Handel's Bestiary
Author | : Donna Leon |
Publisher | : Open Road + Grove/Atlantic |
Total Pages | : 236 |
Release | : 2011-04-05 |
Genre | : Music |
ISBN | : 0802194907 |
A “real tour de force” exploring the mythic history of animals in Handel’s operas complete with illustrations and audio recordings of the composer’s arias (News—Austria). When New York Times–bestselling novelist Donna Leon isn’t writing her Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries, she often listens to her favorite composer, George Frideric Handel. Leon noticed that Handel frequently references animals in his music. In his arias, Handel explores the perceived virtues and vices of the lion, bee, nightingale, snake, elephant, and tiger, among others. With this in mind, Leon combined her knowledge of medieval bestiaries—illustrated collections of animal stories—with her love of Handel. In Handel’s Bestiary, Leon traces twelve animals through history, mythology, and Handel’s arias. Each chapter is joined by original illustrations by German painter Michael Sowa. And in this enhanced edition, music is included from conductor Alan Curtis and his orchestra, Il Complesso Barocco.
A Poetics of Handel's Operas
Author | : Nathan Link |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : 393 |
Release | : 2023 |
Genre | : Opera |
ISBN | : 0197651348 |
"A Poetics of Handel's Operas investigates the rich representational fabric of Handel's stories, drawing upon musicology, narratology, drama, and film in offering a study with appeal to scholars, producers and performers, opera afficionados, and anyone fascinated by storytelling. In most storytelling genres, we often distinguish between the story, on the one hand, and the way that story is represented, on the other, without a second thought. We know that a character in a film hears neither her own voice-over nor the ambient music that accompanies it, and that she does not really build a house from the ground up in the three minutes spanned by the cinematic montage that depict its construction. In opera, however, many commentators to this day characterize the medium as "unrealistic," since we know, for example, that people in the real world do not sing to each other, nor does orchestral music accompany their utterances. This said, the vocal and orchestral music, while not literally present in the world of the story surely have a great deal to tell us about the opera's story and its characters, and if we distinguish the performance we see and hear on the stage and in the orchestra pit from the story represented, we enable ourselves to construct stories that are no less coherent than those conveyed by other media. By avoiding conflation of the story and its representation, we enable ourselves to engage more meaningfully with the significance of these and many other unique aspects of operatic storytelling"--
Dance in Handel's London Operas
Author | : Sarah Yuill McCleave |
Publisher | : University Rochester Press |
Total Pages | : 282 |
Release | : 2013 |
Genre | : Music |
ISBN | : 1580464203 |
Examines the pivotal role of dance in the Italian operas of Handel, perhaps the greatest opera composer between Monteverdi and Mozart. George Frideric Handel set himself apart from his contemporaries by employing choreographed instrumental music to complement and reinforce the emotional impact of his operas. Of his fifty-three operas, no fewer than fourteen -- including ten written for the London stage -- feature dances. Dance in Handel's London Operas explores the relationship between music, drama, and dance in these London works, dispelling the notion that dance was a largely peripheral element in Italian-language operas prior to those of Gluck. Taking a chronological approach, Sarah McCleave examines operas written throughout various periods in Handel's life, beginning with his early London operas, including his time at the Royal Music Academy and the "Sallé" operas of the 1730s, and concluding with his unstaged dramatic opera Alceste (1750). In considering the various influences on Handel (particularly the London stage), McCleave blends analysis of information from eighteenth-century treatises with that found in more modern studies, offering an informed and imaginative understanding of the role dance played in the work of this major figure --one who remained responsive throughout his career to the vital and innovative theatrical environment in which he worked. Sarah McCleave is a lecturer at The School of Creative Arts at Queen's University Belfast.
George Frideric Handel
Author | : Paul Henry Lang |
Publisher | : Courier Corporation |
Total Pages | : 794 |
Release | : 2012-04-30 |
Genre | : Music |
ISBN | : 0486144593 |
Exceptionally full, detailed study of the man, his music and times. Childhood, music training, years in London; analysis of Messiah and other works; much more. Introduction. Includes 35 illustrations.
Essays on Handel and Italian Opera
Author | : Reinhard Strohm |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 322 |
Release | : 2008-10-30 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 9780521088350 |
Reinhard Strohm examines the relationship between Handel's great operas and the earlier European Baroque tradition.
Handel's Operas, 1704-1726
Author | : Winton Dean |
Publisher | : Boydell Press |
Total Pages | : 771 |
Release | : 2009 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 9781843835257 |
The first volume of this monumental study of Handel's operatic works, covering the first seventeen operas.
Handel in London
Author | : Jane Glover |
Publisher | : Simon and Schuster |
Total Pages | : 391 |
Release | : 2018-12-04 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 1681779471 |
In 1712, a young German composer followed his princely master to London and would remain there for the rest of his life. That master would become King George II and the composer was George Freidrich Handel. Handel, then still only twenty-seven and largely self-taught, would be at the heart of music activity in London for the next four decades, composing masterpiece after masterpiece, whether the glorious coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, operas such as Rinaldo and Alcina or the great oratorios, culminating, of course, in Messiah. Here, Jane Glover, who has conducted Handel’s work in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, draws on her profound understanding of music and musicians to tell Handel’s story. It is a story of music-making and musicianship, but also of courts and cabals of theatrical rivalries and of eighteenth-century society. It is also, of course the story of some of the most remarkable music ever written, music that has been played and sung, and loved, in this country—and throughout the world—for three hundred years.
The Librettos of Handel's Operas
Author | : George Frideric Handel |
Publisher | : Garland Publishing |
Total Pages | : 416 |
Release | : 1989 |
Genre | : Music |
ISBN | : |