Tosca's Rome: The Play and the Opera in Historical Perspective

Přední strana obálky
University of Chicago Press, 15. 1. 2002 - Počet stran: 365
A timeless tale of love, lust, and politics, Tosca is one of the most popular operas ever written. In Tosca's Rome, Susan Vandiver Nicassio explores the surprising historical realities that lie behind Giacomo Puccini's opera and the play by Victorien Sardou on which it is based.

By far the most "historical" opera in the active repertoire, Tosca is set in a very specific time and place: Rome, from June 17 to 18, 1800. But as Nicassio demonstrates, history in Tosca is distorted by nationalism and by the vehement anticlerical perceptions of papal Rome shared by Sardou, Puccini, and the librettists. To provide the historical background necessary for understanding Tosca, Nicassio takes a detailed look at Rome in 1800 as each of Tosca's main characters would have seen it—the painter Cavaradossi, the singer Tosca, and the policeman Scarpia. Finally, she provides a scene-by-scene musical and dramatic analysis of the opera.

"[Nicassio] must be the only living historian who can boast that she once sang the role of Tosca. Her deep knowledge of Puccini's score is only to be expected, but her understanding of daily and political life in Rome at the close of the 18th century is an unanticipated pleasure. She has steeped herself in the period and its prevailing culture-literary, artistic, and musical-and has come up with an unusual, and unusually entertaining, history."—Paul Bailey, Daily Telegraph

"In Tosca's Rome, Susan Vandiver Nicassio . . . orchestrates a wealth of detail without losing view of the opera and its pleasures. . . . Nicassio aims for opera fans and for historians: she may well enthrall both."—Publishers Weekly

"This is the book that ranks highest in my estimation as the most in-depth, and yet highly entertaining, journey into the story of the making of Tosca."—Catherine Malfitano

"Nicassio's prose . . . is lively and approachable. There is plenty here to intrigue everyone-seasoned opera lovers, musical novices, history buffs, and Italophiles."—Library Journal

 

Obsah

Historictopographicopanoramic Inexactitudes
11
Sede Vacante Rome without a Pope
27
The Painters Rome
48
The Singers Rome
77
The Policemans Rome
101
Act One
123
EntrActe
169
Act Two
180
Act Three
221
Sardous La Tosca and Puccinis Tosca Plots and Parallels
257
1869 working papers for Tosca
266
Notes
275
Bibliography
313
Index
331
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Oblíbené pasáže

Strana 319 - Duppa, Richard. A Journal of the most remarkable occurrences that took place in Rome, upon the subversion of the ecclesiastical government, in 1798.

O autorovi (2002)

Susan Vandiver Nicassio is professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She is the author of many books, including Tosca's Rome, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Bibliografické údaje