Waiting for Verdi: Opera and Political Opinion in Nineteenth-Century Italy, 1815-1848

Mary Ann Smart

Published by University of California Press 2018

Waiting for Verdi

Opera and Political Opinion in Nineteenth-Century Italy, 1815-1848

Mary Ann Smart

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520966574

Overview
Contents

About this book

The name Giuseppe Verdi conjures images of Italians singing opera in the streets and bursting into song at political protests or when facing the firing squad. While many of the accompanying stories were exaggerated, or even invented, by later generations, Verdi's operas—along with those by Rossini, Donizetti, and Mercadante—did inspire Italians to imagine Italy as an independent and unified nation. Capturing what it was like to attend the opera or to join in the music at an aristocratic salon, Waiting for Verdi shows that the moral dilemmas, emotional reactions, and journalistic polemics sparked by these performances set new horizons for what Italians could think, feel, say, and write. Among the lessons taught by this music were that rules enforced by artistic tradition could be broken, that opera could jolt spectators into intense feeling even as it educated them, and that Italy could be in the vanguard of stylistic and technical innovation rather than clinging to the glories of centuries past. More practically, theatrical performances showed audiences that political change really was possible, making the newly engaged spectator in the opera house into an actor on the political stage.

Author / Editor information

Smart Mary Ann :

Mary Ann Smart is Gladyce Arata Terrill Professor in the Department of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera and editor of Siren Songs: Representations of Gender and Sexuality in Opera.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
1. Risorgimento Fantasies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Accidental Affinities: Gioachino Rossini and Salvatore Viganò Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
3. Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart, and the Limits of Allegory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
4. Reading Mazzini’s “Filosofia della musica” with Byron and Donizetti Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	102
5. Parlor Games Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
6. Progress, Piety, and Plagiarism: Verdi’s I Lombardi at La Scala Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 266

eBook

Published: June 22, 2018
ISBN: 9780520966574