Encyclopedia Of Opera On Screen

“This wondrous encyclopedia is an invaluable boon to all movie and opera buffs. I shall be referring to it frequently to slake my curiosity and to settle bets.”--Tom Lehrer This bountiful book is a comprehensive guide to the thousands of films, DVDs, and videocassettes featuring operas and opera singers from 1896 to the present. From ABC Television to Franco Zeffirelli, the encyclopedia is a storehouse of fascinating information for film and opera aficionados and casual browsers alike. Find answers to such questions as: * What were the first operas filmed? * Why did they make silent films of operas? * Why was a pseudo-opera written for Citizen Kane? * What was the title of Maria Callas’s only film? Organized alphabetically with more than 1,900 fully cross-referenced entries, the book casts a wide net that covers not only expected topics--operas, operettas, zarzuelas, composers, singers, conductors, writers, and film directors--but also the unexpected and offbeat--animated opera, first operas on film, puppet opera films, silent films about opera, and many other lesser-known topics. Encyclopedia of Opera on Screen illuminates the many intersections between opera and film as never before.

Opera has always been controversial, not only because of how vastly expensive it is to produce. It has historically been a vital and complex mixture of high art and commerce, socially elite and popular or middle-class, the new and the increasingly old. When a city wants a new landmark building, an opera house is very often the solution: why should this still be the case? The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon examines how opera has become the concrete edifice it was never meant to be, by looking at how it evolved from a market entirely driven by novelty to one of the most arthritically canonic art forms still in existence. This new collection addresses questions that are key to opera's past, present and future. Why is the art form apparently so arthritically canonical, with the top ten titles, all more than a century old, accounting for nearly a quarter of all performances world-wide? Why is this top-heavy system of production becoming still more restrictive, even while the repertory is seemingly expanding, notably to include early music? Why did the operatic canon evolve so differently from that of concert music? And why has that evolution attracted so comparatively little attention from scholars? Why, finally, if opera houses all over the world are dutifully honoring their audiences' loyalty to these favorite works, are they having to struggle so hard financially? Answers to these and other problems are offered here by 26 musicologists, historians, and industry professionals working in a wide range of contexts. Topics range from the seventeenth century to the present day, and from Russia to England and continental Europe to the Americas. In an effort to reflect the contested nature of most of the issues facing opera, each topic is addressed by two essays, introduced jointly by the respective authors, and followed by a jointly compiled list of further reading. These paired essays complement each other in different ways: for example, by treating the same geographical location in different periods, by providing different national or regional perspectives on the same period, or by thinking through similar conceptual issues in contrasting or changing contexts. Posing its questions in fresh, provocative terms, The Oxford Handbook of the Operatic Canon challenges scholarly assumptions and expectations, and breathes fresh air into the fields of music and cultural history.

More than 3,000 alphabetically arranged entries cover more than 700 operas, with information on composers, librettists, singers, conductors, plots, opera houses, stage designers, and other subjects.

This encyclopedia presents a wealth of information on early cinema history, with coverage of the techniques and equipment of film production, profiles of the pioneering directors and producers, analysis of individual films and the rapid growth of distinct film genres, and the emergence of something the world had never seen before - the movie star. The work also focuses on how the nature of film exhibition changed as the industry grew, and how the public's reception to films also changed. The pre-cinema period is closely examined to show those mass-cultural forms and practices - such as music hall and vaudeville - from within which cinema was to emerge. A perfect companion for any student of early cinema and film studies.

Opera can reveal something fundamental about a film, and film can do the same for an opera, argues Marcia J. Citron. Structured by the categories of Style, Subjectivity, and Desire, this volume advances our understanding of the aesthetics of the opera/film encounter. Case studies of a diverse array of important repertoire including mainstream film, opera-film, and postmodernist pastiche are presented. Citron uses Werner Wolf's theory of intermediality to probe the roles of opera and film when they combine. The book also refines and expands film-music functions, and details the impact of an opera's musical style on the meaning of a film. Drawing on cinematic traditions of Hollywood, France, and Britain, the study explores Coppola's Godfather trilogy, Jewison's Moonstruck, Nichols's Closer, Chabrol's La Cérémonie, Schlesinger's Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Boyd's Aria, and Ponnelle's opera-films.

Filmmakers' fascination with opera dates back to the silent era but it was not until the late 1980s that critical enquiries into the intersection of opera and cinema began to emerge. Jeongwon Joe focusses primarily on the role of opera as soundtrack by exploring the distinct effects opera produces in film, effects which differ from other types of soundtrack music, such as jazz or symphony. These effects are examined from three perspectives: peculiar qualities of the operatic voice; various properties commonly associated with opera, such as excess, otherness or death; and multifaceted tensions between opera and cinema - for instance, opera as live, embodied, high art and cinema as technologically mediated, popular entertainment. Joe argues that when opera excerpts are employed on soundtracks they tend to appear at critical moments of the film, usually associated with the protagonists, and the author explores why it is opera, not symphony or jazz, that accompanies poignant scenes like these. Joe's film analysis focuses on the time period of the post-1970s, which is distinguished by an increase of opera excerpts on soundtracks to blockbuster titles, the commercial recognition of which promoted the production of numerous opera soundtrack CDs in the following years. Joe incorporates an empirical methodology by examining primary sources such as production files, cue-sheets and unpublished interviews with film directors and composers to enhance the traditional hermeneutic approach. The films analysed in her book include Woody Allen’s Match Point, David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, and Wong Kar-wai’s 2046.

Although many opera dictionaries and encyclopedias are available, very few are devoted exclusively to operas in a single language. In this revised and expanded edition of Operas in English: A Dictionary, Margaret Ross Griffel brings up to date her original work on operas written specifically to an English text (including works both originally prepared in English, as well as English translations). Since its original publication in 1999, Griffel has added nearly 800 entries to the 4,300 from the original volume, covering the world of opera in the English language from 1634 through 2011. Listed alphabetically by letter, each opera entry includes alternative titles, if any; a full, descriptive title; the number of acts; the composer’s name; the librettist’s name, the original language of the libretto, and the original source of the text, with the source title; the date, place, and cast of the first performance; the date of composition, if it occurred substantially earlier than the premiere date; similar information for the first U.S. (including colonial) and British (i.e., in England, Scotland, or Wales) performances, where applicable; a brief plot summary; the main characters (names and vocal ranges, where known); some of the especially noteworthy numbers cited by name; comments on special musical problems, techniques, or other significant aspects; and other settings of the text, including non-English ones, and/or other operas involving the same story or characters (cross references are indicated by asterisks). Entries also include such information as first and critical editions of the score and libretto; a bibliography, ranging from scholarly studies to more informal journal articles and reviews; a discography; and information on video recordings. Griffel also includes four appendixes, a selective bibliography, and two indexes. The first appendix lists composers, their places and years of birth and death, and their operas included in the text as entries; the second does the same for librettists; the third records authors whose works inspired or were adapted for the librettos; and the fourth comprises a chronological listing of the A–Z entries, including as well as the date of first performance, the city of the premiere, the short title of the opera, and the composer. Griffel also include a main character index and an index of singers, conductors, producers, and other key figures.