In this book; Emily Wilbourne boldly traces the roots of early opera back to the sounds of the commedia dellrsquo;arte. Along the way; she forges a new history of Italian opera; from the court pieces of the early seventeenth century to the public stages of Venice more than fifty years later.Wilbourne considers a series of case studies structured around the most important and widely explored operas of the period: Monteverdirsquo;s lost Lrsquo;Arianna; as well as his Il Ritorno drsquo;Ulisse and Lrsquo;incoronazione di Poppea; Mazzochi and Marazzolirsquo;s Lrsquo;Egisto; ovvero Chi soffre speri; and Cavallirsquo;s Lrsquo;Ormindo and Lrsquo;Artemisia. As she demonstrates; the sound-in-performance aspect of commedia dellrsquo;arte theatermdash;specifically; the use of dialect and verbal playmdash;produced an audience that was accustomed to listening to sonic content rather than simply the literal meaning of spoken words. This; Wilbourne suggests; shaped the musical vocabularies of early opera and facilitated a musicalization of Italian theater.Highlighting productive ties between the two worlds; from the audiences and venues to the actors and singers; this work brilliantly shows how the sound of commedia performance ultimately underwrote the success of opera as a genre.
2016-12-05 2016-12-05File Name: B01N2QLI9N
Review
