Bibliograph

The impossible art, adventures in opera, Matthew Aucoin

Type

Label

The impossible art, adventures in opera, Matthew Aucoin

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-292)

Illustrations

music

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

The impossible art

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

1259293962

Responsibility statement

Matthew Aucoin

Sub title

adventures in opera

Summary

"From its beginning, opera has been an impossible art. Its first practitioners, in seventeenth-century Florence, set themselves the unreachable goal of reproducing the wonders of ancient Greek drama, which no one can be sure was sung in the first place. Opera's greatest artists have striven to fuse multiple art forms--music, drama, poetry, dance--into a unified synesthetic experience. The composer Matthew Aucoin posits that it is this impossibility that gives opera its exceptional power and serves as its lifeblood. The virtuosity required of its performers, the bizarre and often spectacular nature of its stage productions, the creation of a whole world whose basic fabric is music--opera assumes its true form when it pursues impossible goals. The Impossible Art is a passionate defense of what is best about opera, a love letter to the form, written in the midst of a global pandemic during which operatic performance was (literally) impossible. Aucoin writes of the rare works--ranging from classics by Mozart and Verdi to contemporary offerings of Thomas Ades and Chaya Czernowin--that capture something essential about human experience. He illuminates the symbiotic relationship between composers and librettists, between opera's greatest figures and those of literature. Aucoin also tells the story of his new opera, Eurydice, from its inception to its production on the Metropolitan Opera's iconic stage. The Impossible Art opens the theater door and invites the reader into this extraordinary world.", Provided by publisher

Table Of Contents

A Field Guide to the Impossible -- Primal Loss : Orpheus and Eurydice in Opera -- The Firewood and the Fire : Words, Music, and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress -- Verdi's Shakespeare Operas : MacBeth, Otello, Falstaff -- Walt Whitman's Impossible Optimism -- Inner Rooms : Two Recent Impossibilities -- Finding Eurydice -- Music as Forgiveness : Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro

Target audience

adult

resource.variantTitle

Adventures in opera

Classification