of Romanticism. 
	Emma di Resburgo marked a milestone in Meyerbeer’s career and brought him the greatest honour any composer could aspire to in Italy—a commission from La Scala Milan that would result in his next work, Margherita d’Anjou (1820).



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,Giacomo Meyerbeer: The Complete Libretti in Eleven Volumes (in the Original and in English Translations by Richard Arsenty with Introductions by Robert Ignatius Letellier),Paperback,9781847189714,69.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime hardly rivalled by any of his contemporaries. This ten volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts offer the  most complete versions available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. The first volume presents Meyerbeer’s first three youthful operas, all of them  German Singspiele: the grandiose Biblical drama of Jephthah and his fated daughter (Jephtas Gelübde, 1812), the colourful Arabian Nights tale of the  man who becomes caliph for a day (Wirt und Gast, 1813), and a popular celebration of Prussian victory in the War of Liberation (Das Brandenburger Tor, 1814).


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Carolyn Birdsall and Anthony Enns,"Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology",Hardback,9781847188397,39.99,"Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology is a collection of original essays that represents an invaluable contribution to the burgeoning field of sound studies. While sound is often posited as having a bridging function, as a passive in-between, this volume invites readers to rethink the concept of mediation by examining the relationships between the body, sound and technology. The chapters provide a series of focused case studies involving sound and music technologies, performances and installations, which address key issues for sound scholars: How are audio performances mediated by sound technologies as well as the performer’s body? In which ways is the immediacy of live performance influenced by sound technologies? How do bodies and technologies mediate the experience of auditory perception? What is the role of the listener in audio-based performances? How does sound mediate the experience of viewing optical media and how does this complicate vision-oriented theories of spectatorship? By incorporating a range of interdisciplinary responses to these questions, Sonic Mediations provides a model for the future of sound studies.
","""This book is essential reading for those in a postgraduate study of 'sound arts' (weaned on Trevor Wishart's 'On Sonic Art'), cultural and philosophical studies (interested in Foucault) or the professional performing-arts world. This is a thought-provoking book that you can revisit to expand your own thoughts on sonic art – and with historiophony you may be able to 'hear the voices of the dead'.""
– Martin Coslett, Farnborough College of Technology in Intellect Journals/Theatre and Performance Vol. 3, No. 3

""Birdsall and Enns extend the limitations on existing disciplinary frameworks surrounding the study of sound, while at the same time elucidating fundamental concerns relevant to scholars of sound.... The end result is an attempt to establish a model for sound studies as a mosaic of innovative approaches where scholars from varied fields can enter into productive dialogues around shared theoretical concerns.""
– John F. Barber, Leonardo
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,"The Meyerbeer Libretti: German Operas 1 (Jephtas Gelübde, Wirt und Gast, Das Branderburger Tor)",Paperback,9781847189615,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime hardly rivalled by any of his contemporaries. This ten volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts offer the  most complete versions available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The first volume presents Meyerbeer’s first three youthful operas, all of them  German Singspiele: the grandiose Biblical drama of Jephthah and his fated daughter (Jephtas Gelübde, 1812), the colourful Arabian Nights tale of the  man who becomes caliph for a day (Wirt und Gast, 1813), and a popular celebration of Prussian victory in the War of Liberation (Das Brandenburger Tor, 1814).

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,"The Meyerbeer Libretti: German Operas 2 (Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, Vielka)",Paperback,9781847189660,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime hardly rivalled by any of his contemporaries. This ten volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts offer the  most complete versions available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The seventh volume presents Meyerbeer’s German operas, Ein Feldlager in Schlesien (1844) and Vielka (1847). When the Royal Opera House in Berlin was burned down in 1843,  Meyerbeer, in his capacity as Generalmusikdirektor, was asked to write a new opera for the opening of the new house. He secretly asked Eugène Scribe to prepare an effective  scenario which was then rendered into German by the Berlin critic and littérateur  Ludwig Rellstab. The resulting patriotic Festspiel (festival play) was based on an episode in the life of King Frederick the Great, the great hero of the Prussian state. While on campaign during the Seven Years’ War with Austria (1756-63), the king is saved by the ingenuity and self-sacrifice of the retired army captain Saldorf, his niece Therese, his foster son Conrad, and the Gypsy girl Vielka—a role Meyerbeer composed especially for the brilliant Swedish soprano Jenny Lind.  The opera has its own very specific mood and character, indeed its own very gentle charm as a Singspiel. The scenario presents three overlapping worlds: the bourgeois domesticity of Saldorf and his family, the Gypsy realm of the alien Vieka, and the militarism associated with Frederick the Great and  his kingdom. Each of these spheres is represented musically. The first and third acts participate in the  world of the Singspiel and opéra comique. The atmosphere is calm and relaxed, the music direct and simple in its appeal. Vielka's music shares in the more elevated genre of the opera seria and grand opéra.Meyerbeer's penchant for the grandiose emerges in act 2, the Camp Scene. The story exalts qualities of simplicity, generosity and self-sacrifice. Patriotic or national issues are actually given a secondary place in the scheme of values, with the king becoming the father of the  extended family of the nation 

Two years later, Ein Feldlager  was revised for production  in Vienna as Vielka. The Prussian origins and emphasis of the story were hidden: King Frederick the Great was now tranmuted into a duke. The first and second acts  were hardly altered, but the third was completely reconstituted, with a tragic denouement. The opening night on 18 February 1847 at the Theater an der Wien was another triumph for Meyerbeer and Jenny Lind.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,The Meyerbeer Libretti: Grand Opéra 3 Le Prophète,Paperback,9781847189677,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime hardly rivalled by any of his contemporaries. This ten volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts offer the  most complete versions available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The eighth volume  presents the third of Meyerbeer’s great tetralogy of grands opéras. In Le Prophète Meyerbeer’s dramatic language shows further evolution in refinement. The music, in the richness of harmony, the sophistication of orchestral colour, the vitality of rhythm, and the expressive flexibility of  melody, seeks to explore a complex scenario. The discourse of faith is a crucial subtext here, as in all of Meyerbeer’s four principal operas. The progressive unfolding of this concept establishes a definite thematic dialectic that is consistently commenting on the surface action in its direct handling of  religion and power. In the third stage of religious consideration, depicted in  Le Prophète, the focus has shifted from the grand scale of metaphysical struggle in Robert le Diable, and socio political conflict in Les Huguenots, to an examination of the impact of corrupted faith upon the individual and its consequences for those around him. Once again, an organised faith fails to bring peace. Indeed, it brings the most abhorrent conflict and abuses of personal liberty. The ultimate redemption of the hero is mediated through the actions of individuals, his mother and fiancée. Powerful biblical images are used in this process. The composer achieved his master portrait in the character of  Fidès, one the noblest conceptions of the lyric stage. Meyerbeer  forged a magnificent maternal character, and with the tremendous tenor part of the Prophet John of Leyden, created a powerful mother-and-son drama. The high seriousness of the subject, and the dark sublimity of the music, won for this opera a unique regard: “People of my father’s generation would rather have doubted the solar system than the supremacy of Le Prophète over all other operas” (Reynaldo Hahn).



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,The Meyerbeer Libretti: Grand Opéra 4 L'Africaine,Paperback,9781847189707,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime hardly rivalled by any of his contemporaries. This ten volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts offer the  most complete versions available. Each libretto is translated into modern English by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The eleventh volume presents the fourth of Meyerbeer’s grands opéras, and his final work. By 1860 long-imposed labor had started to tell upon the composer’s health: he knew that he must concentrate on the “navigator project” which he had started twenty years earlier if  he intended to finish it. Meyerbeer died on 2 May 1864, the day after the completion of the copying of the  full score of this his last opera, Vasco da Gama.  Minna Meyerbeer and César-Victor Perrin, the director of the Opéra, entrusted the editing of a performing edition to the famous Belgian musicologist François-Joseph Fétis, while the libretto was revised by Mélesville. The original title of L’Africaine was restored out of deference to public expectation. Much of the music and action was suppressed, in spite of the strain this inflicted on the internal logic of the story.

While L'Africaine is not lacking in the grandeur of statement and stirring climaxes for which the composer was so famous, there is a new intimacy, a new intensity of melancholic lyricism. Like its famous predecessors, it is basically an historical work, derived from the period of sixteenth-century Renaissance. The account of Vasco da Gama's voyage of discovery around the Cape of Good Hope and conquest of Calicut (1497-98) is subjected to a fictional treatment that raises many interesting issues.  The framework is historical, but most of the characters and course of action are not; in fact the end of the opera, in the suicide of the heroine, suddenly leaves the terra firma of reality, and transports us into the mystical realms of the spirit. It is this mixture of modes that is central to the dramaturgy of L'Africaine, a confusion of history and fairytale, ancient certainties and challenging discoveries, in the creation of a new mythology.   There is also originality in formal developments, with the great tenor scene in act 4 providing a new malleability in handling the constraints of shape and genre: recitative, arioso and cabaletta have a fluent integration in trying to explore the text more pointedly.  

L’Africaine was produced on 28 April 1865, a great posthumous tribute to its famous creators.  The Ship Scene, the exotic Indian act, and the Scene of the Manchineel Tree exerted a fascination on audiences, and elicited new praise. The work full of melodic beauty and rapturous  lyricism, began a triumphal progress through the world, beginning with the big stages of London and Berlin.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,"The Meyerbeer Libretti: Italian Operas 1 (Romilda e Costanza, Semiramide, Emma di Resburgo, Margherita d'Anjou)",Paperback,9781847189622,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime unrivalled by any of his contemporaries. This eleven volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts are offered in the most complete versions ever made available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The second volume presents Meyerbeer’s first two Italian operas, written early in his decisive sojourn in Italy where for eight years (1816-24) he confronted and assimilated the operatic traditions of bel canto,  all the while expanding his own rapidly developing dramatic instincts. His  Italian operas divide themselves into three pairs of two. The first pair, Romilda e Costanza (Padua, 1817) and Semiramide (Turin, 1819), have a pure, naive, serene quality, and showed the young composer  taking account of pre-Rossininian models while working within the formulae of contemporary melodramma.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,The Meyerbeer Libretti: Opéra Comique 1 L'Étoile du Nord,Paperback,9781847189684,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime hardly rivalled by any of his contemporaries. This ten volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts offer the  most complete versions available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The ninth volume  presents the first of Meyerbeer’s opéras comiques. For L'Étoile du Nord (1854), Scribe rewrote the text of Meyerbeer’s occasional piece for Berlin, Ein Feldlager in Schlesien, based on the capture of Frederick the Great by the Croats. Now Scribe successfully wove fact and fiction into a romantic story which  relates to its predecessor only in certain respects. The libretto followed a typical pattern in which four traditions about Tsar Peter the Great were interwoven, despite spatial and temporal differences: his sojourns incognito as a shipwright in Saardam and Deptford (1697-98), the rebellion of the Strelitzy (1698), his courting and marriage to  the Lithuanian peasant girl Catherine (1712), who later became the Empress Catherine I (1725). There is the same determining polarity between pastoral and the military worlds as in the earlier opera. True order and enlightened rule come through the proper integration of these two worlds, a process  which takes place through patterns of loss and rescue, isolation and integration, disguise and true identity. The basic situation of Feldlager is also reflected musically in L’Étoile du Nord: the unpretentious first and third acts reflect the gemütliche world of the Singspiel, while the grandiose Camp Scene in act 2 requires vast choral and orchestral forces and concerted forms of the grand tradition. In spite of the difficulties of the growing political crisis between France and Russia, soon to explode in the Crimean War, and Meyerbeer's personal anxiety over his mother's health, the première of L'Étoile du Nord on 16 February 1854 was another triumph for composer and librettist. Within a year the opera had been given 100 times in Paris. Within four years it was seen in over 60 European cities, and was spreading all over the world.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-10-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,The Meyerbeer Libretti: Opéra Comique 2 Le Pardon de Ploërmel,Paperback,9781847189691,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime hardly rivalled by any of his contemporaries. This eleven volume set provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts offer the most complete versions available. Each libretto is translated into modern English by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use.

The tenth volume is devoted to Dinorah (1859), the second of Meyerbeer’s opéras comiques. Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, whose libretto for Gounod’s Faust made them famous, devised an idyll, with large parts of the libretto planned by the composer himself. The feathery bravura and rainbow colouring of the score proved eminently acceptable to the Opéra-Comique, and Meyerbeer could have kept to the “comic” vein if he had chosen. The work is unusual in being an opera by a Jewish composer built around the mystique and person of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the pious practice of a pilgrimage of pardon in her name. Dinorah is the product of a composer's most mature gifts. Meyerbeer's determination to compose this opera, its themes and technical perfection, suggest its closeness to his heart, to something vital in his artistic imagination. While on the surface of things it appears merely as the whim of an old man, a slight tale about a peasant girl, a goatherd and a hidden treasure, the simplicity belies a rather more complex subtext. The Breton tale and its milieu provided an excellent opportunity for Meyerbeer's penchant for couleur locale. The French title Le Pardon de Ploërmel combines the pastoral location with a strongly religious intention, the Breton custom of an annual pilgrimage of grace to a local shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, events that were then so much part of the traditional life of rural communities in certain regions of France. The combination of remote country place, religious belief, and the seeking of treasure,  provide the essential contours of the symbolic concerns of the story. Dinorah, with its return to the legend and folktale, in fact conjures up something of the modality of Robert le Diable, with its medieval universe of angels and devils, and its quest for redemption. The première on 4 April 1859 was another of Meyerbeer's great triumphs: the principal singers were enthusiastically praised, and the work again brought the composer a great and enduring success all over the world.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,Scott Harrison,Masculinities and Music: Engaging Men and Boys in Making Music,Hardback,978-1-4438-0020-4,34.99,"Masculinities and Music provides a window into the world of men and boys and their engagement with music. This book offers both personal reflections and academic argument. Historical perspectives are provided alongside recent research findings. Topics include an interrogation of the affect of hegemonic masculinity on musical involvement, with references to compulsory heterosexuality, gender-role-rigidity and avoidance of femininity. Stories of men and boys and their struggle to participate in music permeate the volume, which concludes with some examples of effective practice for men and boys wishing to engage or re-engage with music. 

Australian academic Scott Harrison’s writing is the result of many years of experience as both performer and teacher. He offers a glimpse into his own experiences as young man performing at school and, as an adult singing opera and music theatre. His experience as a teacher of males and females from pre-school to adulthood imbues the book with authority born of genuine familiarity with his topic. 

This is a passionate, humorous yet serious look at men and music. The volume is essential reading for teachers, parents, academics and young men. 



","'...an engaging account of negociating posative 'masculine' musical identities...Amajor strength of his work is the extensive literature review which brings together research about masculinity and music from within and beyond the music education field... This book has wide appeal, not only because it is the first to focus on masculinities in music education, but also because the findings link to international trends in males.'

Clare Hall, Monash University, The Journal of B. J. Music Ed, Volume 27/2, 2010
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2008-12-01,"Bev Diamond, Denis Crowdy and Daniel Downes",Post-Colonial Distances: The Study of Popular Music in Canada and Australia,Hardback,978-1-4438-0051-8,34.99,"This anthology emanated from a conference in St. John’s, Newfoundland, that brought together popular music scholars, folklorists and ethnomusicologists from Canada and Australia. Implicit in that conference and in this anthology is the comparability of the two countries. Their ‘post-colonial’ status (if that is indeed an appropriate modifier in either case) has some points of similarity. On the other hand, their ‘distance’ – from hegemonic centres, from colonial histories – is arguably more a matter of contrast than similarity. Canada and Australia are similar in various regards. Post-colonial in the sense that they are both former British colonies, they now each have more than a century of stature as nation states. By the beginning of the 21st century, they are each modest in size but rich in ethnocultural diversity. Nonetheless, each country has some skeletons in the closet where openness to difference, to indigenous and new immigrant groups are concerned. Both countries are similarly both experiencing rapid shifts in cultural makeup with the biggest population increases in Australia coming from China, India, and South Africa, and the biggest in Canada from Afro-Caribbean, South Asian countries, and China.
The chapters in this anthology constitute an important comparative initiative. Perhaps the most obvious point of comparison is that both countries create commercial music in the shadow of the hegemonic US and British industries. As the authors demonstrate, both proximity (specifically Canada’s nearness to the US) and distance have advantages and disadvantages. As the third and fourth largest Anglophone music markets for popular music, they face similar issues relating to music management, performance markets, and production. A second relationship, as chapters in this anthology attest, is the significant movement between the two countries in a matrix of exchange and influence among musicians that has rarely been studied hitherto. Third, both countries invite comparison with regard to the popular music production of diverse social groups within their national populations. In particular, the tremendous growth of indigenous popular music has resulted in opportunities as well as challenges. Additionally, however, the strategies that different waves of immigrants have adopted to devise or localize popular music that was both competitive and meaningful to their own people as well as to a larger demographic bear comparison. The historical similarities and differences as well as the global positionality of each country in the early 21st century, then, invites comparison relating to musical practices, social organization, lyrics as they articulate social issues, career strategies, industry structures and listeners. 



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-01-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,"The Meyerbeer Libretti: Italian Operas 2 (Emma di Resburgo, Margherita d'Anjou)",Paperback,978-1-4438-0321-2,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime unrivalled by any of his contemporaries. This eleven volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts are offered in the most complete versions ever made available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The third volume presents Meyerbeer’s third and fourth Italian operas, written at the midpoint in his decisive sojourn in Italy where for eight years (1816-24) he made the operatic traditions of bel canto his own, while constantly expanding  his own powerful dramatic instincts. His  Italian operas divide themselves into three pairs of two. The second  pair, Emma di Resburgo (Venice, 1819) and Margherita d’Anjou (Milan, 1820), show the young composer and his famous librettists Gaetano Rossi and Felice Romani opening up the Romantic impulses of romance and history. These works  are characterized by a growing adventurousness of form and sound, with vigorous reinterpretation of the operatic language of the day. Both operas carried Meyerbeer’s name over the Alps, and right across Europe.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-02-01,Ludwig Minkus,Ludwig Minkus La Bayadère: Grand Ballet in Four Acts and Seven Scenes by Sergei Khudekov and Marius Petipa Piano Score,Paperback,978-1-4438-0177-5,54.99,"La Bayadère was first produced at the Maryinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, on 4 February 1877. The scenario was by Sergei Khudekov and Marius Petipa, who also devised the choreography. The music was by the Austrian composer Ludwig Minkus (1827-1917), who spend most of his life working for the Imperial Ballet in St Petersburg. His music for this ballet—long scorned, never published, and endlessly re-arranged— has slowly emerged, since its revival began in the West in the 1960s, as a viable and significant musical achievement in its own right. Apart from the strongly defined melodies, infectious rhythm, and affecting harmonies, there is a powerful unity of conception and a sustained attention to mood that establishes its own unique incidental atmosphere. In its evocation of far-off times, the score conjures up an exotic Indian setting, where two spheres are set in contrast—a bright external world of colour and pomp, of ambition, rivalry and death; and an internal realm of night and dreams, of ideals, transcendent love and life—all realized most completely in the famous Kingdom of the Shades in act 3. 
The generous self-offering love of the temple dancer Nikia is one of the great stories of the Romantic ballet.
Here for the first time is the piano score of the entire ballet. The music derives from four sources: a clear manuscript from the days of the Soviet Union; a version of Act 4 as held in the Library of Covent Garden; a beautiful Russian copy of the Kingdom of the Shades; and a potpourri from the 1880s by Johann Resch—the only music ever published from the score.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,The Meyerbeer Libretti: Grand Opéra 1  Robert le Diable,Paperback,9781847189646,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime unrivalled by any of his contemporaries. This eleven volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts are offered in the most complete versions ever made available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The fifth volume presents Robert le Diable (1831),  the first of Meyerbeer’s epoch-making grand operas. It had one of the most successful premières in operatic history, and enjoyed phenomenal popularity in the 19th century.  Contemporary criticism showed that the French, and indeed all Europe, seemed to see in this opera a symbol of their own epoch, with all its ardors, despairs and ambiguities. The spirit of Romanticism had inspired both librettist and composer. By its vivid melodies and great dramatic power, by its color and contrast, its bold use of the religious idea, it appealed to the emotions and intelligence of the public. The authors had addressed the preoccupations and intimations of the age. The choice of the Norman legend, with its various hues and dramatization of the eternal struggle in the human soul between light and darkness, good and evil, was a skillful adaptation of the Faust theme central to so many Romantic concerns.  The fundamental modernity of Meyerbeer’s concept of opera was very clear to his contemporaries. After the première the critic and musicologist François-Joseph Fétis described the opera as a remarkable production in the history of art. Verdi, who knew Meyerbeer’s work well and valued it highly, saw in Robert le Diable an outstanding alliance of the fantastic and the true in the manner of Shakespeare.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,The Meyerbeer Libretti: Grand Opéra 2  Les Huguenots,Paperback,9781847189653,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime unrivalled by any of his contemporaries. This eleven volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts are offered in the most complete versions ever made available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The sixth volume presents Les Huguenots (1836), Meyerbeer's most popular opera, not only in France, but throughout the world during the 19th and early 20th  centuries. By 1936 it had been performed 1126 times at the Paris Opéra alone.  The stirring scenario set during the French Wars of Religion conjures up a rich and complex Renaissance world and the tragedy of religious conflict, with  the whole of society unraveling in hatred, murder and chaos. The only light is spiritual illumination which chooses self-sacrifice and love above hatred and vengeance—even to the point of death. Resolution comes in true enlightenment of mind and heart. George Sand, indeed, called this opera “an evangel of love”.

The plot follows an inexorable course, intensified in terms of broadness, light, time, speed and compression, as leisured life, freedom of mind and action, are funneled into a vortex of constriction: action becomes narrower, darker, faster and inescapable in the realization of a fatal course of tragic events. Eventually the only authentic behaviour left is the freedom to die for the truth. In Les Huguenots Meyerbeer showed himself the master of narrative pacing and symbolic color. He emerges as the historical novelist of dramatic music, using sophisticated orchestral and choral  mixtures, strong melody, splendid vocalism, and powerful characterization to unfold both relaxed and vibrant narration. 

The apprehension of historical detail, the bold confrontation of ideological and religious themes of profound importance to human self-determination and liberty, established Meyerbeer as a great composer of serious opera.  The engagement of poet and composer transcended historical limitations to create a masterpiece of Romantic tragedy. For Verdi, Les Huguenots was true theater, and acts 2 and 4 especially, stupendo (magnificent).

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-03-01,Richard Arsenty and Robert Letellier,"The Meyerbeer Libretti: Italian Operas 3 (L'Esule de Granata, Il Crociato in Egitto)",Paperback,9781847189639,9.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most important and influential opera composers of the nineteenth century, enjoyed a fame during his lifetime unrivalled by any of his contemporaries. This eleven volume set  provides in one collection all the operatic texts set by Meyerbeer in his career. The texts are offered in the most complete versions ever made available. Each libretto is translated into modern English  by Richard Arsenty; and each work is introduced by Robert Letellier. In this comprehensive edition of Meyerbeer's  libretti,  the original text and its translation are placed on facing pages for ease of use. 

The fourth volume presents Meyerbeer’s fifth and sixth Italian operas, written towards the end of  his decisive sojourn in Italy,  where for eight years (1816-24) he made the operatic traditions of bel canto his own, while constantly expanding  his own powerful dramatic instincts. His  Italian operas divide themselves into three pairs of two. In the third  pair, L’Esule di Granata (Milan, 1822) and Il Crociato in Egitto (Venice, 1824), the impulse to dismantle and reconstruct the traditions of bel canto was carried even further than before. Development of the introduzione, a fluent handling and modification of structure, an imaginative expansion of forces, showed awareness of both the French traditions of grandeur and  Rossini’s experiments in the opera seria in Naples. All Meyerbeer’s Italian operas are concerned with situations of exile and imposture, search and restitution, confusion and fulfilment, and none more so then Il Crociato. This recurrent theme certainly reflected a subliminal thematic treatment of issues at work in the composer’s life: his view of himself as a searching artist, an alien Jew,  an outsider living away from his Prussian home and seeking his true métier. The success of the Crociato enabled Meyerbeer to effect a move to Paris, the operatic capital of the world, where his career would find its true artistic home.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-04-01,Giacomo Meyerbeer and Gaetano Rossi,Il Crociato in Egitto: Melodramma eroico in due atti,Hardback,978-1-4438-0446-2,54.99," 	This book reproduces the Ricordi vocal score of Meyerbeer’s last Italian opera (Milan, c. 1825).  More than  hardly any other opera of the first third of the nineteenth century, Il Crociato in Egitto (Venice, 1814) appears as work standing between the epochs. In its engagement with the traditions of the melodramma, Meyerbeer exploited here to the full all the possibilities offered by the form, without actually questioning its nature. Whereas Rossini in his Neapolitan operas had undertaken a transformation of the genre, moving it in the direction of French grand opera, Meyerbeer on the one hand  continued a heightened development of the generic tendencies, while on the other affecting a deliberate resumption of older forms, already obsolete at this time (like simple romance structures and the use of recitativo secco, especially to mark the closure of scenes). The disparate medium of presentation spans isolated individual numbers and highly integrated tableaux of solo and chorus, traditional lyrical virtuosity and the dramaturgy of modern instrumental colour, melodic models from the eighteenth century, and anticipation of middle Verdi, integrated only by the strongly imprinted force of the individual style. Even more than in Margherita d’Anjou and L’Esule di Granata, the Crociato opens up to the historical opera. The personal conflict still determines the dramaturgy, but this is projected onto historical circumstances and given a philosophical component through the figure of the religious fanatic  Adriano. Throughout the whole opera, the antagonism between the Crusaders and the Egyptians, until their final magnanimous reconciliation, is depicted in contrasting dramatic terms  as the confrontation between two cultures and religions. The formal structures for such a dramaturgy also shapes the tableaux in this opera.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Giacomo Meyerbeer: L'Africaine Deuxième Partie (22 morceaux et fragments  inédits),Paperback,978-1-4438-0615-2,39.99,"This volume presents the various pieces of music—from fragments, through complete pieces, to whole scenes—that were not used in the final performing edition of Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine.
	The genesis of Meyerbeer’s last opera  is something of a legend. He had first considered the subject in 1837 when Scribe presented him with two new drafts, intended to clinch the triumphant successes of Robert le Diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836). The composer began composing Le Prophète immediately, but had the other project, L’Africaine,  ever in his mind. By 1843 a piano score was ready, but the subject as it stood then, concerning Fernando da Soto’s explorations in West Africa, did not satisfy Meyerbeer. Scribe was asked to rewrite the libretto in 1851, with the hero changed to Vasco da Gama, and focussed on his epic voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India. A new contract was signed in 1857, and the  greater part of the opera was written between 1857 and 1863, in spite of the Meyerbeer’s growing debility.  
 	Meyerbeer died on 2 May 1864, the day after the completion of the copying of the  full score of Vasco da Gama. The rehearsal period was always a time of radical revision and excision for the composer, and he left a verbal request that the work should not be produced if he were not alive to supervise it.  Minna Meyerbeer and César-Victor Perrin, the director of the Opéra, however, entrusted the editing of a performing edition to the famous Belgian musicologist François-Joseph Fétis, while the libretto was revised by Mélesville. Because of the long public expectation, the editors restored the original title, and  attempted to reconcile this to the Hindu elements of the action by shifting the action to the island of Madagascar. 
	L’Africaine was produced on 28 April 1865, a glorious posthumous tribute to Scribe and Meyerbeer. Much of the music and action was suppressed, in spite of the resultant strain on  the internal logic of the story. The opera caused tremendous enthusiasm, and became enormously popular, being staged 60 times in the first four seasons, and eventually receiving 485 performances in Paris until the end of the century.   The Ship Scene, the exotic Indian act, and the finale under the Manchineel Tree exerted a fascination on audiences, and elicited new praise. The work began a triumphal progress through the world, beginning with the big stages of London and Berlin. In its glorious vocal writing, resplendent orchestral colouring and fragrant exoticism, it was a source of delight to many—like Franz Liszt, who produced two books of transcriptions from the work. 
	Fétis edited a performing edition of the score, subsequently used all over the world. However, most of Meyerbeer’s manuscript was reproduced intact in the orchestral score printed by G. Brandus & S. Dufour. But Fétis  also collected all 22 of the unused variants and fragments in vocal score for publication as the so-called Deuxième Partie. These remain a  crucial source of information for the history and future performing editions of this great opera. Fétis  himself observed of his own work:
.
	“Convinced, after a first reading of the score of L’Africaine, that this opera was the master’s most complete, most perfect oeuvre, the crowning achievement of his work, I then began a study of each of the parts, in order to prepare the score for the copying of the roles, the separate parts for the chorus and orchestra; and finally for the heads of the various performing departments. There began my task: sometimes several arias had been composed for the same situations, just as the composer was accustomed to do with his other operas, not fixing his choice until he had assessed the effect in rehearsals. He had also written many variants for the ensembles, particularly for the finale of act 4. Finally, indicators of performing abridgements for certain numbers of bars in many scenes were found in the manuscript for those instances where the musical development would be too long for the appropriate dramatic effect. Not wanting to prejudge the solutions that Meyerbeer had taken for many of these situations, I decided to make my choices according to my instincts, amidst all these matters left uncertain by the master. These choices were all made before I delivered the score to the copyist. During the rehearsals, the artists and the heads of services concurred that I had chosen well.” 

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-06-01,"Elizabeth Mackinlay, Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Katelyn Barney","Musical Islands: Exploring Connections between Music, Place and Research",Hardback,978-1-4438-0956-6,49.99,"The island is a powerful metaphor in everyday speech which extends almost naturally into several academic disciplines, including musicology. Islands are imagined as isolated and unique places where strange, exotic, different and unexpected treasures can be found by daring adventurers. The magic inherent within this positioning of islands as places of discovery is an aspect which permeates the theoretical, methodological and analytical boundaries of this edited book. Showcasing the breadth of current musicological research in Australia and New Zealand, this edited collection offers a range of subtle and innovative reflections on this concept both in established and well-charted territories of music research.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-07-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,"Giacomo Meyerbeer Orchestral Works: The Incidental Music to Struensee, Fackeltänze, Overtures,Marches, Ballet Music Piano Score",Paperback,978-1-4438-0979-5,39.99,"This volume brings together a collection of the orchestral works of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer. He is remembered as one of the great figures of 19th-century opera—a master of brilliant vocalism, impassioned drama and vivid orchestral power and colour. His operas are noted for their precise construction and urgent propulsion, and never linger for long in music for its own sake. Nevertheless, the orchestral passages are integral to the dramatic logic: brief thematically pertinent preludes and precise introductions to the individual acts, always providing a sense of colour and purpose. The operas are also famous for their ballets as an integral aspect of the dramaturgy of the grand French style, but even here the music is kept within strict temporal control. Some of these dance sequences (like the Ballet of the Nuns in Robert le Diable and the Skaters’ Ballet in Le Prophète became very famous in themselves: the former was of seminal influence on the development of the Romantic Ballet, both in musical and conceptual terms; the latter is known universally as the ballet of winter joy, Les Patineurs). Other orchestral episodes from the operas also enjoyed great independent popularity—like the resplendent Coronation March in Le Prophète and the exotic  Marche Indienne in L’Africaine. The former continues to be Meyerbeer’s most widely known composition. All these works have been gathered together in this volume to constitute orchestral suites from the French operas—both grand and the smaller opéras comiques. The two latter works L’Étoile du Nord and Dinorah each has an extended overture. Meyerbeer’s most substantial orchestral work, however,  is the incidental music he wrote for his brother, Michael Beer’s tragedy Struensee (1846). The overture is Meyerbeer’s crowing achievement in orchestral writing, and the rest of the incidental music is enthralling in its drama, passion and pathos. The composer was also asked to write instrumental music for other public occasions, most especially for the weddings of the Prussian Royal Family. He provided four stirring Fackeltänze for the torchlight procession held at the Hohenzollern nuptial celebrations, superb works in processional polonaise style, full of grandezza, dramatic gesture and affecting lyricism. In 1861 Meyerbeer was asked to compose the music for the royal procession of King Wilhelm I of Prussia at the ancient capital of Königsberg. The result was another Coronation March, this one of more formal and stately character, that reaches its climax most appropriately in the Prussian national anthem “Ich bin ein Preusser”. In 1862 Meyerbeer was commissioned to write music for the opening of the London Exhibition in the Crystal Palace. His Overture in March Style is in the form of a Baroque suite, and provides a series of four variants on the march genre, culminating in a fantasia on “Rule Britannia”. This grandiose festive piece is full variety, surprises and subtle orchestral colours. Like all this composer’s work, this fine composition is waiting to be rediscovered.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-08-01,Marc Jeannin,Anthony Burgess: Music in Literature and Literature in Music,Hardback,978-1-4438-1116-3,39.99,"This book, taking an interdisciplinary approach, proposes a new insight into the relationship between literature and music through the prism of Anthony Burgess’s works and those of his spiritual fathers, be they writers or composers. Exploring this relationship not only helps us to appreciate the complex mechanisms of certain artistic creations, but also demonstrates the parallels between these two major modes of artistic expression as well as showing the limits of trying to superimpose them. A selected panel of brilliant international scholars tackles the challenge of examining this relationship by providing original explanatory comments on the musicality of literature and the literary aspects of music. The book includes many pertinent references to a variety of artists ranging from musicians such as Mozart, Beethoven and Debussy to authors such as Joyce, Eliot and Huxley. Finally, it offers, through a wide spectrum of analyses, enrichment to scholars, students and general readers of the works of Burgess and of others in which literary and musical domains meet.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Vesa Kurkela and Lauri Väkevä,De-Canonizing Music History,Hardback,978-1-4438-1391-4,39.99,"This book is about musical canons and de-canonizing music history. Whenever music is critically examined, it is disciplined, ordered, and corrected; the canon functions as a basic tool in defining the scope of this disciplining. In recent music history, however, there has emerged a strong need to redefine the limits of the disciplining and to criticize the principles of canon formation. De-canonizing can be seen as a tool in this critique. 

This book also shows how different styles and traditions in music have formed their own canons. Its main goal is to deconstruct these canons: to describe, analyze and problematize them in their variety. De-canonizing also refers to artistic crossover and cross-border encounters. In this book art meets popular, ethnic meets education, and avantgarde meets mainstream. Here musical past meets modern musicology, its various trends—and canons.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2009-12-01,Robert P. McParland,Music and Literary Modernism: Critical Essays and Comparative Studies 2nd Edition,Hardback,978-1-4438-1402-7,34.99,"In Music and Literary Modernism, the intersections of music, literature and language are examined by an international group of scholars who engage in studies of modernist art and practice. The essays collected here present the significant place of music in the writing of T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, James Weldon Johnson, Mina Loy, Stephen Mallarme, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein,Wallace Stevens and Virginia Woolf, as well as the importance of literary art for composers such as George Antheil, Pierre Boulez, Olivier Messaein, and The Beatles. Contributors explore the role of music and literary modernism in the postmodern sublime, sound and ""music"" in language, the uneasy alliance of jazz and pop song in high modernist work, the Beatles as modernists, and other topics.

This is a revised and updated second edition.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-02-01,Paolo Petrocelli,The Resonance of a Small Voice: William Walton and the Violin Concerto in England between 1900 and 1940,Hardback,978-1-4438-1721-9,34.99,"This book constitutes both a study and a historical musicological analysis of Sir William Walton's Violin Concerto, treating the form of the violin concerto in general in England, as it developed between 1900 and 1940, taking into consideration the works of Charles Villiers Stanford, Edward Elgar, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Frederick Delius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Somervell, Arnold Bax and Benjamin Britten. 

The study is divided into three parts:

-	The Violin Concerto in England between 1900-1920: Stanford, Elgar, Coleridge-Taylor, Delius.

-	The Violin Concerto in England between 1920 and 1940: Vaughan Williams, Somervell, Bax, Britten.

-	William Walton's Violin Concerto

The book opens with a brief description of the form of the Violin Concerto between the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe. This description is intended to provide both a familiarity with the fundamental characteristics of this musical form during the period under examination, and the beginning of a comparison between different national compositional styles.
Each section is introduced with a portrait of the historical musical character in England during the respective period, and presents, after a biographical introduction to the respective composers, a formal structural, harmonic and aesthetic analysis (this analysis being embedded within a general discussion of the concertos themselves). In addition, a study of the technical and interpretative aspects of the concerto and a reflection on the relationship between composer and performer form part of the analysis. At the close of each section a comparative overview is also given.
The first and second parts are developed entirely in relation to the third, which treats, exclusively and in considerable depth, Sir William Walton's Violin Concerto, the work to which the greatest attention is devoted. 
The appendix provides various unpublished texts concerning some of the concertos treated (with particular reference to Walton's) that were gathered during research. It is hoped that these will prove useful in enriching and completing a reflection, begun in the book, on the decidedly performative and interpretative aspect of violin music produced by British composers in the first half of the 20th century.  
Currently there are no modern texts that approach the violin concertos of this period in an exhaustive way. This text proposes to fill the gap, drawing the attention of scholars, musicologists and musicians to the appeal of this repertoire, composed of works of great artistic value that have been, for too long, unjustly forgotten.  
The volume will be useful to university and conservatory students, musicologists, composers, violinists and musicians in general, in as much as it treats, in specialized yet accessible language, the aspects of the concerto that are of interest to the author.
The study is enriched by the inclusion of unpublished documents (letters and essays written by both the composers themselves and by those to whom the concertos were dedicated), that will help to illuminate the myriad cultural and personal circumstances that fed and gave life to these great works. 

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Marina Santi,Improvisation: Between Technique and Spontaneity,Hardback,978-1-4438-1854-4,34.99,"Underpinning this project is the attempt to grasp the notion behind improvisation and to understand what is actually meant by “improvisation” its nature and its construct. At the same time this project aims to bestow on improvisation its legitimate role as a versatile, long-lasting creative process of knowledge and action. The word “improvisation” is used to describe a host of very different things. It can be considered a collective, creative phenomenon, an individual skilled performance, an emerging act within a rooted practice, or as a set of generative techniques, yet there are a number of issues with its concept and practice. In improvisation, shared practices, steeped in culture and history, are intertwined, yet constantly exposed to the force of spontaneity and innovation. All the studies presented in the book contend that improvisation in artistic practices could hold the key to understanding the more unstructured, at times more unconscious, forms of improvisation that pervade different fields of knowledge and professions, as well as our everyday experiences.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Julie Ballantyne and Brydie-Leigh Bartleet,Navigating Music and Sound Education,Hardback,978-1-4438-1843-8,39.99,"Navigating Music and Sound Education has been specifically written for pre-service teachers who are studying music education curriculum or pedagogy subjects. It features the voices of leading international academics in the field to illuminate issues of importance in preparing pre-service teacher education students. The engaging examples provided in each chapter are drawn from real-life educational settings, and enable readers to critically explore the perspectives presented by the authors and consider the application of such perspectives in their future practice.


","“We rarely have the opportunity and time to engage with the practicalities of music teaching through the lens of evidence-based practice. This book provides us with a wonderful exception that is accessible to beginning and established teachers. It contains a wide range of stimulating and thought-provoking material that draws on real-world experiences and events, which are contextualised, informed and structured by theory. This is a powerful combination that we can visit again and again for insight and inspiration. Congratulations to all involved, particularly the editors for shaping such a valuable contribution!”
—Professor Graham F. Welch, University of London; President, International Society of Music Education

“Navigating music and sound education draws together a range of issues increasingly acknowledged to be at the basis of reflective and effective music learning and teaching: social settings, cultural dimensions, gender, indigeneity, varying cognitive approaches, inter-disciplinary connections, technology, types of learning, and creativity. It opens up areas of pedagogy that go beyond classroom methodology to acknowledge student individuality and encourage music learning and teaching grounded in the reality of students’ musical and social lives. It will be invaluable for those training to become educators and for teachers already in the field.”
—Associate Professor Peter Dunbar-Hall, University of Sydney

“This book brings an important contribution to music teacher education as it challenges the readers to rethink their paradigms of music education. It highlights the importance of preparing a reflective teacher, autonomous, creative and conscious of the multifaceted and multicultural locus in which they will work. The book also draws on the importance for music teachers to consider the context in which they work, and establish a dialog between local musical traditions, informal music practices and global trends of music teaching and learning. Most importantly, all chapters are in one way or another derived from research carried out on specific areas, thus stressing the importance of the research informed practice in music education.”
—Professor Liane Hentschke, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; International Society of Music Education Immediate Past President

Many readers will appreciate Steve Dillon and Kathy Hirche’s description of the future of education in their work with dynamic technological contexts. 

Navigating Music and Sound Education is a wonderful guide and resource for pre-service music teachers, for teachers in the field, and for teacher educators. 

It offers a range of fresh perspectives on the state of music education as it is and as it might be. Kari K Veblen

Navigating Music and Sound Education is an ambitious project which features current research from 20 individuals whose professional identities run the gamut from musician to songwriter to student to educator to music therapist to ethnomusicologist. The book’s scope is perhaps the most exciting aspect of Navigating Music and Sound Education.
Kari K Veblen
University of Western Ontario
British Journal of Music Education
October 2011

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-03-01,Brandon Derfler,Single-Voice Transformations: A Model for Parsimonious Voice Leading,Hardback,978-1-4438-1860-5,39.99,"This study demonstrates how smooth voice leading in music can be effectively modeled using concepts from abstract algebra. Minute voice-leading displacements are explained as iterations of the basic operation, the single-semitone transformation (SST). The SST is a type of transformation in which only a single voice in a chord is transposed by a semitone. Unlike previous music theoretic studies, the SST model does not rely on twelve-tone operations on sets to determine voice-leading paths. SST-succession classes can then be defined; they allow SSTs to be generalized as parsimonious voice-leading relations between pair-ordered set classes. Voice leading between chords of different “sizes” can be obtained through split and fuse operations. Once a mathematical basis for smooth voice-leading is formalized, 3D graphical representations in the form of lattices of parsimoniously related chord types can be developed. The study compares the single-voice transformational model to transformational theories of atonal voice leading and to recent work in the emergent field of neo-Riemannian theory. The final chapter examines music from tonal, atonal, and “post-atonal” stylistic periods by Chopin, Scriabin, Webern, Paul Lansky, and John Adams, showing the new voice-leading model’s versatility as an analytical tool.

","“Brandon Derfler's Single-Voice Transformations: A Model for Parsimonious Voice Leading explores neo-Riemannian and parsimonious voice-leading relations among generalized types of set classes. It summarizes very clearly the bewildering variety of terminology and ideas in this area, and goes on to develop an approach based on n-tuples of pitch-classes for chords, related to one another by “single-semitone transformations” (the parsimonious aspect here) assembled into a direct product group that acts on the chord-tuples. This is a mathematical treatment that is more correct and superior to previous approaches. The thesis includes some very impressive online 3-dimensional virtual reality fly-through models of the geometry of chord types under these relations.
 A must-read for anyone interested in this area of music theory research.”
—John Rahn, Professor of Music, University of Washington, Editor, Perspectives of New Music


",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,"Inma Álvarez, Héctor J. Pérez and Francisca Pérez-Carreño",Expression in the Performing Arts,Hardback,978-1-4438-1953-4,44.99,"The performing arts represent a significant part of the artistic production in our culture. Correspondingly the fields of drama, film, music, opera, dance and performance studies are expanding. However, these arts remain an underexplored territory for aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Expression in the Performing Arts tries to contribute to this area. The volume collects essays written by international scholars who address a variety of themes concerning the core philosophical topic of expression in the theory of the performing arts.

Specific questions about the ontology of art, the nature of the performances, the role of the performer, and the relations between spectators and works emerge from the study of the performing arts. Besides, these arts challenge the unchanging physicality of other kinds of works of art, usually the direct result of creative individual artist, and barely affected by the particular circumstances of their exhibition. Expression is one of the issues that adopt a special character in the performing arts. Do singers, dancers or actors express the feelings a work is expressive of? How does the performer contribute to the expressive content of the work? How does the spectator emotionally respond to the physical proximity of the performers? Is aesthetic distance avoided in the understanding of the performing arts? How are the expressive properties of work, performance and characters related? And how are the subjectivities they embody revealed? The contributions presented here are not all in agreement on the right answers to theses questions, but they offer a critical and exciting discussion of them.

In addition to original proposals on the theoretical aspect of expression in the performing arts, the collection includes analyses of individual artists, historical productions and concrete works of art, as well as reflections on performative practice. 






",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,"Ludwig Minkus, Don Quixote: Ballet in Three Acts, Six Scenes and a Prologue by Marius Petipa; revised by Alexander Gorsky and Rostislav Zakharov (the Moscow Version)",Paperback,978-1-4438-1909-1,49.99,"The ballet Don Quixote, with music by Ludwig Minkus and scenario and original choreography by Marius Petipa, is one of the most enduring creations to have emerged from the flowering of the ballet in late 19th-century Russia. Still popular, it has become a standard repertory piece in ballet companies all over the world. The work was first performed in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theater on 14/26 December 1869. The plot, in four acts and eight scenes, was based on an episode which Petipa had developed from the second part of Cervantes’s novel, relating the love story of Quiteria (known as Kitri in the ballet) and Basilio. Petipa devised the original version to suit the unsophisticated taste of Moscow's audiences. Soon after, he prepared a version for St Petersburg, using the same music and designs, but with major choreographic revisions. This St Petersburg version, premiered on 9/21 November 1871, was in five acts (eleven episodes, a prologue and an epilogue). It took into account the Imperial capital's preference for a more classical interpretation of the ballet and amounted to a new and very different version.

Alexander Gorsky staged his Moscow revival of Don Quixote in 1900 using Petipa's St Petersburg scenario and some of his choreography, and reducing the work to four acts. Two years later, in 1902, the director of the Imperial Theatres, Vladimir Teliakovsky, invited Gorsky to restage an updated version of Don Quixote at the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg. The ballet became a staple of the repertoires of the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet and the Leningrad Kirov Ballet and was regularly modified as it was continually restaged, ending up as three acts with a prologue and six scenes. This version of the score, containing several interpolated pieces by other repertory dance composers, is the standard performing edition used in Russia.

Don Quixote was first seen outside of Russia in an edited two-act version danced by Pavlova and her company in England in 1924. The first time the full work was staged for a Western company was by the English Ballet Rambert in 1962, by Witold Borkowski. Notable productions outside of Russia to Minkus's music were those by Rudolf Nureyev for the Vienna State Opera (1966), and Mikhail Baryshnikov for American Ballet Theatre (1978), which for the most part followed the traditional versions they had performed in Russia. Another major source of publicity for the ballet came in 1976 when the iceskater John Curry’s inspired routine to music from the ballet won him a gold medal at the European Figure Skating Championship, the World Figure Skating Championship and the Winter Olympics.

No standard editions of Minkus's scores have ever been produced, and no full score of Don Quixote has been published. Every ballet company usually comes up with its own arrangements of his music, the revisions by John Lanchbery being the most widely known. Lanchbery’s work, however, tampers with both the orchestration and, more seriously, the harmony, of Minkus’s music, and is often closer to a rewriting than an arrangement. The resurgent popularity of Minkus's Don Quixote and La Bayadère, as well as his additions to Deldevez’s  Paquita, have revealed the innate skill and charm of his music, despite the ubiquity of the arrangements and distortions of his scores. Minkus's writing, like so much Romantic ballet, is closely allied to operatic conventions, with arias, duets and ensembles that are enacted rather than sung, and with each ballet sustaining its own special atmosphere. The Town Square, Gypsy Camp and Dream Sequence in Don Quixote are full of musical buoyancy and melodic verve, demonstrating a careful use of tonality and dramatic style. The famous Grand Pas de Deux from the finale “is lively, well-crafted and ablaze with attractive invention” (Ian Woodward). Until such times as a definitive version of the manuscript score can be established, this performing edition as used in Russia acknowledges the living tradition of this work, and the vibrancy of Minkus’s splendid music.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,"Ludwig Minkus; Fiammetta/Néméa: Ballet-Pantomime in Two Acts, by Arthur Saint-Léon; Airs de ballet, Le Poisson doré: Fantastic Ballet in Three Acts, by Arthur Saint-Léon",Paperback,978-1-4438-1951-0,39.99,"Aloysius Ludwig Minkus (1826–1917), famous for his ballets Don Quixote (1869) and La Bayadère (1877), was born in Bohemia, and grew up in the dance capital Vienna. He hoped to establish a reputation as a violinist and composer, and by 1853 had emigrated to St Petersburg where he became the conductor and solo violinist of the private orchestra of Prince Nikolai Yusupov. In 1861 he was appointed violin soloist and, a year later, conductor of the Moscow Bolshoi Orchestra. He began a happy collaboration with the great French choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon (1821–1870), who was a real friend and inspiration to Minkus, and more than anyone else, helped to launch his career as a theatrical composer, producing five works in association with him in St Petersburg and Paris.

Minkus’s first ballet, the three-act Plamya lyubvi, ili Salamandra (The Flame of Love, or the Salamander, also called Fiammetta), was given its premiere on 13 February 1864 at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theater in St Petersburg (with Marfa Muravyeva in the leading role). The scenario and the choreography were by Saint-Léon, the most important dance master of the day in both Paris and Russia. Saint-Léon’s influence secured this work production in the French capital, and it was perhaps for this occasion that Minkus accompanied Saint-Léon to Paris to mount the work at the Académie Royale de Musique. Reduced to two acts, and re-christened Néméa, ou l’Amour vengé (with a scenario adapted by Henri Meilhac & Ludovic Halévy), the ballet was performed at the Paris Opéra on 11 July 1864, with considerable success (again with Marfa Muravyeva, and with Eugénie Fiocre as Cupid). It remained in the repertoire for seven years, attaining 53 performances by 1871. Théophile Gautier remarked on the atmospheric quality of Minkus’s music, its “haunting, dreamy quality.” Roqueplan singled out Saint-Léon's choreography for its “imagination and originality, his ability to handle masses.” Some of the Airs de Ballet were almost immediately published by Henri Hegel (1865), and are reproduced here.

By now Minkus was becoming known internationally. So when five years later the Paris Opéra ordered a new grand ballet from Saint-Léon to a libretto by Charles Nuitter, Saint-Léon involved Minkus in the project, securing for him a hand in the composition of the first and fourth scenes of this new work, La Source. The other two scenes were entrusted to the young Léo Delibes, thirty at the time, who had drawn favourable attention to himself in the preparation of the ballet music for the première of Meyerbeer’s posthumous L’Africaine in 1865. The first performance of La Source on 12 November 1866 was great success for Delibes, whose bold and colourful composition was praised at the expense of Minkus’s subtler contribution. Saint-Léon immediately began planning another work with Nuitter and Delibes, and one which would crown the young French’s composer’s success with triumph, Coppélia.

Saint-Léon nevertheless continued to work with Minkus, despite his busy engagements in Paris. The choreographer’s greatest ballet for Russia was his work with Cesare Pugni, Koniok-Gorbunok (The Little Humpbacked Horse) (1864), based on a Russian fairytale. He now tapped into the same folk material in a new work with Minkus, Zolotaya rybka (The Golden Fish), based on Alexander Pushkin’s Legend of the fisher and the little fish. On 20 November 1866, for the celebration of the Tsarevitch’s wedding, Saint-Léon oversaw the production of a one-act version of this new ballet, Le Poisson doré, at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theater in St Petersburg. The work was then developed as a three-act ballet for the same theater a year later (8 October 1867). Minkus’s music was very well received. As with La Source, it was carefully adapted in form and mood to the scenario, remarkable for its panache and beautiful writing for solo instruments (violin, flute, cello, cornet), and for reflecting the nature of the fairytale scenario in the appropriation of national folk styles (Polish, Kazak, Cossack). The score was considered worthy of full publication in piano reduction by the St Petersburg house of Stellowsky (c. 1870), and is reproduced here. The last collaboration between Minkus and Saint-Léon followed two years after that, a partial  arrangement of La Source, given in St Petersburg as Liliya (Le Lys) in 1869.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Robert Letellier,"Paquita, Ballet-Pantomime in Two Acts, Grand Pas Classique by Marius Petipa; and Nuit et Jour, Allegorical Ballet in One Act, by Marius Petpa; Piano Score, by Ludwig Minkus",Paperback,978-1-4438-1940-4,49.99,"The two ballets in this volume, Paquita and Nuit et Jour, represent Ludwig Minkus (1826–1917) towards the end of his career in Russia, working at the peak of his creative powers. They are respectively the thirteenth and fourteenth collaborations between the Viennese composer and the famous choreographer of the Russian classical ballet, Marius Petipa (1819–1910).

The Grand Pas, written for Petipa's revival of Deldevez’s Paquita in St Petersburg in 1881, is well-known and loved, a jewel of the classical ballet repertoire in its own right. As an independent, abstract divertissement, the Grand Pas has remained popular with ballet companies and their audiences all over the world, but had not been seen outside Russia in its original context (as the climax of the concluding celebrations) before Pierre Lacotte's sensitive re-creation of the 1846 ballet in its entirety at the Paris Opéra in 2001.

The Grand Pas was designed for ballerina, premier danseur, six premières danseuses and eight second soloists. Over the years, this Spanish flavoured piece has become a kind of miniature gala performance, with an array of solo variations that are particularly interesting not only for their choreography but also their occasional obbligato writing. Minkus had a talent in composing for the violin, his own special instrument—as can be seen in the sumptuous, extended adagio. His ballets also contain effective virtuoso pieces for  the flute, harp, cello and cornet. The violin and harp solos were written with the talents of the famous violinist Leopold Auer and harpist Albert Zabel in mind, both of whom served as instrumental leaders in the St Petersburg theatre orchestras in the late 19th century.

The contemporary manuscript piano arrangements reproduced here, repetiteur scores from the Soviet era, present a longer and a shorter version of the Grand Pas. They reflect the performing edition as it has variously evolved over the 130 years of its independent stage life on the Russian stages, and—through the agency of Anna Pavlova’s travelling company in the 1920s—as also adapted by ballet companies across the world.

The less familiar Nuit et Jour was created by Petipa and Minkus to mark the accession to the throne of Tsar Alexander III in 1883. It is an interesting development of the popular contemporary genre of abstract allegorical works, illustrating the movement of time through the day and the seasons of the year. The ballet depicts the innate beauties of both night and day (created by the great ballerinas Yevgeniya Sokolova and Yekaterina Vazem respectively), the daily struggle between darkness and light, and climaxes in an achievement of harmony in a dance of the nations. This is given a patriotic resonance by reflecting ten national types from the Russian Empire in a tour de force, testing the composer’s skill in capturing the various national styles: Uzbek, Tartar, Siberian, Finnish, Cossack, Belarusian, Polish, Caucasian, and Ukrainian. The score reproduced here is the piano version published in both Hamburg and St Petersburg about 1885.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-04-01,Michal Smoira Cohn,The Mission and Message of Music: Building Blocks to the Aesthetics of Music in our Time,Hardback,978-1-4438-1870-4,44.99,"This book is an English re-writing of the original Hebrew edition, published by Dvir Publishing House, in 2007, and written jointly with the late Herzl Shmueli.

The book probes into the nature and quality of the beauty and meaning of music. According to the authors, these have to be found within the musical phenomena themselves and serve as the basis for the aesthetical criteria of all music. They maintain that similar to every linguistic phenomena, music is a message in sound that moves, within a certain time limit, from musician to listener. The musician on the one hand, and the listener on the other, are the two focal points between which the musical process takes place. Music is thus a covenant between the musician and the listener. One sends the musical message, the other takes it up and internalizes it; one is the initiator, the other proves the successful outcome of the artistic process.

The book is intended for music connoisseurs and for all who are intersted in artistic thought, in general, and in musical thoughts in particular. Every professional concept that had to be included  in the book is duly explained, so that any interested reader is able to broaden the scope of his/her outlook.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-05-01,Robert Letellier,"Ludwig Minkus and Léo Delibes: La Source; Fantastic Ballet in Three Acts and Four Scenes, by Charles Nuitter and Arthur Saint-Léon: Piano Score",Paperback,978-1-4438-1986-2,34.99,"This volume reproduces the piano score of the ballet La Source, a joint composition by Ludwig Minkus and Léo Delibes.

After the success of Néméa (1864), the Paris Opéra ordered a new grand ballet from the famous choreographer Arthur Saint-Léon to a libretto based on a Persian legend by Charles Nuitter. Saint-Léon involved his musical collaborator in St Petersburg, Ludwig Minkus, in the project, securing for him a hand in the composition of the first and fourth scenes of the of this new work, La Source, a fantastic ballet in three acts. The composition of the other two scenes (the second and third) were entrusted to the young, unknown Léo Delibes, thirty at the time, who had drawn favourable attention to himself in the preparation of the ballet music for the première of Meyerbeer’s posthumous L’Africaine in 1865. The first performance of La Source was on 12 November 1866 at the Théatre Impérial de l’Opéra, with the principal dancers Guglielmina Salvioni (Naila), Eugénie Fiocre (Nouredda) and Louis Mérante (Djemil). The ballet as a whole was very successful, with 73 performances until 1876. Saint-Léon immediately began planning another work with Nuitter and Delibes—Coppélia—one which would crown the young French’s composer’s success with triumph. This was premiered on 25 May 1870, the last of Saint-Léon’s work, and the last great success of the French Romantic ballet at the Salle Le Peletier before the crisis of the Franco-Prussian War, and the end of the Second Empire.

As regards the music of La Source, Delibes’s contribution to the score, his first essay at ballet music, was noted for its vigour and many delightful melodies. In Jouvin’s opinion, his music was “vivacious and especially lively,” and contrasted effectively with the plaintive melodies of Minkus. “The style of the two composers,” observed the critic of La France Musicale (18 November 1866), “is essentially different and easily recognizable at a first hearing. M. Minkus's music has a vague, indolent, and melancholic character, full of grace and languor. That of M. Delibes, fresher and more rhythmic, is much more complicated in orchestration, and sometimes a little more ordinary. I should add that this difference in style is perfectly justified by the: contrasting character of the two parts of the ballet.”
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Paul F. Rice,British Music and the French Revolution,Hardback,978-1-4438-2110-0,49.99,"British Music and the French Revolution investigates the nature of British musical responses to the cataclysmic political events unfolding in France during the period of 1789–1795, a time when republican and royalist agendas were in conflict in both nations. While the parallel demands for social and political change resulted from different stimuli, and were resolved very differently, the 1790s proved to be a defining period for each country. In Britain, the combination of a protracted period of Tory conservatism, and the strong spirit of patriotism which swept the nation, had a profound influence on the arts. There was an outpouring of concert and theatrical music dealing with the French Revolution and the subsequent war with France. While patriotic songs might be expected when a country is at war, the number of recreations on the London stages of events taking place on the Continent may surprise.  Initially, such topical subjects were restricted to the summer or “minor” theatres; however, government restrictions were relaxed after 1793, giving Londoners the opportunity to see topical theatre in the royal or “patent” theatres, as well. The resulting repertoire of plays and recreations (often propagandist in nature) made considerable use of music, and those performed in the “minor” theatres were all-sung. Consequently, there exists a large repertoire of music which has been little studied. 

British Music and the French Revolution investigates this repertoire within a social and political context. Initial chapters examine the historical relationship between France and Britain from a musical perspective, the powerful symbols of national identity in both countries, and the complex laws that governed commercial theatres in London. Thereafter, the materials are presented in a chronological fashion, starting with the fall of the Bastille in 1789, and the Fête de la Fédération in 1790. The period of the Captivity was one of growing tension and fear in both France and Britain as war became an ever-increasing threat between the two nations. Two subsequent chapters examine the war years of 1793 until first half of 1795. The choice of a five-year period allows the reader to follow British musical reactions to the fall of the Bastille and subsequent events up to the rise of Napoléon.

","Dr Paul Rices' new book British Music and the French Revolution is an important, impressive and thorough-going study of music and theatre in England in the last decated of the 18th century. the French Revolution, with its political and social upheavals inspired British librettists and composers to fashion musical dramas dealing with the French Revolution, which served as a spring-board for dozens of musical/theatrical works.

Remarkably little has been written about the relationship of the French performing arts and the French Revolution. British Music and the French Revolution is the first study to examine the analogous relationship in Britain. Given that this period in British history shaped the destiny of the country for much fo the 19th century, the study is long overdue.

The Book examines a little-known repertoire of theatrical and concert materials, and it does so within a complete social and political context. In his study, Dr Rice reveals the complex relationship between the needs of politics and hte creative energies of composers, playwrights and theatrical singers and actors.

Dr Rice's study significantly expands our understanding of the relationship between the performing arts and government during the crises of war, and reveals how the government of PM William Pitt used the  media to 'instruct' audiences to receive new artistic works based on their patriotic content alone. At the same time, the study reveals the tremendous change in musical styles that took place in the Royal Theatres at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, moving from concert and operatic styles to those of popular songs and folksongs. All in all, this is an excellent book which Cambridge Scholars should be proud to publish.
- Professor Erich Schwandt, School of Music, University of Victoria, Canada
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,"Ludwig Minkus: Don Quichotte; Ballet en cinq actes, avec prologue et épilogue, et onze tableaux, par Marius Peitpa après Miguel de Cervantes Piano Score",Paperback,978-1-4438-2130-8,39.99,"In 1868 the choreographer Marius Petipa planned his ballet Don Quixote for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, and the Austrian composer Ludwig Minkus was invited to compose the music. The plot of Don Quixote was based on the adventures of Quiteria (known as Kitri in the ballet) and Basilio, which Petipa had developed from the second part of Miguel de Cervantes's novel (1605). The ballet was an enormous success, both in Moscow (14/26 December 1869) and in St Petersburg where it was represented at the Bolshoi Theatre on 9/21 November 1871 in an expanded version as Don Quichotte—with revised scenario and choreography that took cognizance of the more sophisticated expectations of the Imperial capital. Changes were made to the story, with a new fifth act in three scenes, for which Minkus wrote additional music. Don Quixote no longer regarded Kitri simply as his protégée, but now actually mistakes her for Dulcinea, and she appears as such in his Dream Scene. Provision was made for one ballerina to perform the double virtuoso role of Kitri and Dulcinea. The big classical scene for Don Quixote's dream was rewritten. Greater emphasis was now placed on this episode, where Kitri/Dulcinea was surrounded by a large corps de ballet and seventy-two children dressed as cupids. Alexandra Vergina was partnered by Basilio (Lev Ivanov), and supported by Pavel Gerdt in the last scene. The cast also included Timofei Stukolkine (Don Quixote), Nicholas Goltz (Gamache), and Alexei Bogdanov (Lorenzo).

Don Quixote became established in the repertory, and its continued life on the Russian stage bears testimony to the appeal of its exuberance, “the life-asserting and life-loving nature of its dances” (Natalia Roslavleva). Generations of Russian ballet-masters and dancers preserved these dances in essence, and the ballet is still part of the Russian repertory, given today in all Russian and Siberian companies, in the Moscow version of Alexander Gorsky, in three acts and seven or eight scenes.

Petipa’s version of Don Quixote, with its life-affirming music by Minkus, has during the 20th century spread throughout the world, not least because of the work of Rudolf Nureyev who made a film version of the Australian Ballet production in 1971 that became very famous. It co-starred Robert Helpmann and Lucette Aldous, and made world history in being the first ballet to be produced with full film technique, so providing wider scope for imaginative handling of the famous story. Don Quixote has become the standard ballet version of the Cervantes tale, and one of the most popular pieces of the international repertory. Much of its emotional fervour is captured in the celebrated virtuoso Grand Pas de Deux for the wedding of Kitri and Basilio in the last scene. This piece, with a spectrum of feeling enshrined in its rapturous melodies and irresistible rhythmic élan, has assumed a life of its own as a concert piece in countless renditions wherever ballet is performed.

The piano score of the St Petersburg version was published as Don Quichotte (St Petersburg: Theodore Stellowsky, c. 1882). This version is reproduced here.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-06-01,Henry Johnson,Many Voices: Music and National Identity in Aotearoa/New Zealand,Hardback,978-1-4438-2124-7,34.99,"This collection of fourteen essays provides a starting point to re-think music and national identity in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The papers offer various perspectives on the interconnections between music and identity, while providing case-studies on diverse topics including performance, composition, and musical styles. Based on a conference held at the University of Otago, the book covers three broad themes: Cultural Diversity; Popular Culture; and, Education and High-Art. 

Within any nation, individuals might have a cultural identity that is related to notions of being or becoming, or they may live transcultural lives. One consequence of the nation-state is that notions of national identity are often challenged and continually changing, often brought about by social and cultural flows such as those connected with music. 

The intention of this book is to open up critical discourse on the many musics of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The papers represent a few sounds of a diverse nation, and sounds that do much to represent place, very often Aotearoa/New Zealand and beyond. The papers cannot cover everything, but what they can offer will hopefully open up further research on the many voices of those who call Aotearoa/New Zealand home.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Giacomo Meyerbeer: Sacred Works,Paperback,978-1-4438-2152-0,39.99,"The fame of Giacomo Meyerbeer is associated preeminently with the operatic stage, but he wrote for the voice extensively in other genres as well, and produced a small body of carefully crafted religious works throughout his life that reveal the depth of his religious convictions, and also his ecumenical openness to all forms of religious devotion.

While studying with the Abbé Vogler in Darmstadt, the young composer had opportunities to show off his skills and serious endeavours. These were crowned by the composition of choral settings for seven religious odes by the influential eighteenth-century poet, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803) (Sieben Geistliche Gesänge, 1812, revised 1841). During his stay in Vienna, the young Meyerbeer produced another religious song in 1814, a setting of Friedrich Wilhelm Gubitz’s meditational poem “An Gott”. This gifted and richly varied youthful work for four solo voices is characterized by its blooming melody and simple piano accompaniment. The seven Klopstock Lieder (or Sieben Geistliche Gesänge), also for vocal quartet, are on a higher artistic level. Klopstock, famous for his religious epic Der Messias (1745–73) inspired by Virgil and Milton, was regarded as a great religious poet who, particularly through his highly influential odes, helped to inaugurate the golden age of German literature. The seven poems used by Meyerbeer, in both strict strophe and freely composed verse effusion, capture the essence of Klopstock’s vision, the rhetorical and rhapsodic nature of his spiritual fervour, modelled closely as they are on the Psalms. They affirm a life-transforming faith in the resurrection (Morgenlied), proclaim a Trinitarian faith in the creator-redeemer (Dem Dreieinigkeit), the enthusiasm of a believing community in sacrament and Sabbath (Vorbereitung zum Gottesdienst), a prayer of thanksgiving and divine consolation (Danklied), a renewal of faith in forgiveness and covenantal promise (Nach dem Abendmahl), exhilaration in earthly pilgrimage and the promise of immortality (Wach’ auf, mein Herz), and praise of Jesus as revelation of the divine light and wisdom, teacher of how to live and how to die (Jesus Christus wir sind hier). The Klopstock Lieder are highly lyrical and melodic, and for all their considerable technical challenges, are easily performable, and indeed were later revised for a wider European audience (1841).

Meyerbeer’s early involvement with religious texts continued intermittently throughout his life. Other secular songs with an overt religious imagery or intention, include “Le voeu pendant l’orage” (1830) for soprano solo (which is basically a prayer to the Blessed Virgin in time of fear), the two dramatic monologues for musing monks—“Le Moine” (1834) and the “Cantique du Trappiste” (1842)—the baptismal song (“Le baptême”) (1841), the devotional “Le Chant du dimanche” (1841), and the penitential effusion “Le pénitent” (1842). All these were included in the Quarante Mélodies of 1849, and thus became widely known. These small occasional works had their own particular social purposes, and serve as a bridge to this composer’s most encompassing and important religious works.

Meyerbeer’s two most famous religious works were written late in his life, and within four years of each other. The monumental eight-part setting of Psalm 91 (known as “Trost in Sterbengefahr”—comfort in danger of death) (for four soloists and double chorus a cappella) was composed at the request of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV for the Berlin Cathedral in 1853. The music, for all its complex vocal disposition, breathes a trusting intimacy akin to that of Mendelssohn’s psalm settings that became so popular. It contrasts with the intimate and beautiful four-part offertorium Pater Noster (1857), in the purest of church styles, also written for the Berlin Domchor, and printed in the musical journal La Maîtrise later in the same year. This motet deserves a high place among the many settings of this most famous of prayers. Its serene melody operates on a striking principle of contrast between the fortissimo of the emphatic injunction of the phrase “as we forgive those who trespass against us” and the contrasting pianissimo used for anxiety and contrition of the following “and lead us not into temptation”.

The success with which Meyerbeer was able intuitively to identify with and experience the nuances of ancient literature is evident in his last great sacred work, the Cantique tiré de l’imitation de Jésus Christ for bass solo, mixed chorus and organ in 1859—a free rewriting by Pierre Corneille of Thomas à Kempis’s “Qui sequitur me, non ambulat in tenebris”. It was called the Busslied (or penitential song) when published in the German translation by Ludwig Rellstab with instrumental praeludium (1862–3), the year before the composer’s death. This song of world-weariness and hope in the divine mercy and peace is a reflection of Meyerbeer’s deep religious sensibility.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Opéra-Comique: A Sourcebook,Hardback,978-1-4438-2140-7,64.99,"Opéra-comique, like grand opéra, a specifically French genre of opera, emerged from the political changes and intellectual discussion that played a recurrent role in determining the nature of artistic expression and production in Paris from the late 17th until the mid-18th centuries.
 
Opéra-comique is distinguished by its use of spoken dialogue to link the arias and sung parts, and its more restrained use of recitatives. It emerged out of the popular entertainments, called opéras-comiques en vaudevilles, that were a feature of the theatres held at the seasonal Parisian fairs of St Germain and St Laurent, and of the Comédie-Italienne. The similarity of the entertainments provided by the Comédie-Italienne and the fairs resulted in their amalgamation on 3 February 1756, when they established a theatre for their joint productions, the Hôtel Bourgogne. Their type of entertainment, combining existing popular tunes with spoken sections, lent its generic name to this house, which, regardless of its changing venue, would become known as the Opéra-Comique. 

The genre of opéra-comique exercised a powerful popular appeal because of its unique fusion of fixed musical form with fluid improvised dialogue. The well-known airs of the day, invariably strophic, came to be the genre’s staple medium of artistic expression—the couplets. But opéra-comique was not necessarily comic or light in nature. Indeed, the most famous example, Bizet’s Carmen (1875), is a tragedy. The genre, with its unique mixture of comedy and drama, its captivating musical fluency, its handling of serious and Romantic themes—expertly crafted by its most famous librettist Augustin-Eugène Scribe (1791-1861)—became universally popular in the masterpieces of its heyday between 1820 and 1870: Adrien Boieldieu’s La Dame blanche (1825), Daniel-François-Esprit Auber’s Fra Diavolo (1830) and Le Domino noir (1837), Ferdinand Hérold’s Zampa (1831) and Le Pré aux clercs (1832), Fromental Halévy’s L’Éclair (1835) and Ambroise Thomas’s Mignon (1866).

The history of the opéra-comique between 1762 and 1915 reflects the political and cultural life of France—from the last days of the ancien régime, through the tumult of the Revolution and Napoleonic era, the July Monarchy and Second Empire, to the shattering defeat of France by Prussia in 1870. After this, apart from isolated works (by Bizet, Delibes, Offenbach, Massenet), new works by the younger generation of musicians now tended to be French adaptations of the Wagnerian aesthetic and the record of success is very thin. Hardly any native French works in this imitative mode premiered at the Opéra-Comique between 1870 and 1915 have survived—apart from Debussy’s unique Pelléas et Mélisande (1902).

This study serves as a sourcebook for this very French genre, with details of forgotten composers, their operas—performance dates, plot summaries, the singers who created them, the names of important numbers in the works (from libretti and scores that are either now to be found only in the Paris libraries, or are lost completely), often with contemporary observations about the reception of particular works, the effectiveness of their dramaturgy and music. It provides a resource for operatic culture and convention, from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. The record of the fortunes of the Opéra-Comique provides a way into the changing culture and aesthetic values of an age.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-07-01,Björn Horgby and Fredrik Nilsson,"Rockin’ the Borders: Rock Music and Social, Cultural and Political Change",Hardback,978-1-4438-2163-6,39.99,"Rock music challenges hegemonic orders based on class, gender, nation, ethnicity/race or generation. This volume investigates how rock has played an integral part in the formation of identities and life-styles since the 1950’s. Rock music is used as a wide concept, including different genres, e.g. rock ‘n’ roll, pop, punk, hip hop and blues.

Unlike most other books on rock music, this volume focuses on how rock music becomes a part of everyday life and the formation of identities in a variety of European states such as England, Finland, Sweden and Wales, the USA, and also states that used to be on the other side of the Iron Curtain—such as GDR and Czechoslovakia. Thus, it includes a comparative perspective based on temporal as well as spatial aspects that further deepen the understanding of how rock music and society are intertwined.

Rockin’ the Borders is an interdisciplinary volume; the authors represent a variety of backgrounds: History, Ethnology, Folklore, Sociology and Sociology of Music, thus presenting us with an interesting mix of theoretical perspectives and methods.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Giacomo Meyerbeer: Cantatas for Festive Occasions,Paperback,978-1-4438-2323-4,39.99,"The cantatas of Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864), spanning his middle and late life, were written in response to royal and civic commissions to celebrate dynastic events and to praise the deeds of famous men. Their festive nature is indicated in the titles: festival song, festival greeting, festival hymn, homage.

Like a continuation of the 18th-century tradition of patronage, the more famous Meyerbeer became, the more his services were required by public authorities. Although a burden to him, and a distraction from his dramatic vocation, the composer understood the importance of these works for his life and public perception—especially in Germany, where his Jewishness was always a source of comment. His special relationship with the Prussian Royal Family was one of the most significant features of his life—as it was for Felix Mendelssohn.

Meyerbeer’s cantatas can be divided into Royal commissions and civic/national ones. There are royal birthdays (the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the Grand Duchess of Baden), weddings (Princess Louise of Prussia), marriage anniversaries (King Friedrich Wilhelm IV and Prince Karl of Prussia), coronations (King Wilhelm I) and state visits (Queen Victoria). These are parallelled by commemoration of historical events and personages—the invention of printing (1436) by Johannes Gutenberg (1397–1468), commemoration of the Prussian national hero Frederick the Great (1712–1786), the unveiling of the monumental equestrian statue of the famous king by the great sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch (1777–1857), and the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of the illustrious dramatic poet and chronicler of idealism and freedom, Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805).

In all of these works, Meyerbeer’s powers of lyric beauty, dramatic perception, orchestral colour and drama, and sense of pomp and circumstance, are amply in evidence. They reveal a side to this great operatic composer that has been completely forgotten, and now awaits discovery.

This collection, including both published vocal and full scores, contains the unpublished cantata written for Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (b.1784, ruled 1806–1844), the  father of Prince Albert the Prince Consort of Queen Victoria.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Giacomo Meyerbeer Choral Music and Songs,Paperback,978-1-4438-2271-8,44.99,"This second volume of Meyerbeer’s non-operatic work is devoted to his secular choral writing for male voices, solo songs with chorus, and later songs with instrumental obbligato and local colour.

Choral writing—so much part of the operatic tradition, also germane to religious music, and integral to the public music of celebration—is fundamental to the next genre Meyerbeer wrote for, the part-song, a typical German tradition. Meyerbeer’s part-songs for male chorus, most of which were provided for the Liedertafel Friends of the Berlin Singakademie, use the age-old themes of unity, friendship, patriotism, homeland, hunting: Bundeslied (1835), Freundschaft (1842), Dem Vaterlande (1842), and Die lustigen Jägersleut (1842). This set of four illustrates the composer’s harmonic richness, his imaginative use of all the variants of vocal timbre and tessitura, in part-writing, textured  unison and homophony.

Rather different were two later numbers, Der Wanderer und die Geister an Beethovens Grabe (1845), and Das Lied vom blinden Hessen (1862). The first is a personal tribute to the memory of Beethoven, for bass solo and chorus, that uses the Platonic imagery of the music of the spheres as the transcendent ideal of beauty. The late Song of the Blind Hessian, requiring a tenor soloist and chorus, is a deeply felt lament in which the protagonist’s blindness becomes the metaphor for a series of variations on loneliness, exile and loss, and eventually a correlative of disenfranchisement and yearning for freedom—political and spiritual. In both songs the chorus has a more dramatic role than in the part-songs, reflecting on the situation presented in the soloist’s manifesto, sometimes serene and supporting, at others adding to the sense of anguish and aspiration.
	
Throughout his career Meyerbeer wrote songs. These reflected the circumstances of his life, the various cultural milieux he moved in—particularly, of course, the German, Italian and French worlds. The majority of Meyerbeer’s songs were composed between 1828 and 1860, in tandem with his illustrious operatic career and socially prestigious musical posts in Berlin. Meyerbeer’s songs in whatever genre show the influence of the Lied, especially in his subtle use of the piano parts. Unique among Meyerbeer’s songs are two written with instrumental obbligatos: “Hier oben” (Des Schäfers Lied or Hirtenlied) (Ludwig Rellstab) (1842) (for tenor, clarinet and piano, published in Paris in 1857), and “Près de toi” (“Neben Dir”) (Gustav Roger, translated by the poet and historian Joseph Duesberg) (1857) (for tenor with violoncello and piano, published in Paris in the same year). Meyerbeer adapted a strong sense of local colour in two songs composed in the 1850s: the Spanish bolero in the mélodie written for the incidental music to Aylic-Langlé’s play Murillo (Ballade dans la comédie Murillo, ou Le Peintre mendiant un modèle) (Paris, 1853); and the Italian barcarole in the canzonetta “A Venezia” (Pietro Beltrame) (1856) [Paris: Brandus, 1856; Cologne: Schloss, n.d.].

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-09-01,"Robert G. Weiner, B. Lynn Whitfield and Jack Becker",James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough,Hardback,978-1-4438-2289-3,54.99,"James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough provides the most comprehensive study of the James Bond phenomena ever published. The 40 original essays provide new insights, scholarship, and understanding to the world of James Bond. Topics include the Bond girl, Bond related video games, Ian Fleming’s relationship with the notorious Aleister Crowley and CIA director Alan Dulles. Other articles include Fleming as a character in modern fiction, Bond Jr. comics, the post Fleming novels of John Gardner and Raymond Benson, Bond as an American Superhero, and studies on the music, dance, fashion, and architecture in Bond films. Woody Allen and Peter Sellers as James Bond are also considered, as are Japanese imitation films from the 1960s, the Britishness of Bond, comparisons of Bond to Christian ideals, movie posters and much more. Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines have contributed a unique collection of perspectives on the world of James Bond and its history. Despite the diversity of viewpoints, the unifying factor is the James Bond mythos. James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough is a much needed contribution to Bond studies and shows how this cultural icon has changed the world.

James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough features articles by noted scholars like Professor James Chapman, John Shelton Lawrence, Cynthia J. Miller, Dr. Wesley Britton, Dirk Fowler, Kristen Hunt, Kathrin Dodds, Tom L. McNeely, Claire Hines, Richard B. Spence, Cynthia Walker, Lisa M. Dresner, Andrea Siegel, and David Hopkins among many others.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,"Klisala Harrison, Elizabeth Mackinlay and Svanibor Pettan",Applied Ethnomusicology: Historical and Contemporary Approaches,Hardback,978-1-4438-2425-5,39.99,"Applied ethnomusicology is an approach guided by principles of social responsibility, which extends the usual academic goal of broadening and deepening knowledge and understanding toward solving concrete problems and toward working both inside and beyond typical academic contexts (International Council for Traditional Music 2007). This edited volume is based on the first symposium of the ICTM’s Study Group on Applied Ethnomusicology in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2008 that brought together more than thirty specialists from sixteen countries worldwide. It contains a Preface, an extensive Introduction, and twelve selected peer-reviewed articles by authors from Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Slovenia, Serbia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, divided into four thematic groups. These groups encompass: diverse perspectives on the growing field of applied ethnomusicology in various geographical and problem-solving contexts; research and teaching-related connotations; the potential in contributing to sustainable music cultures; and the use of music in conflict resolution situations.

The edited volume Applied Ethnomusicology: Historical and Contemporary Approaches brings together previously dispersed knowledge and perspectives, and offers new insights to various disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. Rooted in diverse scholarly traditions, it addresses a variety of challenges in today’s world and aims to benefit the quality of human existence.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-11-01,Judith Crispin,Olivier Messiaen: The Centenary Papers,Hardback,978-1-4438-2498-9,44.99,"In 2008 musicians and scholars world-wide celebrated the centenary of Olivier Messiaen’s birth. One of the most influential composers in living memory, Messiaen is remembered as a great nature poet—a mystic whose music had a profound effect on the Twentieth-century avant-garde.
 
This volume of essays, marking the occasion of Messiaen’s centenary, was authored by musicologists, performers, composers, ornithologists and researchers from Australia, Germany, France, North America, Japan, New Zealand, Serbia and England. The writers, internationally acclaimed experts as well as emerging scholars, span three generations—living testimony to the diverse and lasting sphere of Messiaen’s legacy.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: The Man and His Music,Hardback,978-1-4438-2563-4,49.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871), the composer of La Muette de Portici (1828) and Fra Diavolo (1830), was once regarded as one of the great figures of music, a staple of the operatic repertoire in France, and indeed around the world. It is now almost impossible to understand the extent of his once universal fame, his influence on contemporary composers. His operas were in the theatre repertories of the world until the 1920s, and innumerable arrangements of them were published and sold everywhere. The ubiquity of his overtures—Masaniello, Fra Diavolo, The Bronze Horse, The Black Domino, The Crown Diamonds—once as popular as those of Rossini and Suppé, and the influence of his melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on Romantic comic opera, was overwhelming. 

In his operas Auber avoided any excess in dramatic expression; all emotion and expressiveness, any vivid depiction of local milieu, were realized within his discreetly nuanced tones, always stamped with a Parisian elegance. His operas were loved in his native France until the years before the First World War, with Fra Diavolo and Le Domino noir last performed at the Opéra-Comique in 1909. Auber’s career was a record of this success and appreciation. His appointment to the Institute (1829) was followed by other prestigious posts: as Director of Concerts at Court (1839), director of the Paris Conservatoire (1842), Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel (1852), and Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur (1861). During his lifetime, six biographies appeared contemporaneously, with another six appearing posthumously in the period up to 1914. 

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, reactions to Wagner, Impressionism and the Neo-Classicism of the Ballet Russe resulted in a growing lack of interest in the ancient traditions of opéra-comique, with its charming plots, melodic directness and rhythmic élan. Boieldieu, Hérold, Adam and Auber were relegated to the dustbin of history. Only in Germany did the genre continue to flourish; Auber’s most enduring work is still performed there. His death in pitiful conditions during the Siege of Paris (1871), in the city he always loved, marked the end of an era. Auber now occupies a shadowy niche in the general consciousness as the name of the metro station nearest the Palais Garnier, and remains unknown and neglected (apart of course from Fra Diavolo), although his impact on the nineteenth-century operatic theatre was just as great as Rossini’s. 

The time has surely come for Auber’s life and work, especially in association with his life-long collaborator Eugène Scribe (1791-1861)—master dramatist and supreme librettist, a determining force in the history of opera—to be reassessed. Perhaps then the world will begin to hear more of Auber’s elegant gracious, life-affirming music, written to Scribe’s words. The aim of the present study is to offer an overview of the life and work of Auber by close examination of his forty operas, with consideration of origins, casting, plot, analysis of dramaturgy and musical style, and reception history. This is presented in the context of Auber's relationship to the dominant genres of early nineteenth century French culture, opéra comique and grand opéra. The three evolving periods of Auber's unique involvement with opéra comique are of principal concern.

This analysis of the operas is made in the context of Auber's crucial working relationship with Scribe, who provided 38 of his libretti. Their cooperation is unique and of great importance on several literary, musical and cultural levels. The nature of their interaction and personal friendship is assessed by a translation of the extant correspondence between them, some 80 letters that have not appeared in English before. The presentation of each opera is illustrated by musical examples from all the scores, prints from the complete works of Scribe and other theatrical memorabilia. The study also contains bibliographies of Auber’s works and their contemporary arrangements, studies of Auber’s and Scribe’s life and work, their artistic and historical milieux, and a discography.



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2010-12-01,"Barrett Ashley Johnson, PhD",Training the Composer: A Comparative Study Between the Pedagogical Methodologies of Arnold Schoenberg and Nadia Boulanger,Hardback,978-1-4438-2570-2,39.99,"While many teachers of music composition have influenced both the aesthetic and eventual success of their students, few have equaled the contributions of Arnold Schoenberg and Nadia Boulanger in the twentieth-century. A larger volume of a more comprehensive collection including all music composition teachers of the era would serve a certain purpose. However, the unique aspect of the current text examines, in detail, and herein presented for the first time in print, many of the teaching materials and approaches of these two famed musicians.

Selection of these two teachers for comparison was made owing to the musical position so famously attributed to each: Schoenberg’s predilection to the German School; Boulanger’s favoritism to the French/Stravinsky aesthetic.

In making the case for both Schoenberg and Boulanger, the Author has chosen two differing philosophies of music education practice of the late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century: those of Bennett Reimer and David Elliott. The Author examines the materials and methods of each Schoenberg and Boulanger in light of each Reimer’s and Elliott’s case for music education philosophy. Among the subjects discussed: the nature of musical creativity, the process and methods of teaching creativity/music, and the teacher/student dynamic, to name a few.

In closing, the Author has presented his own suggestions for teachers, or would-be teachers, of music composition in a seven-step process leading to an effective pedagogy of the subject.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-01-01,Dennis Taylor,"English Brass Bands and their Music, 1860-1930",Hardback,978-1-4438-2641-9,34.99,"This book is an addition to the British music culture as it traces the history, growth and environmental, social and musical conditions of the Brass band Movement during the Victorian era, and the influences of the “Romantic Period.”

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,David Holdhusen,Commitment to Musical Excellence: The 75 Year History of the Gustavus Choir,Hardback,978-1-4438-2670-9,39.99,"The Gustavus Choir has long stood as the premiere choral ensemble on the campus of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, USA. It is a tradition-rich group that binds its members across generations. Whether it be singing “Praise to the Lord,” or touring across the country, the choir has developed a lasting place on the choral landscape. Throughout its history, one common element has been a constant for the Gustavus Choir; the ensemble’s commitment to musical excellence.

For seventy-five years, the members of The Gustavus Choir have lifted their voices in beauty and praise from the small campus on top of the hill. This internationally recognized choral ensemble has provided a heritage of choral music that is deeply rooted in the a cappella tradition. Commitment to Musical Excellence: A 75 Year History of The Gustavus Choir documents the development of The Gustavus Choir from the college’s earliest choral activities through the 75th anniversary celebration, noting the influence of F. Melius Christiansen and the Lutheran Choral School.  The legacy of each of the choir’s six conductors is chronicled, including an in-depth look into their musical backgrounds and the indelible mark each has left on the choir.  The book charts the development of the choir’s touring tradition, providing lists of literature performed and tour itineraries.  It also explores the philosophy and mission of The Gustavus Choir, delving into the role of the ensemble within the Gustavus music department, the college, and the global community. 

","“The author has done a splendid job of thoroughly tracing the history of the Gustavus Choir and extensively documenting the salient aspects of its growth and development that identifies it as one of the premier Lutheran College choirs. The listing of literature by itself makes it a valuable resource for high school, college and university choral educators.”
—Dr Karle Erickson, Former Conductor of the Gustavus Choir

“Commitment to Musical Excellence is a welcome addition to other scholarly endeavors that have examined in detail the influence that the conductors and the college choirs rooted in the Lutheran tradition have exerted in the realm of the choral art.  The research is extensive and thorough, meticulously tracing the evolution of the ensemble from its initial formation in 1930 to the present day.  The book includes interesting and pertinent viewpoints on the philosophies and methods of the various conductors that have led the Gustavus Choir, gleaned from numerous interviews of past and present Gustavus music professors, college administrators and tour managers, and a wealth of archived documents. For the student of choral education and methodology, it provides keen insight into the various approaches espoused by these conductors. An exhaustive list of the repertoire that the choir has performed provides added perspective to the choir’s development as an artistic entity, and inherently provides insight to the musical interests of the various conductors and the overall evolution of choral performance by Lutheran College touring choirs.”
—Dr Gregory Aune, Associate Professor of Music, Gustavus Adolphus College, Conductor, Gustavus Choir

“David Holdhusen’s Commitment to Musical Excellence tells the poignant story of the a cappella choir at Gustavas Adolphus College by providing vivid details related to the contributions and personalities of each of the conductors, as well as administrators and students. Commitment to Musical Excellence is an important source for the musician who desires to understand the evolution of the university choir movement in the United States.”
—Dr Kevin Fenton, Professor of Music and Director of the University Singers at Florida State University

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-02-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Giacomo Meyerbeer: Music by Royal Command,Hardback,978-1-4438-2668-6,34.99,"	The manuscripts scores contained in this collection further extend knowledge about Meyerbeer’s non-operatic compositions—instrumental, choral and occasional. These totally unknown works by a great operatic master  range from a substantial cantata in the style of a dramatic monologue (for tenor solo with chorus and brass orchestra), through a brassy celebratory processional march, to a brief unaccompanied chorus of welcome. All the pieces are linked by their association with the various German Royal families with whom the composer had some association. All the were written, as it were, ‘by Royal Command’, for regal occasions—either based on texts by a king for that monarch (King Ludwig I of Bavaria), for a Court festivity ordered by the ruler (King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia), or to celebrate the formal visit of a royal head of state to the nation (Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to Prussia).

	A synthesis of old and new, with  implications of the dramatic monologue, is characteristic of Der Bayerischer Schützen-Marsch, a cantata for four soloists and brass instruments to a text by King Ludwig I of Bavaria (January 1814) commemorating the struggle against Napoleon, which Meyerbeer set for the king. It was performed in the presence of the monarch on 18 March 1831, just eight months before the spectacular success of Robert le Diable, and forms a type of prelude to the composer’s French period. In spite of the choral and military nature of this work, the essentially lyrical and confessional mode of the words make up a psychological drama born of a frustrated yearning for action in a struggle against tyranny for the restoration of freedom and peace.

	On the 28 February 1843 at the Berliner Schloss, immediately after taking up his new position as Generalmusikdirektor, Meyerbeer prepared an occasional piece, a masque for a ball at Court for some three thousand guests. Called Die Hoffest zu Ferrara, the text  was by the poet Ernst Raupach,   The masque was a paraphrase of  elements taken from Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581), a Renaissance  epic celebrating the First Crusade. Members of the Royal family appeared in costume as guests from the House of D’Este of Ferrara, forming part of a series of tableaux vivants  presenting scenes from famous epic: 
 Meyerbeer composed music for all the scenes, some for soloists, some for chorus. Most is known from contemporary newspaper reports, because the score is lost. Herminia’s Romance was the only piece to be published; the processional march has survived in manuscript.  The masque is interesting for focussing on a particular and recurrent features of Meyerbeer’s style—the pastoral topos, exemplified in the Chorus of Shepherds, and the military mode in the Festmarsch for the  entry of the guests. This “military” overtone is so often identifiable, characterized  by strutting dotted rhythms and relentless propulsion. On 25 August 1842 he completed the first of his four Fackeltänze, the ceremonial polonaises written for the special torch-lit rituals attendant on the public betrothal of a member of the Prussian Royal family.

	On 9 August 1845 Meyerbeer travelled to Cologne to direct the Court  concert held by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia for the reception of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who were paying a state visit to Prussia. One of the duties incumbent upon Meyerbeer as general director of the royal music, was the provision of pieces required for state occasions involving the king. Just such a piece was the brief choral work written to welcome the Queen of England to Prussian territory. The short four-part choral work with allusion the British anthem, has never been published, and deserves to be better known.





",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Domino noir,Paperback,978-1-4438-2851-2,44.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that ended only with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was.
	
Le Domino noir, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was premiered at the Opéra-Comique (Salle de la place de la Bourse/Salle des Nouveautés) on 2 December 1837. It was an instant success, and remained hugely popular. The music is employed with economy, mellifluous, but pared and pointed. Its wit and elements of parody look forward to Jacques Offenbach.

The action takes place in Madrid, around 1780; Angèle, a noblewoman who is about to take solemn vows and become the Abbess of a convent at the behest of the Queen of Spain, nonetheless still attends masked balls, disguised in a black domino. At one of the balls she falls in love with the handsome and eligible Horace de Massarena, who is equally smitten. Horace attends the installation of the new abbess and sees Angèle about to receive this great honour. Suddenly a messenger from the Queen of Spain appears, ordering the convent to select a new abbess and releasing Angèle from her vows. She and Horace are now free to marry.

The libretto is one of the best from the great dramatist. The choice of subject, characterized as it was by ideas current at the time of its creation—the emancipated view of womanhood and the daring treatment of religious themes—was felt by the middle of the 19th century not to be in the best taste. However, the unconventional daring and single-mindedness of the fashionable heroine becomes a kind of celebration of feminine independence and resourcefulness. The evocation of a gracious high society and the enterprising servanthood of the opéra-comique tradition, as well as the tender, romanticized evocation of the convent and religious life, invest the whole with the aura of an urban pastoral.

Le Domino noir was celebrated for its lightness, elegance and wit, the libretto and music complementing each other perfectly in realizing a masterpiece of this genre. This is Auber’s most original opéra-comique, the one in which he most fully abandoned himself to charming fantasy and melodic grace. Nearly all the pieces became popular. The overture, which is perfect in itself, presents the context of the romance, and sketches the elusive charm of the heroine. This work was more popular in Paris than Fra Diavolo: the 1000th performance took place in 1882, the 1209th in 1909. Between 1838 and 1845 translations were made into German, English, Russian, Danish, Czech, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian and Swedish, with later versions in Finnish, Croatian, Polish and Norwegian. In more recent times there were performances in Paris (ORTF, 1950, 1965), London (Opera Viva, 1979) and Compiègne (2006).

This edition reproduces the vocal score published in Paris by E. Troupenas (1837).

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Manon Lescaut,Paperback,978-1-4438-2720-1,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (The Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830),  have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism.

Manon Lescaut, an opéra-comique in three acts with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was premiered at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 23 February 1856. The plot is derived from the novella Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731) by Abbé Antoine-François Prévost d’Exiles. Scribe followed his usual practice in arranging novels for the stage, retaining the names of characters, the central incidents of the plot, and effective moments which are used as coups de théâtre. He adapted the novel freely, cutting down the role of Des Grieux, reducing Manon’s various adventures to a single one involving the Marquis d’Hérigny, and inventing new characters and relationships. But he remained true to the novel, emphasizing to the same degree Manon’s unwavering devotion to Des Grieux, her search for pleasure and dependence on luxury.

Auber, who was 74 when he wrote the score, worked with undiminished energy. The ravishing overture immediately captures the pathos of Manon and her story—the fateful relationship with the Marquis, the giddy verve and gaiety of her world of opportunism and pleasure. The dark side of the story is also reflected, and suggests that friendship and devotion remain the only enduring values. There is an abrupt generic shift in Act 3 from the elegant world of opéra-comique to the more lyrically charged drame-lyrique, increasingly typical of Auber’s late style. Indeed, the last scene, devoted to the death of Manon and the despair of Des Grieux, is a unique passage in Auber’s operas, and provided the composer with the opportunity of writing a type of dramatic symphony, powerfully expressive in its simple grandeur and real emotion.

The cast included the famous virtuoso soprano Marie-Josephe Cabel (Manon), the tenor Jules Puget (Des Grieux) and the legendary baritone Jean-Baptist Faure (Le marquis d’Hérigny). Despite a positive reaction to the première, the opera did not survive in the Parisian repertoire beyond 63 performances, but there was resurgence of interest in this work in the late 20th century.

This edition reproduces the vocal score published in Paris by Maison Boieldieu (1856).


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Charlotte de Mille,"Music and Modernism, c. 1849-1950",Hardback,978-1-4438-2696-9,44.99,"Music and Modernism is a collection of essays which re-evaluates the significant connections between the disciplines of music, fine art and architecture in the period covering the emergence and flowering of modernism, c. 1849–1950. Combining established scholars in the field with those at the start of their careers, this book presents an exceptional cross-section of European and American modernism through a series of detailed case-studies.

Avoiding a simplistic engagement with cross- or inter-disciplinarity, the focus of attention centres on themes that became key to modernist artists and critics: association, perception, representation, subjectivity, writing and language. Accordingly, this book re-thinks modernism itself in the light of both the fine arts and music, to advocate a multiplicity of modernisms from which it is necessary for scholars to construct their own narratives.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,The Overtures of Daniel-François-Esprit Auber,Paperback,978-1-4438-2702-7,49.99,"The overtures of Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), once as popular as those of Gioacchino Rossini and Franz von Suppé, were formerly known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of Auber’s melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, but some of their overtures live on vicariously, and sound brilliant and charming when given the chance—The Bronze Horse, Masaniello, The Crown Diamonds, Fra Diavolo, The Black Domino. The freshness of the melody, the incision of the orchestral colours, and the rhythmic vitality are still capable of generating a visceral excitement.

Auber, the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first operas were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. It was at this time that he met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he established a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (The Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the  advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of La Muette de Portici, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism. But he was once a household name, and his pared style, fleet rhythms and restrained emotion were a byword of taste. This collection brings together 40 of Auber’s overtures, from his first great success with La Bergère Châtelaine, to his last opera, written at the age of 87, Rêve d’Amour, and including the concert overture he wrote in 1862 for the London Exhibition. Auber adopted the Rossinian adaptation of the overture genre, a sonata form with foreshortened development (or a sequential passage for transition back to the recapitulation). His handling of this basic structure remained consistent throughout his career, and followed three or four differing approaches, but always invested with his characteristic verve, rhythmic élan, clarity of texture, and brilliance of orchestration. In all, the overtures, especially when viewed as a corpus, present a journey through the creative life of composer dedicated to musical drama, who always remained the perfect exemplar of a certain French style and elegance—even in his serious works.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-03-01,Ian Bartlett with Robert J. Bruce,William Boyce: A Tercentenary Sourcebook and Compendium,Hardback,978-1-4438-2721-8,44.99,"William Boyce: A Tercentenary Sourcebook and Compendium is published in celebration of the three-hundreth anniversary of the birth in 1711 of England’s leading eighteenth-century composer. It is the first book to be devoted to a musician who more than any of his contemporaries carried the flag in the broadest sense for English music during a period that was inevitably dominated by the towering figure of Handel, who was then resident in London. By the late 19th century, however, Boyce had become generally known only as a composer of anthems and the national song, ‘Hearts of Oak,’ and as the editor of a monumental historical anthology of English anthems, Cathedral Music, which was still in use at that time. The emergent ‘Baroque revival’ led to a gradual broadening of awareness of Boyce from the 1890s onwards. Yet it was only following the initiatives inspired by the bicentenary of his death in 1979 that a significantly wider public appreciation of the quality and range of his achievements came about. 

Previously neglected works were revived, new recordings made, scholarly articles written, and new editions of his music began to be published.

This book brings together diplomatic transcriptions of all the most significant contemporary documents relevant to Boyce’s personal and family life, his career as a composer, editor, theorist, teacher, conductor, Master of the King’s Music, and the reception history of his music. They are accompanied by critical commentaries whenever necessary. The range of sources drawn on includes memoirs, histories, diaries, letters, poems, concert programmes and related press reports, chapel royal, court and parish archives, prefaces to Boyce’s own publications of his music and those edited by others, advertisements for performances of his works and related press reports, details of his subscriptions to musical and literary works, and materials that throw light on his character and professional relationships with the poets, playwrights, churchmen and other musicians with whom he collaborated within the vibrant, burgeoning, and sometimes colourful, English musical culture of his time.

The book’s ‘Catalogue of Works’ constitutes the first comprehensive listing of Boyce’s musical output to have been published, and the select, historical ‘Discography’ is the first catalogue of recordings to have been devoted to the composer’s works.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Fra Diavolo,Paperback,978-1-4438-2852-9,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (The Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism.

Fra Diavolo, an opéra-comique in three acts with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was premiered at the Opéra-Comique (Salle Ventadour), on 28 January 1830. It was hugely successful, and remained in the theatre’s repertoire until 1907.

The opera is set in Terracina, in Italy, around 1830. The figure of the robber chief Fra Diavolo is based on a real Italian bandit, Michele Pezza, whose exploits during the Napoleonic occupation had become so well-known that folk memory ascribed supernatural powers to him. The action of Scribe’s libretto is not drawn from historical events, but makes use of a name that was rich in association.

The plot of Fra Diavolo represents Scribe’s most brilliant handling of the techniques of the theatre, which he disposes with effective fluency and seamless control of dramaturgy. The libretto is one of the writer’s most entertaining, and the score one of the composer’s best. Scribe’s dramatic instinct for a thrilling plot is shown through the numerous devices by which he causes changes in the fortunes of both hero and anti-hero. These ploys range from the melodramatic (where Zerline’s murder is narrowly averted), to the comic (where the Marquis extricates himself from the tight predicament in the Act 2 finale). The travelling English couple Lord Cockburn and Lady Pamela are delightful comic creations.

The composition of Fra Diavolo showed Auber reaching a height which he seldom achieved again. It is pointed, concise, and develops organically out of the action in all the big scenes. In the main it is characterized by simple small forms with piquant rhythms and harmonic effects, and a direct but refined background. Many comic effects are derived from Rossini, but the tonality, melody and rhythm are entirely French. Ensembles dominate, with solos sparsely employed, but the shift between solo numbers and small and large ensembles is scenically motivated, and musically balanced with great care. Even after 180 years the melodies conserve a freshness that testifies to Auber’s originality: in Act 1 Zerline’s ballad about Fra Diavolo “Voyez sur cette roche” establishes the central motif. The Act 2 finale is brilliant in its complex musical realization of Fra Diavolo’s twisting intrigue.

Fra Diavolo was created by the gifted singing actor Jean-Baptist Chollet (Fra Diavolo), Geneviève-Aimeé-Zoe Prévost (Zerline), Marie-Julienne Boulanger (Lady Pamela), Louis-Auguste Féréol (Lord Cockburn), Théodore-Étienne Moreau-Sainti (Lorenzo), Henri (Matteo), Fargueil and Belnie (Giacomo and Beppo). Between 1830 and 1907 it was performed over 900 times at the Opéra-Comique. There were productions in Berlin as early as 1830, and the opera soon spread all over Europe and to New York. By 1852 it had appeared in Calcutta, Sydney and Buenos Aires.

Fra Diavolo was revived at the Opéra-Comique on 29 January 2009, and is the only one of Auber’s operas still in the international repertoire.

This edition reproduces the vocal score published in Paris by E. Troupenas (c. 1845).

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Haydée,Paperback,978-1-4438-2854-3,34.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (The Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism.

Haydée, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart), on 28 December 1847. The opera derives from Auber’s third period, and after La Muette de Portici, Fra Diavolo and Le Domino noir, was the composer’s best work. Scribe’s Venetian tale uses motifs derived from Prosper Mérimée’s novella collection La Partie de trictrac (1830) and Alexandre Dumas (père)’s novel Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1845). He obtained the central anecdote of the plot from one of Prosper Merimée’s short stories translated from Russian (“Six et quatre”), written in 1830.

The opera is set in Dalmatia and Venice during the early years of the 16th century. Lorédan Grimani, a victorious Venetian admiral, is haunted by the memory that several years previously he ruined his best friend, the senator Donato, at cards through cheating. The senator killed himself that night, and in reparation Lorédan has brought up his daughter Rafaëla, and has been searching for the senator’s son, Andrea. The disquieted Lorédan is blackmailed by the unscrupulous Malipieri until the latter is killed in a duel, and it is revealed that Andrea is the long-lost son of the senator Donato. Lorédan is elevated to the dignity of doge of Venice. He reunites Rafaëla and Andrea, and himself marries his Cypriot slave, Haydée.

The opera belongs to the genre of the serious opéra-comique. The chief themes are Lorédan’s pangs of conscience, Malipieri’s villainy, and the growing love between Lorédan and Haydée. Both text and music derive their strongest effect from the continual contrast between external action (nautical life, popular songs and Venetian pomp) and the convolutions of inner drama. There is hardly a weak moment in the score, and in the serious sections it achieves a height and intensity that Auber had not attained in the serious mode since La Muette de Portici (1828). This work is the most distinguished product of the third period of Auber’s career, and is one of his richest scores, a feature apparent from the musical treatment of the tenor hero, a substantial role conceived from the first with the great Gustave Roger in mind. The heroine is also depicted with subtlety. Haydée’s tender understanding, her devotion to Lorédan, the totality of her self-sacrificing love, are revealed in the course of the opera. She becomes one of Scribe’s great female characters.

The strength and controlled forcefulness of the story are consistently reflected in the masterful musical conception of the score. The quasi-tragic nature of the action is underpinned in the power of the music, with its strong writing for brass and woodwind, and its very emphatic rhythms. It is ultimately a concern with psychological exploration, its reflection in formal invention and development, the elemental and local apprehension of colour, and the depiction of the Venetian spirit of military prowess and pride that give the score its unique place in the composer’s work.

The roles were created by Gustave-Hippolyte Roger (Lorédan Grimani); Léonard Hermann-Léon (Malipieri); Louise Lavoye (Haydée); Sophie Grimm (Rafaëla); Marius-Pierre Audran (Andrea Donato); and Ricquier (Domenico, a sailor). Haydée was one of the most successful of all Auber’s operas, especially in Paris where, with interruptions, it was retained in the repertoire until 1894, attaining 499 performances.

This edition reproduces the vocal score published in Paris by Brandus & Dufour (1848).

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-04-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Cheval de bronze,Paperback,978-1-4438-2729-4,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830),  have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism.

Le Cheval de bronze was premiered at the Opéra-Comique on 23 March 1835. It was described as an opéra-féerique in three acts. The librettist, Scribe, derived the plot from the tale “Les Sept Fils du Calender” in The Arabian Nights. The scene is set in Shantung province in China in legendary times. The magical Bronze Horse of the title, which has appeared mysteriously on a nearby hill, will transport any man who climbs onto its back to the planet Venus, where a group of female sirens, led by the lovely Princess Stella, live. If the traveller in space can resist the sirens’ advances, he can return to earth with the lady of his choice; if not, he is whisked back alone, and turned to stone if he speaks of his experiences.

The witty libretto, that with its exotic subject perfectly captured the taste of the time, offers differentiated characterizations, much situational comedy, and some eroticism in the Venus scenes. The score is among Auber’s best achievements, brimming over with invention: fantasy and comedy are captured perfectly, while the big love duets allow the expression of genuine feeling to break through the burlesque situations. The exotic and fairytale tone is achieved without obvious musical chinoiserie, being rather transmuted into instrumental and harmonic richness, especially in the big ensembles. This is one of  the most precisely and carefully controlled of all the composer’s scores. The sense of detail and care is everywhere apparent, as in the short but beautifully crafted entr’actes to acts 2 and 3. The ensembles in act 1, especially the brilliant quintet, and the act 2 finale are remarkable. The thematic integration is extraordinary, and in some instances achieves a genuine use of Leitmotif.

The overture presents all the essential elements of the story in powerful symbolic summary. It is dominated by the central image of the Bronze Horse, the agent of magical adventure and transformation. The enterprising Péki, as the heroine and a redemptrix figure, shares something of the Horse’s dynamism. The most obvious motif of the Bronze Horse and its magic power comes from Péki’s act 1 ballad in which she explains the mysterious presence of the mythical creature on its high promontory: “Là-bas, sur ce rocher sauvage”.

The roles were created by Auguste Féréol (Tsing-Sing), Louis-Benoît-Alphonse Révial (Prince Yang), Jean-Francois Inchindi [Hinnekindt] (Tchin-Kao), Étienne-Bernard-Auguste Thénard (Yanko), Félicité Pradher (Péki), Sophie Ponchard (Tao-Jin), Marie Casimir (Princess Stella), and Mlle Fargueil (Lo Mangli). The opera was initially a hit, with 84 performances in the first year, and over the next few years was staged in numerous countries from London (Covent Garden 1835) to Russia (St Petersburg 1837) and the United States (New York 1837), but then sank into an undeserved obscurity. The work was revived in expanded form at the Opéra on 21 September 1857, and famously by Engelbert Humperdinck at Karlsruhe, in his own arrangement (10 November 1889). It was performed in concert in Vienna (1953), Berne (1969) and Paris (1979).

This edition reproduces the vocal score published in Paris by E. Troupenas (1835).



",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Jenny Bell ,Paperback,978-1-4438-2891-8,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), once one of the most well-known and well-loved names in French 19th-century opera, came later in life than many famous composers to his art, yet had one of the longest and most successful careers. He studied with Cherubini after abandoning an initial attempt to establish a career in commerce, and experienced his first real triumph at the age of 38 with La Bergère Châteleine (1820). His subsequent association with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), a collaboration that lasted until Scribe’s death, became one of the most famous and successful partnerships in musical history. Works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) cemented Auber’s popularity with the public and drew official recognition and honours. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello), a work of great significance in the history of opera, is set against a background of revolution and uprising—a situation that Auber knew only too well. He lived through four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870), dying at the advanced age of 89 in the desperate conditions of the Commune, of a long-standing illness aggravated by the dangers and privations that attended the Siege of Paris. Auber had always loved his home city, and was not prepared to leave it, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. Ironically, a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of La Muette de Portici, a man so successful in depicting revolutionary fervour that a performance of this opera in Brussels in 1830 had helped to inspire the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland.

Auber’s charming and graceful overtures were once staples of the light Classical repertoire, known and loved everywhere. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had an overwhelming influence on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. His operas, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire. Contemporary audiences are not attuned to Auber’s elegant and restrained art, accustomed as they are to verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and 20th-century experimentalism, but those willing to listen are rewarded by works that retain all their freshness, delicacy and charm.

Jenny Bell, an opéra-comique in three acts with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was premiered at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 2 June 1855. It is set in 18th-century London. Lord Mortimer, the son of the Duke of Greenwich, is in love with the celebrated diva, Jenny Bell, but his father has forbidden him to see her. Jenny then attempts to cure Mortimer’s infatuation by reading to her guests all the love letters she has received, and finally accepts diamonds and a proposal from the goldsmith Dodson. Mortimer challenges him, curses Jenny, and leaves. Act 3 opens in the Guildhall, where Jenny is to sing for the Lord Mayor. She is highly despondent and refuses either to sing or to receive Dodson. The Duke sees that Jenny really loves his son, and contritely gives his consent for their marriage.

This is another of Scribe and Auber’s ‘artistic’ operas, reflecting on the professional challenges and social pressures that talented performers are called on to face as they seek to further their careers and stay faithful to their own ideals of integrity. It is a close relation of L’Ambassadrice (1836). The model for Jenny Bell was the famous Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, although she never sang the role.

The piece is well constructed, with interesting situations and deftly-handled dialogue. The secondary characters of Henriette (Jenny’s chamber maid), George Leslie, and Dodson are imaginatively integrated into the principal action. Motifs of an English provenance are introduced by the composer: the lovely tenor romance “À sa voix, à sa vue” features the theme of “God save the king”, and Jenny’s variations on “Rule Britannia” close the opera brilliantly. This score is one of the richest among the composer’s opéras-comiques. It is a work that should be revived and better understood.

The original cast were: Caroline Duprez (Jenny Bell); Edmund-Jules Ricquier-Delaunay (Mortimer); Jean-Baptist Faure (the Duke of Greenwich); Charles-Louis Sainte-Foy (Dodson); Joseph-Antoine-Charles Couderc (George Leslie); and Sophie Boulart (Henriette). The opera was in the repertoire for only one year, 1855, with a total of 36 performances.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: La Barcarolle,Paperback,978-1-4438-2896-3,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), once one of the most well-known and well-loved names in French 19th-century opera, came later in life than many famous composers to his art, yet had one of the longest and most successful careers. He studied with Cherubini after abandoning an initial attempt to establish a career in commerce, and experienced his first real triumph at the age of 38 with La Bergère Châteleine (1820). His subsequent association with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), a collaboration that lasted until Scribe’s death, became one of the most famous and successful partnerships in musical history. Works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) cemented Auber’s popularity with the public and drew official recognition and honours. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello), a work of great significance in the history of opera, is set against a background of revolution and uprising—a situation that Auber knew only too well. He lived through four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870), dying at the advanced age of 89 in the desperate conditions of the Commune, of a long-standing illness aggravated by the dangers and privations that attended the Siege of Paris. Auber had always loved his home city, and was not prepared to leave it, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. Ironically, a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of La Muette de Portici, a man so successful in depicting revolutionary fervour that a performance of this opera in Brussels in 1830 had helped to inspire the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland.

Auber’s charming and graceful overtures were once staples of the light Classical repertoire, known and loved everywhere. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had an overwhelming influence on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. His operas, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire. Contemporary audiences are not attuned to Auber’s elegant and restrained art, accustomed as they are to verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and 20th-century experimentalism, but those willing to listen are rewarded by works that retain all their freshness, delicacy and charm.

La Barcarolle, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was premiered at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 22 April 1845.

The opera is set in Parma in the 18th century, and the story involves a tale of artistic rivalry and social aspiration in the midst of Court intrigue. The Count de Fiesque gives his half-brother, the composer Fabio, the poem to a barcarolle which Fabio is to set to music, and thus bring his work to the attention of the Grand Duke. The Kapellmeister Cafarini and the Marquis de Felino, who are seeking advancement at court themselves, secretly copy the poem, set it to the music they overhear Fabio singing, and send it to the Duchess. The Grand Duke discovers the barcarolle, suspects the Count of being an admirer of his wife, and has him arrested. Fabio learns through Cafarini’s niece Gina of the Kapellmeister’s part in the plot, and having been forbidden entry to the Duke’s concert, disguises himself as a member of the orchestra and places the parts to his barcarolle on the music stands. Gina saves Fabio from arrest by producing the music in Cafarini’s handwriting; the Kapellmeister disentangles himself by identifying the Marquis’s draft. The Duke pardons everyone.

The libretto is simply structured, but the action moves forward most skilfully. Traces of topical humour characteristic of the original comédie-vaudeville that the libretto was derived from have been retained in the dialogue, even though these elements have been fundamentally toned down. This creates an unconscious and slightly discordant duality between the spoken and musical numbers. The Marquis is not altogether convincing as a villain, and his intrigues to imprison the Count and exile Fabio seem exaggerated and out of context.

Auber’s music is elegant, pliable and distinguished, like all his work. Many motifs recall memories from earlier works. The soprano air for Gina in act 1 (“Personne en ces lieux ne m’a vue”) and the comic duet for two basses (“Viens, que par toi nos muses”) offer good musical declamation.

There is a touching duet in act 1 for Fabio and the Count, in which they celebrate their kinship. The Barcarolle itself serves as a Leitmotif, presented imaginatively in various forms throughout the work—solo, duet, quintet, sextet, and finally quartet at the end of the opera. Of the sixteen numbers in the score, eight are duets, six of them for male voices, and two for the two basses. The score also tunes into a tradition of satire—both of musicians and artists, and of musical styles, in the manner of the most famous French example, the enduringly popular Le Maître de chapelle (1821) by Ferdinando Paër.

The original cast were: Gustave-Hippolyte Roger (Fabio), Chaix (Felino), Léonard Hermann-Léon (Cafarini), Edouard Gassier (Count de Fiesque), Anoinette-Jeanne-Hermance Révilly (Clélia), and Mlle Octavie Delille (Gina). The work did not last beyond the year of its premiere, 1845.

There were 27 performances. After the economic slump of 1845, frivolous tales found little public response, and this may well have turned normally receptive listeners away from this work in which the collaboration between Scribe and Auber is subtle but essentially most effective.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: La Fiancée du roi de Garbe,Paperback,978-1-4438-2887-1,44.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian transcendentalism, and 20th-century experimentalism.

La Fiancée du Roi de Garbe, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, was premiered at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 11 January 1864.

The subject is borrowed from a story by Boccaccio, which had been turned into a short erotic tale in verse by La Fontaine. It has a partly Oriental setting; ‘Garbe’ is an Arabic word for the West, suggesting that this may originally have been an Arab tale before being taken up by Boccaccio.

In La Fontaine’s tale, Alaciel, the daughter of Zaïr, the sultan of Alexandria, is to marry the King of Garbe. Alaciel sets out to sea on her journey accompanied by Hispal, a young noble who is in love with her. They are attacked by pirates, jump overboard, and are washed up on a desert shore. The young princess experiences many adventures before finally reaching her destination, where there is a happy ending, and the King of Garbe accepts her as his bride.

Scribe and Saint-Georges adapted this conte to the mores of the time and the exigencies of the stage. It becomes a picaresque tale built around Alaciel’s journey from Garbe, where she marries the king (in act 1), through various adventures to her home to Egypt (in act 2), and back to Garbe (in act 3), attended all the while by the king’s dashing nephew Don Alvar, with his entourage of the royal barber Figurina, and his cupbearer Truxillo. The pirates, and various characters from Arabic folklore (the imam and the hermit), feature in the central desert act, while the outer two are set in the Occidental royal court of Garbe.

This was the last collaboration between Auber and Scribe, terminated, after the death of the latter, by Saint-Georges. The work was treated by both authors and musician in the manner of an operetta, apart from the fourth tableau, the scene of the pirates, which has the dramatic character of an operatic finale.

Act 2 of La Fiancée du Roi de Garbe shows Saint-Georges trying to bring in various elements from the source. The composer derived positive inspiration from some of the characters, and he was especially taken by Alaciel and her companion, in their tent set up in the desert for them by Don Alvar. He set this scene to music with his familiar spirit, youthfulness of melody, and finesse of harmony. This act comes across musically as the best section of the score.

The cast were: Victor Prilleux (Bobolin, the King of Garbe); Valérie Tual (Alaciel); Léon Achard (Don Alvar); Alexandrine Cico (Figurina); Charles-Louis Sainte-Foy (Truxillo); Davoust (the Sultan of Egypt); Charles-Amable Bataille (Kouli-Rouka); Charles-Francois Duvernoy (Hatchi-Bounan); Elias Nathan (Ali-Caphar); and Zoé Bélia and Augusta Colas (Raphael and Paer). The opera did not endure beyond a first flush of enthusiasm. It was in the repertoire for one year, l864, and numbered 33 performances.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel François-Esprit Auber: L’Ambassadrice,Paperback,978-1-4438-2876-5,34.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian transcendentalism, and 20th-century experimentalism.

L’Ambassadrice, an opéra-comique in three acts with libretto by Eugène Scribe, had its first performance at the Opéra-Comique (Salle de la Place de la Bourse) on 21 December 1836.

This tale of social intrigue and artistic integrity centres around the lives of two opera singers in Munich, Henriette and Charlotte. Henriette is wooed by the Prussian ambassador, Count Benedict de Valberg, and is persuaded by her aunt, Mme Barnek, a social climber, to accept him. In Berlin, where Henriette awaits the sovereign’s consent to the marriage, she and her aunt pass themselves off as Bavarian aristocrats, but when the Munich opera company arrives in Berlin, Charlotte, recognizing her old rival, betrays her. Henriette then finds a compromising note in Charlotte’s handwriting addressed to the Count, and vows revenge on both of them. Henriette takes Charlotte’s place on the stage, and after the performance, she tears up the marriage contract, vowing to devote her life to the stage rather than to continue aristocratic pretence with an unfaithful husband.

This work is one of the composer’s best. The libretto is ingenious and charming. The score was written especially for Laure Cinti-Damoreau, and is rich in vocal display, fitting for a prima donna. The original success of this opera was later augmented in 1850 by topical developments, when the famous singer Henriette Sontag left the stage to marry the Sardinian diplomat the Comte de Rossi. The whole scenario is buoyed by the perennial and resonant folk motif of personal victory over challenge, optimally realized in professional success combined with social advancement. The scale and structure of the opera reflects a more intimate dramaturgy. Auber’s music is by turns lively, touching, playful and tender. There are some fascinating touches, especially in the variety and subtly demanding nature of the heroine’s vocal line.

The opera was created by Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Henriette), Jenny Colon (Charlotte), Théodore-Étienne Moreau-Sainti (Valberg), Marie-Julienne Boulanger (Madame Barnek), Roy (Fortunatus), Mlle Mousel (Countess Augusta de Fierschemberg), and Joseph-Antoine-Charles Couderc (Bénédict).

L’Ambassadrice was in the repertoire from 1836–73. There were 417 performances altogether, and the work was translated into German, Danish, English, Swedish and Spanish.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: La Muette de Portici,Paperback,978-1-4438-2865-9,44.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (The Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and 20th-century experimentalism.

La Muette de Portici, an opera in five acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne, was premiered at the Académie Royale de Musique (Salle de la rue Le Peletier) on 29 February 1828. The setting is Naples in 1647, against the historical background of the revolt led by the fisherman Tommaso Aniello (Masaniello) against Spanish rule.

This work, of crucial importance for the genre of grand-opéra, or grandiose historical music drama, was one of the most successful of the 19th century, and became enveloped in a revolutionary mystique. This reputation took fire following a performance in Brussels on 25 August 1830 which sparked the uprising for Belgian independence from the Netherlands, and was further sustained by the events of 1848 when stagings of the opera caused tumult and demonstrations in several opera houses.

La Muette de Portici is the first grand-opéra with all the typical characteristics of the genre: five short acts, most of which culminate in a dramatic and decorative tableau; ballets loosely connected with the action (in acts 1 and 3); stage sensation and mass groupings, with lavish use of  décor, costumes and machinery (the wedding procession, the busy marketplace and popular uprising, the eruption of Vesuvius), characteristic situations and their appropriate type of aria. There is a group of important leading roles, powerful and functional choruses, and a much expanded reliance on the orchestra.

The music responds to, and reflects, the vivid and imposing scenic effects (based on historical and pictorial research by the great stage designers and painters Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre). The music is also remarkable for its melodic abundance, the excitement of its ensembles, the verve of its dances, and the power and variety of the choruses.

The contrast between the two heroines—Fenella, a mute peasant who expresses herself in gesture and dance in free-form balletic sequence; and Elvire, a glamorous princess who uses the full range of Italianate vocal genres and styles—makes a series of innate dramatic and symbolic points about power and powerlessness, authenticity of emotion, and the nature of commitment. The two tenor roles have a similarly strong, if less vivid, contrast. The prince, Alphonse, comes across as weak and vacillating, whereas Masaniello, the fisherman, is a natural leader, a man among men, whose devotion to his people, to freedom, as well as to his pathetic broken sister, mark him out as hero.

The roles were created by Adolphe Nourrit (Masaniello); Alexis Dupont (Alphonse); Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Elvire); Henri-Bernard Dabadie (Pietro) and Prévot (Borella); with Pouilley, Jean-Etienne-Auguste Massol, Ferdinand Prévot and Mlle Lorotte. The dancer Lise Noblet realized the role of Fenella. The opera was one of the greatest successes at the Paris Opéra, the 100th performance taking place on the 23 April 1840, the 500th on 14 June 1880. It was also successful in other countries, especially Germany. The work was translated into German, Hungarian, English, Italian, Czech, Dutch, Danish, Polish, Norwegian, Swedish, Croatian and Russian.

This edition reproduces the vocal score published by E. Troupenas (c. 1828).

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: La Sirène,Paperback,978-1-4438-2894-9,34.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that ended only with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and 20th-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was. 

La Sirène, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 26 March 1844.

The scene is laid in the Abruzzi, during the Restoration. Three travellers, the operatic impresario Bolbaya, his aged servant Mathéa and the naval ensign Scipion, are caught up in Romantic adventures in the mountains as they hear in the distance the entrancing song of the Siren, who lures unwary travellers to an ambush laid by her brother, the bandit chief Marco Tempesta (disguised as the innkeeper Scopetto). The bandits’ ship has been captured, but Scopetto has a plan to smuggle their contraband through the Duke of Popoli's estate, using Bolbaya's troupe as a front. Zerlina, the Siren, reveals she has fallen in love with Scipion. After further intrigue, papers are produced revealing that Scipion is the rightful Duke of Popoli and that Scopetto is his cousin.
 
The smugglers of this opera provide a variant on Scribe’s popular robber motif. Apart from his villainous profession, Marco Tempesta has a generous soul; he forgives his enemies, marries his sister to the young naval officer who has captured the fortune of the smugglers, and, having made them happy, escapes by opportune evasion and witty revelation of his true identity. The dialogue is agreeable, and the episodes ingenious.

The music in its style and character belongs to Auber’s third period. There is an expansiveness in the melodic phrases and a sensibility that speaks more powerfully than in the earlier works, with a preponderance of florid writing, especially in the finales of acts 2 and 3. Act 1 contains the couplets “Ô chef des flibustiers” which becomes a recurring motif throughout the work, appearing as solo, trio and duet. The central duet of the opera is realized in terms of a waltz modality, another form that recurs throughout the opera. Act 3 is structured by the recurring chorus “Les chagrins arrière”, another scene between brother and sister, the dénouement of the imbroglio and the vocalise of the prima donna.

The original cast consisted of: Gustave-Hippolyte Roger (Scopetto), Louise Lavoye (Zerlina), Marius-Pierre Audran (Scipion), Ricquier (the Duke of Popoli), Henri (Bolbaya), Geneviève-Aimeé-Zoe Prévost (Mathéa), and Charles-François Duvernoy (Pecchione). The work remained in the repertoire until 1887, numbering 164 performances, and was translated into German, English, Polish, Swedish and Russian. In the Americas it was performed in New Orleans (1845), New York and Buenos Aires (both in1854).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Lac des fées,Paperback,978-1-4438-2901-4,49.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism.

Le Lac des fées, an opéra in five acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Mélesville (Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier), was premiered at the Académie nationale de musique (Salle de la rue Le Peletier) on 1 April 1839.

The story is derived from the tale “Der geraubte Schleier” from Johann Karl August Musäus’s Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1782–86). Musäus’s collection of fairy tales was also the basis of Wenzel Reisinger’s scenario for Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake (1877).

The opera is set in the Harz Mountains and Cologne, in the fifteenth century. Albert, a young student, has fallen in love with a fairy, Zélia: she has been forced to live on earth because Albert has stolen her veil. At the last moment, however, she regains her veil from Marguerite, and disappears to her fairy sisters. To welcome her back, the Fairy Queen allows Zélia a wish: but she chooses to renounce immortality, and returns to Albert on the earth.

Despite its five acts, the opera is not overtly concerned with the great historical themes usually associated with grand-opéra, but exemplifies Scribe’s third type of opera libretto (after opéra-comique and grand-opéra), derived from exotic or legendary material. However, the literary source is remarkable for its depiction of the rebellion of the people and students against the feudal lord Rodolphe—themes that have a strong affinity with the historical and political concerns of Auber’s earlier compositions, La Muette de Portici and Gustave III, and this thematic affinity is also evident in the musical aspects of the work.

Much time in Le Lac des fées is taken in elaborating the central depiction of popular festivity. Indeed, the requirements of grand-opéra are realized with an original twist in the big act 3 depiction of the medieval Epiphany celebrations, with its attempt at recreating the variety of genre and mood. The composer handled this legendary and supernatural subject with a certain poetic grace and inspiration. The dramatic highpoints of the score provide impressive examples of Auber’s art. Remarkable pieces include: the overture; the cavatina for Albert “Gentille fée”; Rodolphe’s grand air “Avec addresse”; the Scene of the Fairies; Zélia’s scene of despair in act 1 and her complaint “C’en est donc fait”; the extensive duet for Zélia and Albert in act 3, and Albert’s mad scene in act 4. Of special note are the graceful and effective fairy choruses. There is also a very Romantic sense of tonal painting, with the moonlit serenity of the fairy lake conveyed in mellifluous orchestral detail.

Richard Wagner arrived in Paris in 1839, and perhaps saw one of the last of the stagings. The influence of the final transformation scene must have affected him deeply—both as stagecraft and music. The original cast was: Gilbert Duprez; Mlle Maria-Dolorès-Bénédicta-Joséphine Nau; Nicholas-Prosper Levasseur; Louis-Émile Wartel; Ferdinand Prévôt and Alexis Dupont; Molinier; Rosine Stoltz; and Mlle Elian Barthélémy.

Despite the cast of exceptional quality, Le Lac des fées was not a success in Paris, where it was performed 30 times, with no reprise. On the other hand, the German version of the work enjoyed great popularity; the opera was also translated into English and Polish, and produced in a number of European countries and in New York between 1839 and 1847, with revivals in Karlsruhe and Stuttgart in 1865 and 1871.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-05-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Philtre,Paperback,978-1-4438-2880-2,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that ended only with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and 20th-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was.

Le Philtre, an opera in two acts with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was premiered at the Académie Royale de Musique (Salle de la rue Le Peletier) on 20 June 1831. The work was an immediate success and remained in the repertoire of the Opéra until 1862.

The story is set in Mauléon, in the 18th century. Guillaume, a young farmhand, is in love with Thérèsine, the beautiful but aloof lady of the manor. He and his rival, the swaggering Sergeant Jolicoeur, both try in vain to persuade Thérèsine to marry them. In despair, Guillaume buys what he thinks is a love potion from Doctor Fontanarose, a travelling vendor of patent medicines and a charlatan. In order to pay for the potion, Guillaume joins Sergeant Jolicoeur’s regiment. Meanwhile the villagers find out that Guillaume’s uncle has died and left the young man all his money. Guillaume becomes instantly popular with all the girls, and is convinced that the potion is working. Thérèsine then discovers Guillaume has enlisted in order to gain enough money to buy a love potion. She realizes how much he must love her and buys back his enlistment papers. When Jolicoeur returns, Thérèsine explains to him that she is going to marry Guillaume. Thérèsine and Guillaume then learn that the latter is rich. As the couple rejoice over their good fortune, Fontanarose leaves town with honour and gratitude from all sides.

There is less action and a simpler plot than in most of the opéras-comiques despite a similarity of structural elements. Hence there is less need for recitative, with more of the action incorporated into the musical numbers which are in turn able to unfold at a more leisurely pace. This situation is underlined by the prevalence of arioso writing in the course of these longer musical numbers, which necessitate more complex musical forms. While none of these would be out of place in an opéra-comique, there are fewer strophic forms like couplets, more arias and ensembles, and concerted pieces involving the chorus. Both librettist and composer have subtly but formally demonstrated their awareness of generic distinction: they are promoting the same message, but this time as a comic opera not an opéra-comique.

The pastoral atmosphere is developed and sustained from the very beginning. The melodies are graceful and fresh, none more so than those written for the star tenor. Adolphe Nourrit played the role of the naive villager with a perfect naturalness. Julie Dorus-Gras and Laure Cinti-Damoreau took turns in playing the role of Thérèsine. Jolicoeur is depicted as strutting military man, and Dr Fontanarose is a particularly amusing comic creation, his irresistible vending couplets burlesques a comic tour de force.

The original cast was: Adolphe Nourrit (Guillaume); Julie Dorus-Gras and Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Thérèsine); Henri-Bernard Dabadie (Jolicoeur); Nicholas Prosper Levasseur (Fontanarose); Elie (Fontanarose’s valet); and Constance Jaruwek (Jeannette, a villager). The décor by Pierre-Luc-Charles Cicéri was much applauded. The work enjoyed great success, and was given from 1831 until 1862, with 243 performances altogether. The opera was translated into German, Danish, English and Italian.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,John Murungi,African Musical Aesthetics,Hardback,978-1-4438-2927-4,39.99,"In the West, philosophy is generally confined to the domain of the intellect, and music to the domain of the emotion. This book makes either domain the location for the other. African musical aesthetics constitutes this location, and has its home in it. Moreover, since the separation of the domain of the intellect and the domain of emotion represents a bifurcation of what it is to be a human being, and by making either domain the location of the other, what African musical aesthetics accomplishes is the affirmation of a unified sense of what it is to be a human being. Accordingly, the unity of philosophy and music give rises to a unified sense of being human. It is to such unity that African musical aesthetics takes us.

For African musical aesthetics to accomplish this task, this book challenges the conventional Western understanding of philosophy—an understanding that projects Africa as devoid of philosophy. It is this projection that pervaded Africa during the colonial period, and it is the projection that is challenged in African philosophy. From an African philosophical perspective African musical aesthetics turns out to be an emancipatory process that seeks to affirm the humanity of Africans but also a process that seeks to affirm common humanity. Music is not solely a matter of audiology, what is played, or what one dances to. It has its elemental task in calling our attention to what we are as human beings. In so far as it is sensuous, it constitutes us as members of the sensible world, and links us intrinsically to all that is sensuous. It is more than humanism. Music registers us as members of nature. It is nature naturing.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,"Eckehard Pistrick, Nicola Scaldaferri and Gretel Schwörer",Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe,Hardback,978-1-4438-2930-4,44.99,"The edited volume Audiovisual Media and Identity Issues in Southeastern Europe is an attempt to meet the challenges of text-based scholarship, to break medial one-dimensionality dictated by textuality and to shift the focus to the aural and visual dimensions of identity in a part of Europe heavily marked by the dynamics of political, cultural and social change, particularly during the last decades. The objective of this endeavour is to examine identity in Southeastern Europe by means of its communication media, specifically that of the photographic image and the sound recording.

How are identities communicated? How are they performed and made physically perceptible? Brought to a point, the primary issue is one of how people perceive themselves and their environment on the basis of communication media, seen through a lens of different disciplines (social anthropology, ethnomusicology, media studies, sociology and history) and methodologies from the point of view of scholars from Southeastern Europe and their Western European colleagues. The book pursues a distinct comparative and historical perspective, examining the media representations from socialist and pre-socialist periods in relation to the role media play in the postsocialist discourse. Another focus is laid on local media representations and their impact on local self-images. This distinct historical and local approach allows new insights into how identities are constructed, performed and negotiated in the light of media, resulting in different forms of interpreting, re-appropriating and re-evaluting the past and traditions. This opens up questions on the role of media in relation to cultural policies and their potential to preserve or to transform local cultural heritage.

The book is also an important contribution to the field of postsocialist studies in anthropology. It sheds a distinct cultural view on postsocialist transformation processes. Through a wide range of examples and first-hand results of basic field research from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Albania and Slovenia this volume provides an opportunity for a comparative reconsideration of similar phenomena across national borders. It may serve also as a methodological reference work for scholars who are interested in the different ways of how to develop and practice “media reflexivity” in their own field research.


","“What I find so valuable about the volume . . . is its realization in and of a four-part harmony. It is a harmony of theory and ethnography, of media criticism and media practice.”
—Steven Feld, University of New Mexico
",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Actéon,Paperback,978-1-4438-2916-8,34.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism.

Actéon, an opéra-comique in one act with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Salle de la place de la Bourse) on 23 January 1836.

The story is set in eighteenth-century Sicily. Prince Aldobrandi has jealously shut up his wife Lucrezia and his sister Adèle in a palace where only women are permitted. Count Léoni, wishing to see Adèle, disguises himself as a blind street-singer to gain the attention of the ladies. Lucrezia is painting a picture of Diana and her nymphs being surprised by Actaeon, and persuades her husband to allow the blind man to pose as a model. Léoni’s deception is revealed when Adèle catches him reading a letter sent to her by the Cherubino-like page Stéfano, who jealously betrays the Count to Aldobrandi. A poignarding is narrowly averted when Léoni admits that he came to see Adèle and not Lucrezia; the chastened Prince then graciously consents to pose as Actaeon.

The score of this lever de rideau, originally destined for the Opéra, was written for the agile voice of Laure Cinti-Damoreau. It is overshadowed by the other more popular creations of the composer, but nonetheless contains several remarkable pieces. The overture, with its perky introduction broken by slower cello and oboe sequences is dominated by Mediterranean rhythms: a vigorous bolero encloses a beautiful hushed central movement, the sicilienne, which is dreamily passed from horns to clarinets to oboes.

Of real elegance are: the aria “Il est des époux complaisants”; the romance “Jeunes beautés, charmantes desmoiselles” and the syllabic quartet “Le destin comble mes voeux”. Mme Damoreau excited general enthusiasm when she sang the Sicilienne (“Nina, jolie et sage”), an air à vocalise which is a masterpiece of grace and finesse in this small work.

The opera is unique among the works of Scribe and Auber for its brevity, for its use of a classical framework (the myth of Diana and Actaeon) to provide an updated contemporary fable that celebrates art and love. All these elements, and the gift of the vocally challenging part for Cinti-Damoreau, come together in the brilliant finale.

The original cast was: Jean-Francois Inchindi [Hinnekindt] (Aldobrandi); Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Lucrezia); Louis-Benoît-Alphonse Révial (Léoni); Mlle Camoin (Adèle); and Mme Félicité Pradher (Stéfano).

The work was in the repertoire between 1836 and 1852, with a total of 92 performances. It was translated into German, and produced in Brussels, Berlin, Vienna, London and Philadelphia.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: La Circassienne,Paperback,978-1-4438-2923-6,49.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), once one of the most well-known and well-loved names in French 19th-century opera, came later in life than many famous composers to his art, yet had one of the longest and most successful careers. He studied with Cherubini after abandoning an initial attempt to establish a career in commerce, and experienced his first real triumph at the age of 38 with La Bergère Châteleine (1820). His subsequent association with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), a collaboration that lasted until Scribe’s death, became one of the most famous and successful partnerships in musical history. Works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) cemented Auber’s popularity with the public and drew official recognition and honours. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello), a work of great significance in the history of opera, is set against a background of revolution and uprising – a situation that Auber knew only too well. He lived through four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870), dying at the advanced age of 89 in the desperate conditions of the Commune, of a long-standing illness aggravated by the dangers and privations that attended the Siege of Paris. Auber had always loved his home city, and was not prepared to leave it, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. Ironically, a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of La Muette de Portici, a man so successful in depicting revolutionary fervour that a performance of this opera in Brussels in 1830 had helped to inspire the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland.

Auber’s charming and graceful overtures were once staples of the light Classical repertoire, known and loved everywhere. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had an overwhelming influence on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. His operas, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire. Contemporary audiences are not attuned to Auber’s elegant and restrained art, accustomed as they are to verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism, but those willing to listen are rewarded by works that retain all their freshness, delicacy and charm.

La Circassienne, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart), on 2 February 1861. The story is based on the novel Les Amours du chevalier de Faulas (1787–90) by Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray. The locale is the Caucasus and Moscow, around 1840. A group of bored Russian officers, snowed in inside their fort in the Caucasus, plan to put on Dalayrac’s Adolphe et Clara. Alexis, who has just related an anecdote of how he disguised himself in women’s clothes to carry out an errand, is chosen for the female role and dressed à la Circassienne since no other costume is available. The new commandant, General Orsakoff, falls in love with “Prascovia”. The Circassians attack by surprise and carry off “Prascovia” and Orsakoff’s niece and ward, Olga, but the Russians manage to escape. Back in Moscow, the painter Lanskoi tries to dissuade Orsakoff from finding “Prascovia” by announcing that she has entered a convent.

The overture captures something of the pert and satirical aspects of the potentially louche plot, reflecting an appropriate tone for the subtle inversions of expectations and values endemic to this storyline. It unfolds the central themes of the opera, nearly all of them taken from the extended act 2 finale – the Harem Scene.

In act 2 the chorus of odalisques is delightful: the composer had never written anything more vaporous and ethereal. Indeed, La Circassienne provides a mixture of some fine late harmonic thoughtfulness, and also some routine application, as in the repetitions of rhythmic patterns that can seem a weakness. In act 3 the couplets for the painter Lanskoi (“Il aime trop”) are written with malicious finesse, and were encored.

The orchestration is a constant feast for the ear, coupled as it is with a most original and penetrating harmony. This sense of heightened expression is part of the slightly extended or Mannerist tendency discernible in this work. It is nowhere better illustrated than in the vocal writing for the two principal roles. The part of Alexis with its ambiguous transvestism finds a vocal correlative in its very high tessitura, with an almost exaggerated extension in alt. Montaubry excelled in creating the unusual role of Alexis, thanks to his slight physique and head notes. Few tenors could have tackled this as victoriously as he did. The role of Olga is also extremely demanding.

The original cast was: Achille-Félix Montaubry (Alexis); Mlle Monrose (Olga); Barielle (Orsakoff); Joseph-Antoine-Charles Couderc (Lanskoi); Eugène-Louis Troy (Aboul Kasim); Charles-Francois Duvernoy (Soltikoff, a Russian captain); Ambroise (Perod, a Russian brigadier); Davoust (Irak, one of his officers); Paul-Pierre Laget (Boudour, a eunuch); and Mlles Prost and Bousquet (Zoloé and Neïla, wives of Aboul Kasim). The work was in the repertoire for the year of 1861 only, achieving a total of 49 performances. Perhaps because of its rather ambiguous subject matter, the opera did not enjoy further productions outside Paris. But for all its risqué implications, this libretto was set with great success by Franz von Suppé for Vienna in 1876, under the title of Fatinitza.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Maçon (Maurer und Schlosser),Paperback,978-1-4438-2915-1,34.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), once one of the most well-known and well-loved names in French 19th-century opera, came later in life than many famous composers to his art, yet had one of the longest and most successful careers. He studied with Cherubini after abandoning an initial attempt to establish a career in commerce, and experienced his first real triumph at the age of 38 with La Bergère Châteleine (1820). His subsequent association with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), a collaboration that lasted until Scribe’s death, became one of the most famous and successful partnerships in musical history. Works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) cemented Auber’s popularity with the public and drew official recognition and honours. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello), a work of great significance in the history of opera, is set against a background of revolution and uprising—a situation that Auber knew only too well. He lived through four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870), dying at the advanced age of 89 in the desperate conditions of the Commune, of a long-standing illness aggravated by the dangers and privations that attended the Siege of Paris. Auber had always loved his home city, and was not prepared to leave it, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. Ironically, a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of La Muette de Portici, a man so successful in depicting revolutionary fervour that a performance of this opera in Brussels in 1830 had helped to inspire the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland.

Auber’s charming and graceful overtures were once staples of the light Classical repertoire, known and loved everywhere. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had an overwhelming influence on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. His operas, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire. Contemporary audiences are not attuned to Auber’s elegant and restrained art, accustomed as they are to verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism, but those willing to listen are rewarded by works that retain all their freshness, delicacy and charm.

Le Maçon, an opéra-comique (opéra français) in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Salle Feydeau), on 3 May 1825. It was to become Auber’s first enduring success. The opera is set in Paris, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, around 1820. Roger, a mason, and his friend Baptiste, a locksmith, are abducted and taken blindfolded to a chateau by their kidnappers, the Turkish slaves Usbeck and Rica. They are forced to build a secret prison, but eventually help to liberate Irma, a young Greek girl, and her fiancé Léon, who are being held against their will by the Turks.

This opéra français, first performed a few months before La Dame blanche in 1825, represents a Parisian-bourgeois counterpiece to Boieldieu’s Scottish-Romantic opera. Both book and score were equally successful, with varied situations and musically well-delineated characters. The work is related to the venerable tradition of the rescue opera, not only in its story, but also in Auber’s music, especially in the use of a couplet refrain “Du courage” as a dramatic leading melody. The music is characterized by pointed, sharp punctuation that evokes the spirit of the revolutionary tone of the rescue opera, and resonates with the atmosphere of Scribe’s libretto.

The opera represents a decisive development in Auber’s style, a turning away from imitation of Rossini, to Boieldieu’s simplicity and thereby to a specifically French tradition. Scribe’s wonderful facility was able to focus on the simplest but most basic of human activities, and derive a poetry from the ordinary. This was better acknowledged in the German title of the opera, Maurer und Schlosser, where the two ordinary heroes share equal billing. Roger, like Boieldieu’s Georges Brown, is a real hero in working clothes, his honest fervour and suffering idealism expressed in the passion of his music.

It is the extended ensemble scenes that contain the greatest amount of action—both physical and emotional. The act 2 finale (“Malheureux arrêtez!”) is at the heart of the opera, and a fine example of the effective creative and dramaturgical principles used by librettist and composer.

The original cast was: Louis-Antoine-Eléonore Ponchard (Roger); Vizentini (Baptiste); Lafeuillade (Léon de Mérinville); Mme Félicité Pradher (Irma); Darancourt and Henri (Usbeck and Rica); Mme Antoinette-Eugènie Rigaud (Henriette); Mme Marie-Julienne Boulanger (Mme Bertrand, a neighbour of Henriette’s); Mlle Jenny Colon (Zobéide, companion to Irma) and Belnie (a wedding guest).

The work remained in the repertoire from 1825 to 1896 and was performed 525 times. By the 1850s it had been translated into German, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Czech and Hungarian. It was performed across Europe, and in New York (1827) and Rio de Janeiro (1846). On German stages this opera, after Fra Diavolo (1830), remained Auber’s most popular work far into the twentieth century, given as late as 1930. In 1826 a Romantic-comic Singspiel adaptation by Johann Gabriel Seidl (set in Italy) was performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna, while London saw the adaptation by James Robinson Planché, The Mason of Buda, for the Adelphi Theatre.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: L’Enfant prodigue,Paperback,978-1-4438-2908-3,44.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that only ended with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was.

L’Enfant prodigue, an opéra in five acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Académie nationale de musique (Salle de la rue Le Peletier) on 6 December 1850. The story is derived from the famous parable in St Luke’s Gospel (ch. 15). The scene is set in Old Testament times, in Ancient Israel and Egypt.

Azaël, the only son of Reuben, a poor Israelite, leaves the paternal home and his betrothed Jephtèle to go and sample the pleasures promised by the great city of Memphis. He ruins himself in gambling and is seduced by the courtesan Nephté and the dancer Lia. Rejected and destitute, he is rescued from the Nile in act 4 by the leader of a caravan, and is reduced to tending a flock of sheep. In the final act the prodigal son comes to his senses, and returns home to throw himself into his loving father’s arms. 

Scribe produced a libretto without dramatic action, which, however, provided good static situations for the composer. The orchestral details are full of subtle interest and charm. The overture is the longest Auber wrote (466 bars). It is divided into three main sections, focusing attention on the tragic aspects of the story. The music unfolds the programme of the action, rehearsing the scenario in symbolic transmutation. The fleshpots of Egypt are conjured up and then in ecstatic mood the music captures the pathos of the return of the penitent sinner and his welcome back into his family. The theme of prodigality has been transposed into one of restitution. Auber achieves a symbolically effective and sonorous introduction to this operatic recounting of the Biblical parable.

The essence of the story is enshrined in Scribe’s dignified paraphrase of the brief Gospel passage “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants” (Luke 15:18–19): “Oui, j’irai vers mon père”. This is the key moment of decision and soul-searching in the opera, and carries the story’s emotional burden and spiritual implication. The work is dominated by the figure of the patriarch Reuben, with his act 1 aria “Toi qui versas la lumière”, and in act 2 the romance (“Il est un enfant d’Israël”), with its recitative of biblical simplicity. The final air of recognition (“Mon fils, c’est toi”) is possibly the most touching piece in the whole work: indeed, it attains a veritable grandeur.

A special aspect of the opera is the dance sequence in act 2—No. 10 Scène, containing 5 Airs de ballet, as part of the celebrations of the sacred bull Apis. The music is very light, gracious and delicate, full of buoyancy and chamber-like textures.

L’Enfant prodigue was produced only once, with no reprise, a total of 44 performances. The original cast was: Jean-Étienne-Auguste Massol; Gustave-Hippolyte Roger; Mlle Pauline-Eulalie Dameron; Louis-Henri Obin; Fleury; Koenig, Guignot, Ferdinand Prévôt; Molinier; Mme Laborde; Mlle Marie-Adolphine Petit-Brière; and Mlle Adèle Plunkett. The opera was translated into English, Italian and German and produced in Brussels, London, Graz, Vienna, Munich, Florence and New York until 1875.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Serment,Paperback,978-1-4438-2939-7,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that only ended with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was.

Le Serment, an opéra in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Edouard Mazères, was first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique (Salle de la rue Le Peletier), on 1 October 1832. The story is set in Toulon, in 1800. The village innkeeper Andiol prefers, as his future son-in-law, an unknown man who is secretly a brigand and leader of a band of counterfeiters (Capitaine Jean), to the young farmer Edmond, who is loved by his daughter Marie. Edmond learns Jean’s secret but is induced to promise that he will not reveal Jean’s true identity. He goes off to be a soldier, returning as a successful officer. Marie is about to marry Jean, but when the truth about Jean’s identity is revealed, they are able to be married at last.

The proportions of the Opéra were far too grandiose for the modest subject of Le Serment. The opera was not a great success, but maintained its place in the repertoire without interruption until 1849, although most often given without the last act. The mise en scène was much admired, depicting the interior of an inn, a Gothic chamber, and a busy street where merchants of various races dressed in native costume peddled their wares. The opera enjoyed particular popularity in Germany as Die Falschmünzer.

The music is full of ingenious details and the orchestration is refined. The overture became well-known. It establishes three distinct thematic worlds: the pastoral world of Marie and Andiol, the busy world of the counterfeiters, and the military world of Edmond’s patriotic adventures. There are several extended solo numbers, like the opening air for Andiol; some fine choral writing for male voices; and Capitaine Jean’s nautical ballad. The role of the counterfeiters presents another variant on the favoured Romantic topoi of robbers and smugglers; their activities are hidden behind stories of hauntings to keep away the curious. The tenor is given excellent opportunities in Edmond’s arias in act 2 (“En avant conscrit”) and act 3 (“Salut ô mon pays”). The most famous piece in the opera is Marie’s grand air à vocalises for the soprano (“Dès enfance les mêmes chaînes”) in which all the most arduous difficulties of the art of singing are displayed. It was a triumph for Madame Damoreau, and served for a long time as a test piece, and was later introduced into the beginning of act 2 of the Italian version of Fra Diavolo as a more substantial and challenging alternative to Zerline’s aria.

The original cast was: Adolphe Nourrit (Edmond); Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Marie); Henri-Bernard Dabadie (Jean); Prosper Derivis and Nicholas-Prosper Levasseur (Andiol); Ferdinand Prévôt (a brigadier of the gendarmerie); and Trévaux (an officer).

The opera remained in the repertoire from 1832 to 1849, with the 100th performance taking place on 30 March 1849. There were 102 performances in total. It was translated into English, German, Italian, Hungarian, Czech and Russian, and produced in many European cities.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Marco Spada,Paperback,978-1-4438-2914-4,44.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism.

Marco Spada, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 21 December 1852. The opera is set in the Romagna around 1830. The governor of Rome is planning a journey to the Adriatic accompanied by his niece, the Marchesa de Sanpietri, and his aide Pepinelli. They become enmeshed in the intrigues of the Abruzzi bandits headed by Marco Spada. Angela, the daughter of the Baron de Torrida (really Marco Spada), offers them hospitality. Pepinelli declares his love for the Marchesa but is rejected. At a ball Angela meets her long-lost beloved Fédérici, the governor's nephew. The Baron is identified as the bandit chief, but only to Fédérici and Angela. She chooses to remain with her father despite this revelation, and renounces her beloved, who thereupon publicly announces his engagement to the Marchesa. Eventually Marco Spada is fatefully wounded in a successful skirmish with the carabinieri. Pepinelli and the Marchesa, who have been captured, are forced to marry, leaving Fédérici and Angela free to realize their love.

The eternal brigand, so much exploited by the librettist, turns up here again. Indeed, the final scene was inspired by Horace Vernet’s famous painting La Confession du bandit. But this time the recurrence of this favoured type was less successful than in Fra Diavolo and La Sirène: public reception was comparatively cool.

The overture is one of Auber’s most accomplished. The music has all those features that distinguish the composer’s style, as skilled as it is inspired. Act 1 includes a beautiful serenade for Fédérici, a tender paternal aria for the Baron, and Angéla’s pastoral couplets. Act 2 famously includes Angela’s declaration of love in four languages: Russian, English, Italian, and French. The finale is the highpoint of the opera: the grand and moving theme of the stretta already familiar from the overture. Act 3 contains Angela’s chanson “Fille de la montagne”; and the final scene which is full of noble pathos, presaged in the very opening bars of this work.

The original cast was: Charles-Amable Battaille (Marco Spada); Caroline Duprez (Angela); Jean-Jacques Boulo (Fédérici); Léon Carvalho (Prince Osorio); Joseph-Antoine-Charles Couderc (Pepinelli); Mlle Andrea Favel (the Marchesa Sanpietri); Bussine (Fra Borromeo); and Elias Nathan and Lejeune (Geronio and Gianetti, bandits). The relationship between the Baron and Angela, sustained throughout the opera, provided the great bass Charles-Amable Battaille and the bright high soprano Caroline Duprez (daughter of the famous tenor Gilbert Duprez), both rising stars, with the opportunity for an effective working partnership.

Marco Spada played for two years only, until 1854, and was not revived. The work was destined for transformation into a ballet five years later. In all, there were a respectable 78 performances. The opera was translated into German, Polish and Swedish, and performed in Brussels, Berlin, Hannover, Dresden, Mannheim, Vienna, Warsaw and Stockholm.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-06-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Zanetta,Paperback,978-1-4438-2920-5,34.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that only ended with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was.

Zanetta, an opéra-comique in three acts with libretto by Eugène Scribe and Jules Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 18 May 1840. It is set in Naples in the early l740s, and is the second of Auber’s three Sicilian operas, along with Actéon and Zerline. The plot concerns the ploys used by King Charles VI to discourage his favourite, the German nobleman Rodolphe’s attentions to his sister Nisida. The latter, in order to allay her brother’s suspicions, conceives a plan in which Rodolphe will openly court the gardener’s daughter Zanetta. The intrigues fail, and Rodolphe ends up with the humble Zanetta while Nisida marries the Elector of Bavaria.

The music of this pleasant opera is notable for the amount of vocal display (created for Mme Cinti-Damoreau) and the recurrent use of the waltz rhythm which dominates the finales of the first and third acts (cf Fiorella and Haydée as works with a similar emphasis). The overture is very attractive. Mmes Damoreau and Rossi were applauded for the duet in act 2 (“Contre l’hymen qu’ordonne”). Act 3 contains a cavatina for the Princess (“Pendant toute la nuit”), and the remarkable moment of reflection for Zanetta “Adieu mes fleurs chéries”. All three duets are very expressive.

The original cast consisted of: Joseph-Antoine-Charles Couderc (Rodolphe); Laure Cinti-Damoreau (Zanetta); Mme Rossi (Nisida); Ernest Mocker (Charles VI); Honoré Grignon (Baron Mathanasius); Charles-Louis Sainte-Foy and Emon (Dionigi and Ruggieri); and Haussard (a chamberlain).

The work was in the repertoire l840–41, with a total of 35 performances. It was translated into German and Danish, and produced in Amsterdam, Prague, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Brussels and London.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Le Premier Jour de bonheur,Paperback,978-1-4438-2956-4,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that only ended with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was.

Le Premier Jour de bonheur, an opéra-comique in three acts, was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 15 February 1868. It was the 86-year-old Auber’s second-last opera. Eugène Scribe had died in 1861, and Auber chose Adolphe-Philippe Dennery (actually Adolphe Philippe) and Eugène Cormon (Pierre-Etienne Piestre) as his collaborators for his last two operas. The subject of Le Premier Jour de bonheur was borrowed from a comedy by Souques called Le Chevalier de Canolle given at the Odéon on 17 May 1816.

For Gaston de Mailleprés, an officer serving in the French army during the colonial wars with Britain, every happy event is marred by some misfortune. He has fallen in love, but with an unknown woman whom he saw twice in London before the wars, as her carriage went by. An English girl, Hélène, and her craven fiancée Sir John Littlepool arrive, having been apprehended as spies while on their way to the English garrison at Madras. Gaston recognizes in Hélène his mysterious lady; she is in fact the daughter of the governor of Madras. Gaston releases Hélène, but keeps Littlepool as a hostage. In act 2 Gaston comes to Madras under a flag of truce to see Hélène, but is taken prisoner, and condemned to be shot the next day in reprisal for Sir John’s predicament. Hélène takes pity on him and confesses her love for him. Gaston’s joy at this helps him to forget his despair over his imminent fate. In the last act the impressionable Sir John, released from captivity, relinquishes all claims to Hélène, now believing that Hélène has chosen Gaston simply to save his life, and is reconciled to their union. Gaston’s first day of happiness has at last arrived.

The libretto was constructed with skill, but the givens of the situation lack enough power and simplicity to sustain interest. The score contains lovely pieces. The overture presents an overall contrast between the Indian elements of the story (the graceful Ballad of the Djinns) and the French colonial ones (a bellicose march full of military swagger and dance themes from the act 2 ball).

Le Premier Jour de bonheur was the only significant work of the last decade of Auber’s life, and indeed his last great success. The cast was very accomplished, consisting of: Joseph-Amédée-Victor Capoul (Gaston de Mailleprés); Marie Cabel (Hélène); Charles-Louis Sainte-Foy (Littlepool); Mlle Marie-Rose (Djelma); Léon Melchissédec (De Mailly, a French officer); Victor Prilleux (Bergerac, a French officer); and Bernard (the governor of Madras). Between 1867–70 there were 167 performances in Paris. The work was given in German, Italian and Hungarian.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Rêve d'amour,Paperback,978-1-4438-2952-6,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871), the most amiable French composer of the 19th century, came to his abilities late in life. After a stalled commercial career, he studied with Cherubini. His first works were not a success, but La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. He then met the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a working partnership, one of the most successful in musical history, that lasted until Scribe’s death. After Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828), Auber’s life was filled with success. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is a key work in operatic history, and helped to inspire the 1830 revolution in Brussels that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. Auber himself experienced four French Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). The latter (the Commune) hastened the end of his life. He died on 12 May 1871, at the advanced old age of 89, and in the pitiful conditions of civil strife, after a long and painful illness which worsened during the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved despite the dangers and privation, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. By some irony a mark had been placed against the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once known everywhere, a staple of the light Classical repertoire. The influence of his gracious melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany, was overwhelming. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), have virtually passed out of the repertoire, since Auber’s elegant and restrained art now has little appeal for the world of music, attuned as it is to the meatier substance of verismo, high Wagnerian ideology, and twentieth-century experimentalism.

Rêve d’amour, an opéra-comique in three acts, with libretto by Adolphe-Philippe Dennery (Adolphe Philippe) and Eugène Cormon (Pierre-Etienne Piestre), was first performed at the Opéra-Comique (Deuxième Salle Favart) on 20 December 1869. It was Auber’s last work.

The story is set in the French countryside, in the 18th century. It concerns the peasant farmer Marcel and the vicissitudes of his love for both his cousin Denise and the wealthy heiress Henriette. The latter is in turn, however, loved by the gallant Chevalier. To prove himself, Marcel leaves and becomes a successful soldier. He is eventually united with Denise, while Henriette marries the Chevalier.

The scenario is without great interest, but the score is of musical worth. The short binary overture is charming and full of fresh ideas. It neatly juxtaposes the two male protagonists, and the overall thematic pull between the dream of love and the glory of soldierly prowess. It is a lovely pastorale that reaches its climax in a mood of great playfulness.

Act 2 takes one into the heart of the pastoral experience explored in this opera. It opens with a charming scene of Colin-Maillard (blindman’s buff) and a Villanelle, while the extended finale—a lovely waltz followed by Marcel’s embracing of the soldier’s life—counterposes the archetypal polarity of the pastoral and military traditions of the opéra-comique. The military solution to the hero’s emotional dilemma is also the determining action in Auber’s earlier works La Fiancée and Le Philtre.

For the premiere stage set one of the charming scenes of Lancret was reproduced, complemented by costumes and décor modelled on those of Watteau. The Balançoire and the Colin-Maillard were ingeniously re-created by the stage designers to sustain the illusion of this last pastoral dream of love.

The cast consisted of: Joseph-Amédée-Victor Capoul (Marcel); Mlle Marguerite-Marie-Sophie Priola (Henriette); Mlle Maria-Dolorès-Bénédicta-Joséphine Nau (Denise); Mlle Caroline Girard (Marion); Charles-Louis Sainte-Foy (Andoche, a peasant); Victor Prilleux (Bertrand, a farmer); Pierre Gailhard (Le chevalier de Bois-Joli); and Julien (Thomas, a peasant). The opera was in the repertoire 1869–70, and numbered 27 performances. Performances were interrupted in 1870 by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, and never resumed.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,Daniel-François-Esprit Auber: Zerline,Paperback,978-1-4438-2966-3,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782–1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opéra-comique La Bergère Châteleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber’s life was his meeting with the librettist Eugène Scribe (1791–1861), with whom he developed a long and illustrious working partnership that only ended with Scribe’s death. Success followed success; works such as Le Maçon (1825) and La Muette de Portici (1828) brought Auber public fame and official recognition. In 1829 he was appointed a member of the Institut, in 1839 Director of Concerts at Court, in 1842 Director of the Conservatoire, in 1852 Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel, and in 1861 Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur.

Auber seems to have been fated to live in revolutionary times; during his long life no less than four revolutions took place in France (1789, 1830, 1848, 1870). Auber’s famous historical grand opera La Muette de Portici (also known by its hero’s name as Masaniello) is perhaps unsurprisingly based on revolution, depicting the 1647 Neapolitan uprising against Spanish rule. It is a key work in operatic history, and has a revolutionary history itself: it was a performance of this work in Brussels in 1830 that helped spark the revolution that led to the separation of Belgium from Holland. It was a revolution that hastened Auber’s death at the old age of 89. He died on 12 May 1871 as a result of a long illness aggravated by the privations and dangers of the Siege of Paris. He had refused to leave the city he had always loved, even after his house had been set on fire by the petroleurs et petroleuses. In a twist of fate, a mark had been placed on the house of the composer of Masaniello, the very voice of Romantic liberty!

Auber’s overtures were once instantly recognizable, favourites of the light Classical repertoire. His gracious melodies and dance rhythms had a huge influence, both on piano and instrumental music, and on the genre of Romantic comic opera, especially in Germany. Musical tastes and fashions have changed, and contemporary audiences are more accustomed to the heavier fare of verismo, Wagnerian transcendentalism, and twentieth-century experimentalism. The operas themselves, apart from Fra Diavolo (1830), are seldom performed, yet Auber’s elegant, delicate and restrained art remains as appealing to the discerning listener as ever it was.

Zerline, an opera in three acts with libretto by Eugène Scribe, was first performed at the Académie nationale de musique (Salle de la rue Le Peletier) on 16 May 1851. The scene is set in Palermo, during the Restoration. The Prince of Roccanera, married to the sister of the King, has a supposed niece, Gemma. She is really his daughter by Zerline, an orange-seller. The latter was abducted by pirates, and having returned to Palermo after many trials, now meets her daughter, assuming the role of her aunt. She learns that Gemma loves a young naval officer, Rodolphe, but that the Prince’s wife wishes Gemma to marry the King’s cousin, much against the girl’s wishes. In the third act, Zerline, already alerted to an intrigue compromising to the two young lovers, is able to safeguard their integrity and bring about their union.

The action is better suited to a vaudeville than an opera, and the scenario has little innate interest. The role of Zerline was devised especially for the great contralto Marietta Alboni (1823–94), the first role she created. The B-flat major overture immediately establishes the family nature of the drama, with its parable of past sins, social disparity and all-conquering maternal love.

There is allusion to the Sicilian setting in the two opening choruses of act 1 which are dominated by barcarolle rhythms in establishing the couleur locale. Alboni’s magnificent talent added great value to the light music written by Auber for this slight canvas. The work consequently contains many pieces of a purely virtuoso nature. Among them are the grand air d’entrée “Ô Palerme! ô Sicile!”, the thematically central canzonetta “Achetez mes belles oranges”, and the duet for soprano and contralto “Quel trouble en mon âme” in act 1. It is as though the Italian setting of the story and the Italian origins of the prima donna caused Auber to look to his early love for Rossini, and his enduring attachment to Italian musical forms and local colour (as in Fiorella, La Muette de Portici, Fra Diavolo, Actéon, La Sirène, Zanetta and Haydée).

The vocal part of Zerline is a conscious re-creation of the old Rossini mode, and her various solos are written in the style of the virtuoso contralto of the opera seria, obviously with a contemporary Gallic fleetness all Auber’s own. The Grand Air demonstrates all the features.

The original cast was: Merly (Roccanera); Mlle Marietta Alboni (Zerline); Mlle Maria-Dolorès-Bénédicta-Joséphine Nau (Gemma); Aimès (Rodolphe); Mlle Dameron (the Princess of Roccanera); and Lyons (the Marquis of Bettura). The work was only performed 14 times in Paris, with no reprise. It was translated into Italian, and produced in Brussels (in French) and London (in Italian).
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-07-01,Jennifer Jackson,Giacomo Meyerbeer: Reputation without Cause? A Composer and his Critics,Hardback,978-1-4438-2968-7,44.99,"Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864) was the most successful composer of grand operas in nineteenth-century Paris, whose music continued to be frequently performed worldwide into the following century. Today, recent scholars acknowledge his stature but his operas have become stage rarities. There is normally a gap on shelves in libraries and bookshops between Mendelssohn and Mozart (Messaien and Monteverdi for the better resourced). There is no biography or broad evaluation of Meyerbeer in print in English. This study of the vicissitudes of Meyerbeer’s reputation complements introductions to his works and the volumes of academic essays in English and other European languages. While reputation forming has recently offered several interesting studies, it is rare for a composer to be the subject.

This volume will be of interest primarily to opera enthusiasts, and to libraries and musicologists worldwide.

",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-08-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,The Ballets of Daniel-François-Esprit Auber,Paperback,978-1-4438-2987-8,39.99,"Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (Caen 29 January 1782- Paris 12/13 May 1871) is primarily remembered as one of the great masters of opéra-comique, but also played a very important role in the development of Romantic ballet through the long danced interludes and divertissements in his grand operas La Muette de Portici, Le Dieu et la Bayadère, Gustave III, ou Le Bal masque, Le Lac des fées, L’Enfant prodigue, Zerline, and the opéra-ballet version of Le Cheval de bronze. Auber also adapted music of various of his operas to create the score of the full-length ballet Marco Spada; it is quite different from his own opera on the subject. Additionally, several choreographers have used Auber’s music for their ballets, among them Frederick Ashton (Les Rendezvous, 1937), Victor Gsovsky (Grand Pas Classique, 1949) and Lew Christensen (Divertissement d’Auber, 1959).

La Muette de Portici (1828), choreographed by Jean-Pierre Aumer, is set against the Neapolitan uprising of 1647, and was performed 500 times in Paris alone between 1828 and 1880. The opera provides one of the few serious subjects the composer tackled, and one which critics found to have a persuasive dramatic content. An unusual aspect of the work is that the main character, a mute girl, is performed by a mime or a ballerina. The role of ballet in La Muette is important in setting the local scene, using dance episodes, whether courtly, and therefore Spanish—as in the guarucha and bolero in act 1, or popular, and therefore Neapolitan—as in the act 3 tarantella. Dance is also innate to the dramatic situation in the extended mime sequences for the mute heroine each with its own specially crafted music and character. The music responds to, and reflects, the vivid and imposing scenic effects (based on historical and pictorial research by the great stage designers and painters Cicéri and Daguerre).  

Le Dieu et la Bayadère (1830), set in India, was choreographed by Filippo Taglioni. Eugène Scribe, not only one of the most influential of opera librettists, but also a leading figure in the history of ballet, wrote the scenario for the danced part, which was fairly long and of artistic merit. In the ballet scenes of the opera, the choreographer, one of the most important exponents of dance in the Romantic period, was already experimenting with the ideas and style that were to characterize the creations of his prime, and of the Romantic ballet as a whole: an exotic fairy tale subject (often pseudo-Medieval or pastoral), and strange love affairs with supernatural beings, in the theatrical, musical and literary taste of the period. Above all, the Romantic ballet focused on the idealization of the ballerina, floating on the tips of her toes, a figure of ethereal lyricism. All the ballets by Filippo Taglioni were designed to display his daughter Marie’s luminous artistic personality. The heavily mime-oriented role of the bayadère Zoloé was one of Marie Taglioni’s createst triumphs. 
	
Gustave III (1833), based on the assassination of King Gustavus of Sweden in 1792, and also choreographed by Filippo Taglioni, was heavily influenced by the impact of the production of Robert le Diable, which saw a particular emphasis placed on sets and stage effects. The grand and historical nature of this opera is powerfully underscored by the two intercalated ballets. The first divertissement comes as early as act 1, and is in the nature of a grand historical pageant based on the life of Gustavus Vasa (1523-60), founder of the present Swedish state, before he gained the crown. There are two dances illustrating the prince’s leadership of the populace of Dalecarlia on the campaign to gain freedom from Denmark. The second divertissement is the legendary masked ball of the title at which the king was assassinated in 1792. The spectacle provided by the Opéra was sensational: the stage was illumined by 1600 candles in crystal chandeliers, and 300 dancers took part, all dressed in different costumes, and with 100 dancing the final galop. There are six numbers: three airs de danse (Allemande, Pas de folies, Menuet), two marches, and the famous final galop.  

Much time in Le Lac des fées, a tale of love between a human and a supernatural being, choreographed by Jean Coralli, is taken in elaborating the central depiction of popular festivity. Indeed, the requirements of grand-opéra are realized with an original twist in the big act 3 depiction of the Medieval Epiphany celebrations, with its attempt at recreating the variety of genre and mood. There is a detailed description of the procession through the streets of Cologne, organized by the Medieval guilds, each preceded by its own standard, with choruses. It unfolds in several movements:—the chorus of students “Vive la jeunesse”, the Fête des Rois with its Chant de Noël, the whole culminating in a big ballet sequence of four dances: 1) Valse des Étudiants, 2) Pas de Bacchus et Erigone, 3) Styrienne, and 4) Bacchanale. Scribe’s stage directions provide vivid details and combine historically informed spectacle, pantomime and dance into a single artistic conception.

L’Enfant prodigue (1850), based on the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son, was choreographed by Arthur Saint-Léon. A special aspect of the opera is the dance sequence in act 2—No.10 Scène, containing 5 Airs de ballet, as part of the celebrations of the sacred bull Apis. There are some further danced passages in the opening part of act 3, where the formal operatic elements of prayer, drinking song, bacchanal, and lullaby are integrated with singing and dancing into an artistic whole, once again with reference to the venerable French tradition of the opéra-ballet. Scribe’s scenarios show that the formal dances are either enmeshed in the unfolding of the drama (act 2), or use dance an integral element in the thematic ramifications of the plotline (in act 3).

Zerline, ou La Corbeille d’oranges (1851) was choreographed by Joseph Mazilier. Act 3 is dominated by the great princely festivities featuring eight dance movements (No. 15 Airs de Ballet and No. 16 Choeur (Valse), a pallid reminiscence of the great Masked Ball of Gustave in 1832. Auber reused much of the ballet music from act 3 of Le Lac des fées in this elaborate semi-allegorical masque that employs a variety of forms and fuses various types of danced entertainment, from classical pas de deux and formal ball through national dance, vaudeville and children’s routines to carnival.

Marco Spada, ou La Fille du bandit (1857) was choreographed by Joseph Mazilier. Scribe’s libretto for the opéra-comique Marco Spada which had been produced at the Opéra-Comique in December 1852 with Auber’s music, met the fundamental requirement of having two important female characters, and provided Scribe with the right opportunity to adapt his story to a scenario for dancing. So the opéra-comique was transformed into a ballet—Auber’s only full length one. The music was not an adaptation of the opera, but rather a composite score made up of the most striking numbers from several of Auber’s works: Le Concert à la cour, Fiorella, La Fiancée, Fra Diavolo, Le Lac des fées, L’Ambassadrice, Les Diamants de la couronne, La Barcarolle, Zerline and L’Enfant prodigue. The original scenario required elaborate décor and stage machinery, which was a factor in this later revival of the work at the Académie de musique on 21 September1857.  

In 1857 Auber reworked the score of the opéra-comique Le Cheval de bronze as an opéra-ballet in four acts, adding recitatives, and extra ballet and ensemble numbers. The choreography was by Lucien Petipa. The divertissements consisted of 
1) a seven-movement Pas de quatre in act 1
2) a four-movement Danse in act 3
3) and five-movement Pas de deux in act 4.
This version of the opera has never been published.

The 20th century saw Auber’s music used for three significant ballet arrangements.

Les Rendezvous is an abstract ballet created in 1933 with choreography by Frederick Ashton, the first major ballet created by Ashton for the Vic Wells company. It was first performed on Tuesday, December 5th, 1933, by the Vic Wells Ballet at Sadler's Wells Theatre.
	
Premiered in Paris in the year 1949, Grand Pas Classique by Russian choreographer and ballet master Victor Gsovsky (1902 74) is a homage to classical dance. Based on musical extracts from the three-act ballet Marco Spada (1857), published by the composer as an offshoot of his opera by the same name, this pas de deux is a masterpiece of exquisite virtuosity.  

Divertissement d'Auber is set to excerpts from Auber's four most famous and dazzling operatic overtures. It is quicksilver, joyous music that inspired Lew Christensen's most brilliant and effervescent choreographic style. The work showcases the technique of classical ballet at its peak, with the form and movement of the choreography running the gamut of the dancer's virtuoso vocabulary. Divertissement d'Auber is a staple of Christensen’s canon. 
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier and Mark Starr,Giacomo Meyerbeer: Jephtas Gelübde (Jephtha's Vow) - Orchestral Score,Hardback,978-1-4438-3219-9,120.0,"Meyerbeer's first opera, Jephtas Gelübde, has a libretto by the German academic Alois Schreiber, based on a Biblical theme taken from chapters 11-12 of the Book of Judges. The conflict between paternal love and love of country intrinsic to this story was is also the basic theme of the opera scenario, and is reflected in the overture, a symphonic anticipation of the essential features of the action. The opera, whose final rehearsals were conducted by the composer in person, was admirably produced by the Munich Court Opera on 23 December 1812, but on account of its novelty met with indifference, so that it was withdrawn. A newspaper report did, however, observe: ""A delicate sensibility, united to a profound and mature insight into the workings of the impassioned human heart, is manifested through¬out in a grand and elevated style that gives promise of something great in the future"". This score contains the seeds of the whole of Meyerbeer's future development. It is impossible to conceive of Meyerbeer's progress to mastership without the Jephta score. Meyerbeer was responding to the heritage of his predecessors the Handel of the oratorios (in the depiction of grandiose biblical drama), and the Gluck of the tragédie lyrique (in the depth of both public and private emotional exploration), but also alert to issues in contemporary opera, like the rescue motif and development of the villain. There is also evidence of Meyerbeer's famed orchestral virtuosity and imagination already at work. In his psychological exploration, Meyerbeer already begins to use thematic tagging and foreshadowing most imaginatively, and points the way far beyond Gluck, in the direction of Weber-Wagner. 
A performing edition of the opera has been prepared from the manuscript source: text by Robert Letellier, music by Mark Starr. Cambridge Scholars Publishing  is printing the vocal score and the orchestral score. The orchestral parts are included in the catalogue of Noteworthy Musical Editions' Rental Library who make the parts available to opera companies for staged productions.


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier and Mark Starr,Giacomo Meyerbeer: Jephtha's Vow - Vocal/Piano Score,Paperback,978-1-4438-3220-5,44.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-10-01,Drago Momcilovic,"Resounding Pasts: Essays in Literature, Popular Music, and Cultural Memory",Hardback,978-1-4438-0032-7,39.99,"The field of memory studies has long been preoccupied with the manner in which events from the past are commemorated, forgotten, re-fashioned, or worked through on both the individual and collective level. Yet in an age when various modes of artistic and cultural commemoration have begun to overlap with and respond to one another, the dynamics of cultural remembering and forgetting become bound up in an increasingly elaborate network of representations that operate both within and outside temporal, cultural, and national borders.

As publicly circulating texts that straddle the line between cultural artifact and artistic object, both musical and literary works, both individually and often in conjunction with one another, help shape cultural memories and individual experiences of those events. Troping their cultural milieux through specific aesthetic and social forms, genres, and modes of dissemination, music and literature become part of a growing global panoply of raw materials upon which we might begin to pose questions regarding the way we remember, the consequences of sharing and passing on those memories, and the aesthetic and cultural pressures attendant upon the circulation and interpretation of texts that (re-)sound the past.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2011-11-01,Carolyn Birdsall and Anthony Enns,"Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology",Paperback,978-1-4438-3339-4,24.99,"Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound, Technology is a collection of original essays that represents an invaluable contribution to the burgeoning field of sound studies. While sound is often posited as having a bridging function, as a passive in-between, this volume invites readers to rethink the concept of mediation by examining the relationships between the body, sound and technology. The chapters provide a series of focused case studies involving sound and music technologies, performances and installations, which address key issues for sound scholars: How are audio performances mediated by sound technologies as well as the performer’s body? In which ways is the immediacy of live performance influenced by sound technologies? How do bodies and technologies mediate the experience of auditory perception? What is the role of the listener in audio-based performances? How does sound mediate the experience of viewing optical media and how does this complicate vision-oriented theories of spectatorship? By incorporating a range of interdisciplinary responses to these questions, Sonic Mediations provides a model for the future of sound studies.

","""This book is essential reading for those in a postgraduate study of 'sound arts' (weaned on Trevor Wishart's 'On Sonic Art'), cultural and philosophical studies (interested in Foucault) or the professional performing-arts world. This is a thought-provoking book that you can revisit to expand your own thoughts on sonic art – and with historiophony you may be able to 'hear the voices of the dead'.""
– Martin Coslett, Farnborough College of Technology in Intellect Journals/Theatre and Performance Vol. 3, No. 3

""Birdsall and Enns extend the limitations on existing disciplinary frameworks surrounding the study of sound, while at the same time elucidating fundamental concerns relevant to scholars of sound.... The end result is an attempt to establish a model for sound studies as a mosaic of innovative approaches where scholars from varied fields can enter into productive dialogues around shared theoretical concerns.""
– John F. Barber, Leonardo

",Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-02-01,Robert Ignatius Letellier,"Cesare Pugni: KONIOK GORBUNOK, ILI TSAR-DEVITSA Le Petit Cheval bossu, ou La Tsar-Demoiselle The Little Humpbacked Horse, or The Tsar-Maiden",Paperback,978-1-4438-3568-8,39.99,"Cesare Pugni was born in Genoa on 31 May 1802, and studied in Milan from 1815 to 1822, with Antonio Rollo and Bonifazio Asioli. He became a cymbalist in the theatre orchestra, and on the death of Vincenzo Lavigna, was appointed musical director. He later moved to Paris where he became director of the Paganini Institute and met the great choreographers of the time. He started an artistic collaboration that was to prove one of the most productive in the history of ballet—working closely with Jules Perrot (1810–1892), first in Paris, then in London. Here Pugni presented some of the most renowned ballets of the 19th century, such as Esmeralda (1844) and the Pas de Quatre (1845), which still find their place in some modern repertories. He also worked with Arthur Saint-Léon (1821–1870), Paolo Taglioni (1808–1884), Marius Petipa (1818–1910), and some of the greatest dancers of the century. Pugni followed Perrot to Russia and became official composer of the Imperial theatres in St Petersburg where he composed new ballets, notably Doch’ Faraona (Pharaoh’s Daughter) (1862) and Koniok Gorbunok (The Little Humpbacked Horse) (1862). His most famous collaboration, with Marius Petipa, dominated these years, lasting until the composer’s death on 26 January 1870. Pugni is remarkable for his enormous output of some 300 ballets (either original compositions or in arrangements).

Arthur Saint-Leon, famous for Coppélia with Leo Delibes (1870), created The Little Humpbacked Horse to the music of Cesare Pugni for the Imperial Ballet (today the Maryinsky Ballet). The story of Koniok Gorbunok is based on the popular fairy-tale by Petr Yershov (1834), and tells of the spectacular deeds of Ivanushka with the help of the magical Little Humpbacked Horse. The scenario is notable for its humour as well as its fantasy. The ballet is of particular interest as being the first to be based on themes from Russian folklore, a particular interest of Saint-Léon, who chose the subject and the source, and devised the scenario himself. The first performance was on 13 December 1864 at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in St. Petersburg. The Emperor Alexander II attended the première, a great and enduring success. Marius Petipa revived the ballet in 1895 as The Tsar-Maiden for the dancer Pierina Legnani. The work lived on for many years in the repertory of the Imperial Ballet (given in St Petersburg over 200 times), a success continued in Soviet times at the Kirov Ballet, and also the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in a version by Alexander Gorsky (1901).

Alexander Radunsky choreographed his own version of this ballet to a score by Rodion Shchedrin for the Bolshoi Ballet in 1960, a version of which was filmed with Maya Plisetskaya as the Tsar-Maiden and Vladimir Vasiliev as Ivanushka. In 2009 Alexei Ratmansky choreographed a new version for the Maryinsky Ballet, also using Shchedrin’s score. A reconstruction of Saint-Leon’s original was filmed in 1989 for Russian television with graduates from the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet in the lead roles. The film included narrated sections and illustrations from a popular 1964 Russian edition of Yershov’s book.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-03-01,Edited and Introducted by Robert Ignatius Letellier,Cesare Pugni: Esmeralda and Le Violon du diable,Paperback,978-1-4438-3608-1,49.99,"Esmeralda
Cesare Pugni was born in Genoa on 31 May 1802, and studied in Milan from 1815 to 1822 with Antonio Rollo and Bonifazio Asioli. He made his debut as a composer at La Scala in 1826 with the opera Elerz e Zulmida. He became a cymbalist in the theatre orchestra, and on the death of Vincenzo Lavigna was appointed musical director. He later moved to Paris where he became director of the Paganini Institute. There he met the great choreographers of the time and started an artistic collaboration that was to prove one of the most productive in the history of ballet. He began working closely with Jules Perrot, first in Paris, then in London. He later followed him to St Petersburg and became official composer of the Imperial theatres in St Petersburg. His most famous collaboration, with Marius Petipa, now followed, lasting until his death on 26 January 1870.
	Pugni is known above all for his enormous output of musical works, including more than 300 ballets, a dozen operas, over 40 masses, other polyphonic works and a few symphonies, among which was a Sinfonia a canone highly praised by Meyerbeer. This extremely prolific composer was very popular with the public, his ballets being so easy to to listen to and to understand. He also found no diffculty in adapting his music to suit all sorts of choreographic needs, and many different performers. His versatility and facility in composition helped him succeed in his international career, even when they set limits on his artistic achievement. His time in Paris with Perrot was marked by an extraordinarily intense activity, which became even more evident when he reached Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. Here Pugni presented some of the most renowned ballets of the 19th century, such as Esmeralda and the Pas de Quatre (in 1844 and 1845 respectively), which still find their place in some modern repertories. He also worked with Saint-Léon, Paolo Taglioni, Marius Petipa, and some of the greatest dancers of the century. Some of his ballets already well-known in Europe were transferred to St Petersburg, although he also composed new ballets for that city.

Le Violon du diable
Fantastic Ballet in 2 acts, was first performed in Paris, at the  Opéra, on 19 January 1849, with Fanny Cerrito, Arthur Saint-Léon and Jean Coralli. Urbain, a young violinist, is deeply in love with the beautiful Hélène de Vardeck, but she prefers her suitor Saint-Ybars. The sinister Doctor Matheus offers Urbain the power to play his violin so irresistibly as to win the heart of his beloved, but in return he asks for the player’s soul. Urbain refuses, and the doctor breaks his magic instrument. Everything works out for the best through the intervention of a holy man, Pater Anselm.

Arthur Saint-Léon (1821-1870) had married the famous dancer Fanny Cerrito (1817-1909) in 1845. They were to be separated five years later and divorced in 1851, but in the meantime worked well together. Saint-Léon was not only a choreographer and dancer, he was the best dancer of his day, after Jules Perrot. But he was also a violinist. A subject was sought that would show off his talents as both dancer and musician, and the result was Le Violon du diable in which he devised the role of the violinist Urbain for himself.
	
The ballet was a revival and elaboration of an earlier version called Tartini il violinista (with scenario by Saint-Léon after Gavarini, choreography by Emmanuele Viotti, and music by Saint-Léon, Felis and Pugni, first performed in Venice at La Fenice on 29 February 1848). At the Paris premiere, however, subject and choreography were attributed exclusively to Saint-Léon, and the music exclusively to Pugni. The ballet was well received. The music was praised; the mise-en-scène and choreography were also admired. 


",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Edited and Introduced by Robert Ignatius Letellier,Cesare Pugni: DOCH’ FARAONA La Fille du Pharaon/Pharaoh’s Daughter,Paperback,978-1-4438-3728-6,49.99,"Cesare Pugni (1802–1870) made his debut as a composer at La Scala in 1826 with the opera Elerz e Zulmida, later becoming director of the Paganini Institute in Paris where he met the great choreogrpahers of the time. He began working closely with Jules Perrot, first in Paris, then in London. He also worked with Arthur Saint-Léon, Paolo Taglioni, Marius Petipa, and some of the greatest dancers of the century. His time in Paris with Perrot was marked by an extraordinarily intense activity, which accelerated when he reached Her Majesty’s Theatre in London where he presented some of the most renowned ballets of the 19th century, such as Esmeralda (1844) and the Pas de Quatre (1845), which still find their place in some modern repertories.
	Pugni later followed Perrot to St Petersburg and became official composer of the Imperial Theatres in St Petersburg. His most famous collaboration, with Marius Petipa, now followed, which lasted until Pugni’s death. Some of his ballets already well-known in Europe were transferred to St Petersburg, although he also composed new ballets in Russia. Pugni is known above all for his enormous output of musical works, including more than 300 ballets, a dozen operas, over 40 masses, other polyphonic works, and a few symphonies, among which was a Sinfonia a canone, highly praised by Meyerbeer. This extremely prolific composer was very popular with the public, as all his ballets are easy to to listen to and to understand. He also found no diffculty in adapting his music to suit all sorts of choreographic needs, and many different performers. 
	Doch’ Faraona, or La Fille du Pharaon is a ballet in 3 acts and 9 scenes with prologue and epilogue. The scenario was devised by Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Marius Petipa, with choreography by Petipa. It was first performed on 30 January 1862, in St Petersburg at the Bolshoi Theatre. The principal dancers were Carolina Rosati, Nicholas Golts, Marius Petipa, and Lev Ivanov. 
	The ballet was inspired by Théophile Gautier’s Le Roman de la Momie, and narrates the adventures of the English Lord Wilson and his servant John Bull,who seek shelter from a storm in an Ancient Egyptian tomb. They smoke opium and in their dreams are taken back to the times of the characters buried there: Lord Wilson meets the Pharaoh’s daughter Aspicia during a lion hunt, helps her to escape from the invidious attentions of the King of Nubia, and undergoes various adventures with her in the Egyptian countryside (including a visit to the watery underworld of the King of the Nile where all the great rivers of the world are represented in national dance). He is eventually saved from sacrifice and united with her in marriage, before waking to the cold light of reality.
	 The ballet was a resounding success. The spectacle  lasted over 4 hours and featured a cast of 400, 80 of them dancers. The spectacle was prepared in only 6 weeks for Carolina Rosati’s farewell performance. This success secured Marius Petipa’s appointment as maître de ballet (assistant ballet master) in St Petersburg. It marked the last of Rosati’s appearances in Russia, but thereafter tempted other great ballerinas, including Marie Petipa, Yekaterina Vazem, Virginia Zucchi, Mathilda Kschessinskaya and Anna Pavlova, each of them contributing her own interpretation of the heroine’s part.
	Marius Ivanovich Petipa (1818 -1910) was a hugely influential French balletmaster, teacher and choreographer who became Premier Maître de Ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres from 1871 until 1903. Petipa created over fifty ballets, some of which have survived in versions either faithful to, inspired by, or reconstructed from the original, including Pharaoh's Daughter (1862); Don Quixote (1869); La Bayadère (1877); Le Talisman (1889); and Sleeping Beauty (1890) among others. Petipa also revived a substantial number of works created by other ballet masters. His productions became the definitive versions from which nearly all subsequent revivals would be based — Le Corsaire, Giselle, Coppélia, La Fille mal gardée (with Lev Ivanov), The Little Humpbacked Horse and Swan Lake (with Lev Ivanov). There are various dances from Petipa's original works and revivals that have survived in an independent form in versions either based on the original or choreographed anew by others.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Edited and Introduced by Robert Ignatius Letellier,"Cesare Pugni: Music from Five Ballets Ondine Esmeralda Pas de Quatre Catarina, ou La Fille du bandit Théolinda, ou Le Lutin de la vallée",Paperback,978-1-4438-3710-1,39.99,"Cesare Pugni (1802–70) made his debut as a composer at La Scala in 1826 with the opera Elerz e Zulmida. In the 1840s he worked closely with the choreographer Jules Perrot (1810–92) in Paris and in London, creating some of the most renowned ballets of the 19th century, a number of which still find their place in some modern repertories. Pugni later followed Perrot to St Petersburg, and became official composer of the Imperial Russian theatres. Some of his earlier ballets were transferred to St Petersburg, and he also composed many new works for that city.

Along with Perrot, Pugni also worked with Arthur Saint-Léon (1821–70), Paolo Taglioni (1808–84), Marius Petipa (1818–1910), and some of the greatest dancers of the century. His most famous collaboration, with Marius Petipa, lasted until the composer’s death on 26 January 1870. Pugni was extremely prolific, composing more than 300 ballets, a dozen operas, over 40 masses, other polyphonic works and a few symphonies. He was very popular with the public, who were delighted by his direct uncomplicated style, with its attractive melodies and infectious rhythms.

Ondine, choreographed and danced by Perrot and Fanny Cerrito, was premiered at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1845. It is a variant on the famous water nymph story Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué. The ballet became famous for the conception of the generic scene type of the Pas de l’Ombre, where the nymph sees her own shadow in the moonlight for the first time and tries to catch it. The ballet was praised for its magnificent décor and for Pugni’s score: “. . . the musical accompaniment which describes the rise and fall of the waves is eminently characteristic and beautiful: the very ripple of the flow, and the rushing sound of the ebb over the pebbly strand, are heard and fully satisfy the ear”.

Esmeralda, choreographed by Perrot and premiered with Perrot, Carlotta Grisi and Saint-Léon in the principal roles, was first performed at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London in 1844. The ballet is based on the story of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris. It was reasonably successful, and Grisi was pronounced the perfect personification of the gypsy girl Esmeralda. The ballet later became immensely popular in Russia; Fanny Elssler enjoyed one of her biggest triumphs in the title role. Pugni’s music successfully evokes an atmosphere of Medieval Paris, the changing moods of the story, and the delicate vulnerability of the heroine. For Petipa’s production of 1888, Riccardo Drigo was asked to compose several new numbers, including the Esmeralda Pas de Deux and the Diana and Acteon Pas de Deux, which became very popular in their own right.

The Pas de quatre was a divertissement choreographed by Perrot for four of the leading ballerinas of the time, and premiered at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1845. Created by Marie Taglioni, Carlotta Grisi, Fanny Cerrito and Lucile Grahn, this plotless ballet epitomizes the Romantic cult of the ballerina. Pugni’s variations were exquisitely tailored to the character and particular skills of each of the illustrious protagonists. There were four performances of the Pas de quatre with the original dancers, and there have been many revivals, starting in 1847 (when the part created by Grahn was given to Carolina Rosati), and continuing through to later reconstructions in the 20th century.

Catarina, ou La Fille du bandit was choreographed by Perrot, with the principal roles created by Lucile Grahn, Perrot and Louis Gosselin. It was first performed at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1846. The plot revolves around the love of the painter Salvator Rosa for Catarina, a bandit chief. The ballet grew in popularity due to the fascination and humanity of the unconventional characters from an original story based on the artist’s life, and the incomparable elegance of its mass movements. Founded on the contrast between feminine grace and military precision, this work was one of the greatest triumphs of both Lucile Grahn and Fanny Elssler.

Théolinda, ou Le Lutin de la vallée, an opera-ballet in 2 acts and 3 scenes, with choreography by Arthur Saint-Léon, and music by Eugène Gautier, was first performed in Paris at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1853. Later Saint-Léon reworked the piece as Théolinda l’Orpheline for the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow in 1862, with the score arranged by Pugni. Saint-Léon chose the new young star Marfa Muravieva to create the title role. The work was revived in 1865 with Praskovia Lebedeva, again with Lebedeva in 1866, and once more, in 1870, this time with Ekaterina Vazem. Pugni’s adaptation of the music became popular in Russia, and was published in Saint-Petersburg by Stellowsky.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-04-01,Sidsel Karlsen and Lauri Väkevä,Future Prospects for Music Education: Corroborating Informal Learning Pedagogy,Hardback,978-1-4438-3658-6,39.99,"Informal learning pedagogy has become a major topic within the international field of music education, due in no small part to Lucy Green’s groundbreaking research on popular musicians’ learning, as well as her subsequent efforts to turn her research findings into a pedagogy that can be implemented in comprehensive school music education. This has generated massive interest and attention among music education practitioners and scholars worldwide.

With experience of studying and working within higher music education in the Nordic countries, the editors of this anthology, Sidsel Karlsen and Lauri Väkevä, are well acquainted with popular music-related informal learning pedagogies, which have formed an important aspect of comprehensive school music education in the Nordic countries for more than two decades. With this familiarity also comes a wish to contribute to the critical examination and further development of existing practices, by corroborating informal learning pedagogy in popular music from different angles.

The introduction of this book explores different theoretical starting points for investigations of the formal-informal nexus. The following chapters, written by an international community of experienced music education scholars and practitioners, afford critical examinations of informal learning pedagogies from various perspectives, either theoretical or research-based. In the last chapter, Lucy Green paves the way for moving informal and aural learning into the traditional instrumental music lesson. Altogether, the anthology aims to explore some of the future prospects for music education with informal learning pedagogy as the focal point.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-05-01,Luciana Galliano,The Music of Jōji Yuasa,Hardback,978-1-4438-3763-7,39.99,"Over the last fifty years, the music of Jōji Yuasa has attained the zenith of international musical standards. A study of this great Japanese composer is long overdue. Persuasive and captivating, less “easy” than that of his lifetime friend Tōru Takemitsu, Yuasa’s music has also been a model for many young composers, both from Japan and further afield, thanks to the long period he spent teaching composition at the University of California, San Diego (1981–1994).

This book serves to illuminate aspects of Yuasa’s work, intricately linked to deep, native roots which tend to be more opaque for western (and other) ears. It focusses on various aspects of Yuasa’s music as well as on the social, anthropological, aesthetic and critical contexts that have informed his compositional practice in the context of the postwar Japanese musical world. In a continual interior dialogue which includes Jean-Paul Sartre and Daisetzu T. Suzuki, Matsuo Bashō and William Faulkner, Henry Miller and Motokiyo Zeami, Yuasa’s avant-garde aesthetic project, western in conception, encounters the productive thought of an unambiguously Japanese aesthetic, i.e. that of Zen.

An analysis of Yuasa’s main works will illustrate and complete the picture of Yuasa’s world. Yuasa’s works are placed at the centre of the most original of creative forces in the contemporary music world – a place where, for Yuasa, “in the same idea of creativity, there has to be an avant-garde component”.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-06-01,Edited and Introduced by Robert Ignatius Letellier,"French Romantic Ballets: Jean-Madeleine Schneitzhoeffer, La Sylphide Adolphe-Charles Adam, Giselle and Le Corsaire",Paperback,978-1-4438-3797-2,44.99,"This collection presents music from three of the most important scores of the Golden Age of ballet in Paris from 1830–1870. The Romantic ballet had been inaugurated by Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le Diable (21 November 1831) with its ghostly Ballet of the Nuns, risen from their graves and dancing in the moonlight, led by their spectral Abbess; a role created by Marie Taglioni (1804–1884) to her father’s choreography. La Sylphide (1832), inspired by this situation, was the first fully fledged Romantic ballet. Its graceful and atmospheric score was written by the first violinist at the Opéra, Jean Schneitzhoeffer. The story, devised by the great tenor Adolphe Nourrit, similarly introduces spirits and elemental beings, which dominated ballet scenarios for the following decades. Filippo Taglioni’s creation provided the fullest realization of the Romantic ideal, especially in the leading character of the story, and its perfect incarnation in the original interpreter, Marie Taglioni, whose stage personality seemed to be made for the part of the Sylphide. The ballet became the source of theatrically romantic fantasies centred around the hopeless and fatal love between a human being and a supernatural creature. It was performed in Paris until 1860, when the work was abandoned. Only in the late 20th century was Taglioni’s original version revived in a literal reconstruction by Pierre Lacotte at the Paris Opéra on 7 June 1972.

Giselle is a central work in the ballet repertory all over the world. It is regarded as the absolute masterpiece of Romantic dance theatre; a wonderful synthesis of style, technique, and dramatic feeling, with an exceptional score. The ballet was devised in 1841 as a result of the collaboration of some of the major talents in literature, choreography and music in the Paris of the time. The author, critic and poet Théophile Gautier, overwhelmed by the art of the ballerina Carlotta Grisi (1819–1899), discovered what he felt would be the perfect theme for her while reading a translation of Heinrich Heine’s book on German legend and folklore, D’Allemagne. Here he found the legend of the wilis—maidens who die before their wedding day and who come out of their graves at night in bridal dress to dance until dawn. Should any man be caught in the wood while the wilis are about their rituals, he is doomed to dance on and on until he drops dead from exhaustion. The choreography was created by Jean Coralli and Jules Perrot. The first act is on a realistic level, with an evocation of a medieval rusticity and emotional-sentimental intrigue, while the second act conjures up the supernatural, an ethereal world of magic symbolism. Both public and the critics greeted the work as a triumph. The score was praised for its “elegance, the freshness and clarity of the melodies, the vigour and novelty of the harmonic combinations, and the vivacity that pervades the musical texture from start to finish”. The ballet has come down the years in a more-or-less unbroken tradition. Perrot emphasized his own special creative imprint in the productions he supervised in London (1842) and St Petersburg (1856). In Russia he collaborated with Marius Petipa who made his own reconstruction of the ballet in 1884. This version became the model for all later revivals in Russia, as well as for Mikhail Fokine’s production for the Ballet Russes in Paris (1910).

Byron’s famous narrative poem The Corsair inspired several ballets, with Joseph Mazilier’s proving the most important (1856). Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges’s scenario was of a superior quality. Mazilier was maître de ballet at the Paris Opéra between 1853 and 1859, the years of his fullest creativity. The solo parts were infused with an intense dramatic expressiveness, and there was a splendid mise-en-scène. But the great success of the work was due primarily to the quality of the chief performers: the ballerina Carolina Rosati (1826–1905) and the mime Domenico Segarelli (1820–1860). The spectacular shipwreck finale was a sensational feat engineered by the chief mechanist of the Opéra, Victor Sacré, and his crowning glory. Adam’s score—consistently rich in melodic inspiration, engaging in the set dances, imaginative in the many extended mime sequences, and more richly symphonic than ever before in his work—reached a height of inspiration in this last music he ever wrote for the stage. Mazilier’s ballet gained a world-wide popularity, and became a favourite of the leading ballerinas for decades. Marius Petipa produced his own version in St Petersburg in 1868, with additional music by Cesare Pugni and Léo Delibes. In 1899 Petipa revived the ballet again, for the Maryinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, this time completely re-choreographing it for Pierina Legnani, with additional music by Riccardo Drigo. Performances in the USSR and contemporary Russia derive from this version. Drigo’s music for the spectacular pas de deux in act 2 is still performed all over the world as an independent piece.
",,Cambridge Scholars Publishing
2012-07-01,Andrew R. Brown,Sound Musicianship: Understanding the Crafts of Music,Hardback,978-1-4438-3912-9,44.99,,,Cambridge Scholars Publishing