Morality and Viennese opera in the age of Mozart and Beethoven / Martin Nedbal.

Author
Nedbal, Martin [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY ; Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2017.
  • ©2017
Description
xvi, 243 pages : music 24 cm.

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Mendel Music Library - Stacks ML1723.8.V6 N4 2017 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Series
    Ashgate interdisciplinary studies in opera [More in this series]
    Summary note
    This book explores how the Enlightenment aesthetics of theater as a moral institution influenced cultural politics and operatic developments in Vienna between the mid-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moralistic viewpoints were particularly important in eighteenth-century debates about German national theater. In Vienna, the idea that vernacular theater should cultivate the moral sensibilities of its German-speaking audiences became prominent during the reign of Empress Maria Theresa, when advocates of German plays and operas attempted to deflect the imperial government from supporting exclusively French and Italian theatrical performances. Morality continued to be a dominant aspect of Viennese operatic culture in the following decades, as critics, state officials, librettists, and composers (including Gluck, Mozart, and Beethoven) attempted to establish and define German national opera. Viennese concepts of operatic didacticism and national identity in theater further transformed in response to the crisis of Emperor Joseph II's reform movement, the revolutionary ideas spreading from France, and the war efforts in facing Napoleonic aggression. The imperial government promoted good morals in theatrical performances through the institution of theater censorship, and German-opera authors cultivated intensely didactic works (such as Die Zauberflöte and Fidelio) that eventually became the cornerstones for later developments of German culture [Publisher description]
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    Contents
    • Cultivating the court and the nation in Gluck's La rencontre imprévue
    • Die Entführung aus dem Serail and the didactic aesthetics of the national Singspiel
    • Morality and Germanness in Die Zauberflöte
    • Die Zauberflöte and subversive morality in suburban operas
    • The politics of morality at the court theater in the late 1790s
    • How German is Fidelio? Didacticism in Beethovenian operas.
    ISBN
    • 9781472476579 (hardback : alkaline paper)
    • 1472476573
    LCCN
    2016005214
    OCLC
    940342234
    Statement on language in description
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