Orfeo

The author of the National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Echo Maker, Richard Powers “may well be one of the smartest novelists now writing” (LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW) Seventy-year-old avant-garde composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home DIY microbiology lab--the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to extract music from rich patterns beyond the ear’s ability to hear--has come to the attention of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid on his house, Els turns fugitive, waiting for the evidence to clear him and for the alarm surrounding his activities to blow over. His days in hiding provoke memories of a turbulent century of musical turf wars and cause Els to reflect on a life spent chasing after transcendent sounds to the bewilderment of an indifferent public. As the national hysteria for safety erupts again in the face of this latest threat, Els--the “Bioterrorist Bach”--feeling the noose around him tighten, embarks on a cross-country trip to visit the people in his past who have most shaped his failed musical journey. Through the help of these people--his ex-wife, his daughter and his long-time artistic collaborator-- Els comes up with a plan to turn this disastrous collision with the security state into one last, resonant artwork that might reach an audience beyond his wildest dreams. Inspired by Steve Kurtz, the bio-artist wrongly arrested for terrorism by the FBI, Orfeo probes the boundary between stifling safety and reckless, releasing danger. It explores the varieties of human hunger, in particular the desire to hear more and to make meaning where there is none. Finally, the book is a meditation on that most endangered and priceless of human resources: attention.

A detailed study of the earliest opera in the modern repertoire.

A comprehensive opera-guide, featuring Principal Characters in the Opera, Brief Story Synopsis, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples, and Burton D. Fisher's insightful and in depth Commentary and Analysis.

This book introduces a new perspective on Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607), a work widely regarded as the 'first great opera', by exploring the influence of the Mantuan Accademia deglia Invaghiti, the group which hosted the opera’s performance, and to which the libretto author, Alessandro Striggio the Younger, belonged. Arguing that the Invaghiti played a key role in shaping the development of Orfeo, the author explores the philosophical underpinnings of the Invaghiti and Italian academies of the era. Drawing on new primary sources, he shows how the Invaghiti’s ideas about literature, dramaturgy, music, gender, and aesthetics were engaged and contested in the creation and staging of Orfeo. Relevant to researchers of music history, performance, and Renaissance and Baroque Italy, this study sheds new light on Monteverdi’s opera as an intellectual and philosophical work.

Hans-Jrgen Greifs novel calls forth, with the impetuous elegance of a baroque opera, the power of the human voice to stir our souls. It places the reader under the spell of a mythical voicea castrato of our time.Lennart Teufel, a young man with a beautiful voice and great musical talent, is mutilated and orphaned in an automobile accident. Having recognized the boys potential, a demanding and brilliant Italian teacher takes him under her protection, shields him from the outside world, trains him and recreates what the musical world had lost long agoan irresistible, overwhelming voice to which nobody can resist. At the teacher's death, a former student of hers, now a renowned music critic, takes charge of the singer who has chosen a stage name bearing grave consequences, Orfeo. On his path to celebrity, he unleashes passions he cannot control, endangering his life.Set in modern Germany, Hans-Jrgen Greif's novel communicates the power of the Italian castrati. He revives their exceptional performances and their hypnotic power over audiences. At the same time, the novel opens up questions of androgyny and human identity.

A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour.