Een politiek-satirische opera over kapitalismeAufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny is een van deweerspannigste opera's van de 20ste eeuw. Het stuk haalt snoeihard uit naar deuitwassen van het ...kapitalisme, op een manier die ook vandaag nog pijn doet. Maar niet alleen de maatschappij wordt in dit parabelachtige stuk in vraaggesteld, ook de opera zelf. Hoe verdedigbaar was die kunstvorm eigenlijk nog inhet tumult van de wilde jaren twintig, waarin Duitsland zo wanhopig probeerdeeen democratie op poten te zetten? Wat is de plaats van kunst in zo'n beladenen problematisch politiek experiment: genot verschaffen of toch eerder eengeweten schoppen? En wat betekent dit uiteindelijk voor onze hedendaagse omgangmet het genre? Opera, anti-opera, of beide - dat is de kwestie!In samenwerking met Opera Ballet Vlaanderen
The music of Gustav Mahler repeatedly engages with Romantic notions of redemption. This is expressed in a range of gestures and procedures, shifting between affirmative fulfilment and pessimistic ...negation. In this groundbreaking study, Stephen Downes explores the relationship of this aspect of Mahler's music to the output of Benjamin Britten, Kurt Weill and Hans Werner Henze. Their initial admiration was notably dissonant with the prevailing Zeitgeist – Britten in 1930s England, Weill in 1920s Germany and Henze in 1950s Germany and Italy. Downes argues that Mahler's music struck a profound chord with them because of the powerful manner in which it raises and intensifies dystopian and utopian complexes and probes the question of fulfilment or redemption, an ambition manifest in ambiguous tonal, temporal and formal processes. Comparisons of the ways in which this topic is evoked facilitate new interpretative insights into the music of these four major composers.
In the first musicological study of Kurt Weill's complete stage works, Stephen Hinton charts the full range of theatrical achievements by one of twentieth-century musical theater's key figures. ...Hinton shows how Weill's experiments with a range of genres—from one-act operas and plays with music to Broadway musicals and film-opera—became an indispensable part of the reforms he promoted during his brief but intense career. Confronting the divisive notion of "two Weills"—one European, the other American—Hinton adopts a broad and inclusive perspective, establishing criteria that allow aspects of continuity to emerge, particularly in matters of dramaturgy. Tracing his extraordinary journey as a composer, the book shows how Weill's artistic ambitions led to his working with a remarkably heterogeneous collection of authors, such as Georg Kaiser, Bertolt Brecht, Moss Hart, Alan Jay Lerner, and Maxwell Anderson.
Drawing on a wealth of texts and thinkers, the book shows the distinctive nature of sonic cultures in modernity. Arguing that these cultures are not reducible to sound alone, the book further shows ...that these encompass representations of sound in 'other' media: especially literature; but also, cinema and painting. Figures discussed include canonical writers such as Joyce, Richardson, and Woolf; relatively neglected writers such as Henry Roth and Bryher; and a whole host of musicians, artists, and other commentators, including Wagner, Schoenberg, Kandinsky, Adorno, and Benjamin. Conceptually as well as topically diverse, the book engages issues such as city noise and 'foreign' accents, representations of sound in 'silent' cinema, the relationship of music to language, and the effects of technology on sonic production and reception.
This paper suggests that inequality in the distribution of landownership adversely affected the emergence of human-capital promoting institutions (e.g. public schooling), and thus the pace and the ...nature of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy, contributing to the emergence of the great divergence in income per capita across countries. The prediction of the theory regarding the adverse effect of the concentration of landownership on education expenditure is established empirically based on evidence from the beginning of the 20th century in the U.S.
Summary
In the nineteenth century, the British government at home and in the empire promoted the development of public health systems to contain epidemic diseases. By the early twentieth century, the ...government turned its focus increasingly to children’s physical fitness and, in turn, society’s capacity for both labour and military power. Given the role that women played in reproducing the nation’s prospective power, women were perceived to need intervention not only for their own sake but also for the well-being of the nation’s next generation. This essay considers the historical moment when government officials, social reformers and physicians realised that they needed mothers to live for their nations and states to survive. After reviewing discourses shared by social reformers and government officials in Bombay and Manchester, the essay considers the records of St. Mary’s Hospital and the Nowrosjee Wadia Maternity Hospital to explore the role of physicians in the medicalisation of maternal mortality.
This is an analytical monograph by a Schenkerian music theorist, but it is also written by one performer and enthusiast for another. Tonality as Drama draws on the fields of dramaturgy, music theory, ...and historical musicology to answer a fundamental question regarding twentieth-century music: why does the use of tonality persist in opera, even after it has been abandoned in other genres? Combining the analytical approaches of the leading music and dramatic theorists of the twentieth century— Austrian music theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) and Russian director Constantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938)— Edward D. Latham reveals insights into works by Scott Joplin, George Gershwin, Kurt Weill, and Aaron Copland that are relevant to analysts, opera directors, and performers alike. Latham reveals a strategic use of tonality in that repertoire as a means of amplifying or undercutting the success or failure of dramatic characters.
Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti created a stepping stone towards his own brand of serious but accessible music theater. While he dedicated the opera in seven scenes to Marc Blitzstein, that ...path was paved by the formal innovations of Kurt Weill. A comparative analysis of Trouble in Tahiti with Lady in the Dark reveals that Bernstein derived essential impulses from Weill's musical play, although the few statements he made about his music indicate ambivalence and competition, particularly with regard to Weill's American works. As Bernstein's female protagonist, Dinah, struggles to define herself vis-à-vis the institution of marriage, the themes of psychoanalysis, Hollywood glamour and the use of song as a meta-dramatic topic emerge as common threads. Select harmonies, instrumentation and rhythmic devices further evince debts to the precursor of Weill. But while Liza of Lady in the Dark finds her musical cure, Dinah does not meet with personal fulfilment.
Operas are written by social individuals having absorbed the norms of the society they live in. By working on a libretto, composers not only show their interest in a certain topic but also reflect ...the concerns of their time. During the first half of the 20th century a discussion about the traditional norms of gender and sexuality evolved in the West. Are the compositions of the composers, designated as the “moderns”, influenced by this discussion? The analysis of four representative librettos of this time gives, above all, an insight into the open-mind of some composers for liberal ideas. Additionally, the analysis also demonstrates how the creation of opera is influenced by the different ways of thinking of the time in the European societies. Modern opera both reflects the fear of a social progress in favour of women and homosexuals as well as the hope of establishing a liberal society.
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