Meyerbeers 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 story centres on the ...vow the ancient Israelite Judge made to God in return for victory over the enemy: "If thou wilt give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes forth from the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious . . . I will offer him up for a burnt offering". The first person he was fatefull.
Thus far, the success of soap operas in peacebuilding and their contribution to social change have been attributed to the edutainment format they usually take. The edutainment format is indeed an ...essential element of success, but it alone does not reveal the basis for soap operas’ influence on audiences and societies. We therefore argue that for soap operas to have a transformative peacebuilding effect, to contribute to the learning of non-violent engagement with conflict and thereby to enable social change and resilience to violent conflict within societies, they need to do more than educate and entertain: they need to acquire moral authority. This moral authority can only be derived from the combination of two elements: first, edutainment and second, civil norm building. The second element, though indispensable, has thus far not formed part of our understanding of the success of soap operas. To illustrate our argument, we take the soap opera Team Kenya which was created following the 2007–2008 post-election violence to help Kenyans overcome their ethnic-tribal identity conflicts in non-violent ways as a case study.
The tonadilla, a type of satiric musical skit popular on the public stages of Madrid during the late Enlightenment, has played a significant role in the history of music in Spain. This book, the ...first major study of the tonadilla in English, examines the musical, theatrical, and social worlds that the tonadilla brought together and traces the lasting influence this genre has had on the historiography of Spanish music. The tonadillas' careful constructions of musical populism provide a window onto the tensions among Enlightenment modernity, folkloric nationalism, and the politics of representation; their diverse, engaging, and cosmopolitan music is an invitation to reexamine tired old ideas of musical "Spanishness." Perhaps most radically of all, their satirical stance urges us to embrace the labile, paratextual nature of comic performance as central to the construction of history.
John Deathridge presents a different and critical view of Richard Wagner based on recent research that does not shy away from some unpalatable truths about this most controversial of composers in the ...canon of Western music. Deathridge writes authoritatively on what Wagner did, said, and wrote, drawing from abundant material already well known but also from less familiar sources, including hitherto seldom discussed letters and diaries and previously unpublished musical sketches. At the same time, Deathridge suggests that a true estimation of Wagner does not lie in an all too easy condemnation of his many provocative actions and ideas. Rather, it is to be found in the questions about the modern world and our place in it posed by the best of his stage works, among them Tristan und Isolde and Der Ring des Nibelungen. Controversy about Wagner is unlikely to go away, but rather than taking the line of least resistance by regarding him blandly as a "classic" in the Western art tradition, Deathridge suggests that we need to confront the debates that have raged about him and reach beyond them, toward a fresh and engaging assessment of what he ultimately achieved.
_x000B_This book explores the life and works of the pioneering opera composer Robert Ashley, one of the leading American composers of the post-Cage generation. Ashley's innovations began in the 1960s ...when he, along with Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and David Behrman, formed the Sonic Arts Union, a group that turned conceptualism toward electronics. He was also instrumental in the influential ONCE Group, a theatrical ensemble that toured extensively in the 1960s. During his tenure as its director, the ONCE Festival in Ann Arbor presented most of the decade's pioneers of the performing arts. Particularly known for his development of television operas beginning with Perfect Lives, Ashley spun a long series of similar text/music works, sometimes termed "performance novels." These massive pieces have been compared with Wagner's Ring Cycle for the vastness of their vision, though the materials are completely different, often incorporating noise backgrounds, vernacular music, and highly structured, even serialized, musical structures. _x000B__x000B_Drawing on extensive research into Ashley's early years in Ann Arbor and interviews with Ashley and his collaborators, Kyle Gann chronicles the life and work of this musical innovator and provides an overview of the avant-garde milieu of the 1960s and 1970s to which he was so central. Gann examines all nine of Ashley's major operas to date in detail, along with many minor works, revealing the fanatical structures that underlie Ashley's music as well as private references hidden in his opera librettos._x000B_
There is a perception that soap operas are progressively infusing dominant social values and ideas while constructing and positioning indigenous cultures as peripheral and inconsistent with ...modernity. This article aims at ascertaining audience perceptions of and attitudes toward the construction and representation of indigenous cultures in Generations: The Legacy within the framework of indigeneity and audience reception theories. Using quantitative methodology, 350 questionnaires were distributed to a randomly selected sample. Findings showed the majority of the audience felt the soap represents indigenous cultures as the ‘insignificant other’ and perpetuates stereotypes about traditional indigenous groups. This process creates cultural tensions.
The emergence of Chinese opera animation allows a wider audience, especially a younger audience, to access and embrace the art of opera heritage. This study used a two-way mixed-design ANOVA to ...explore the effect of Chinese opera animation on schoolchildren's viewing motivation; the independent variables were the children's grade level and the opera genre of the animation. Grade level was divided into three groups: lower, middle, and upper (grades 2, 4, and 6, respectively). Opera genre consisted of Peking, Yue, and Henan opera. The dependent variable, viewing motivation, comprised six dimensions: entertainment and relaxation, learning knowledge, escapist pastime, aesthetic appreciation, empathic identification, and socializing and sharing. After statistically analyzing the evaluations of 457 participants, the results showed the following: (1) Peking and Yue opera animation had a better entertainment and relaxation effect on the lower and middle groups. Henan opera had a better escapist pastime effect on the upper group but less effect on the lower group. (2) In terms of learning knowledge, empathic identification, aesthetic appreciation, and overall performance, Yue and Henan opera animations were more effective for enhancing viewing motivation compared with Peking opera animation. (3) The middle and lower groups showed higher viewing motivation than the upper group in the learning knowledge, empathic identification, and socializing and sharing dimensions. Overall, grades 2 and 4 were appropriate stages for schoolchildren to engage with opera animation. Our findings can provide a reference for promoting cultural heritage sustainability and support follow-up research on integrating opera animation into children's education.
El objetivo de este artículo es realizar una lectura en clave biopolítica de tres filmes costarricenses centrados en el tema del embarazo: Gestación de Esteban Ramírez (2009), Aurora de Paz Fábrega ...(2021) y Medea de Alexandra Latishev (2017). A nivel metodológico, el texto no se agota en una puesta en relación de la literatura y el lenguaje biopolíticos con esas tres ficciones audiovisuales, sino que busca ver en estas un fondo contra el cual interpretar las operaciones biopolíticas que la cultura opera sobre los cuerpos gestantes. Como resultado de este esfuerzo interpretativo, el artículo enseña la manera en que en las tres películas el embarazo aparece inscrito dentro de escenarios biopolíticos, pero también el modo en que las tres ficciones se posicionan narrativamente en relación con dichos escenarios, ya sea comulgando con las normas que el biopoder pone en marcha para regular la sexualidad de las mujeres o bien desdiciendo dichas normas.
