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Article Excerpt
Edited by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli. Translations by Kate Singleton. (The History of Italian Opera, Part 2. Systems. Vol. 5.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. [xii 346 p. ISBN 0-226-04591-9. $55.] Illustrations, bibliographies, indexes.
By 1700 critics of Italian opera had begun to identify the aesthetic difficulties posed by opera as a dramatic event. Opera was not only a poetic text set to music; it had also become a complex system of visual symbols that involved spectacular elements, including the construction of a theatrical space, the use of set design, and the coordination of theatrical acting and ballet. Opera on Stage, the English translation of La spettacolarita (volume 5 in the series Storia dell'opera Italiana, published in 1988 by Edizioni di Torino), explores from an historical point of view three different aspects of staging and spectacle: (1) the evolution of Italian stage design (contributed by Mercedes Viale Ferrero); (2) the role of the director in opera (Gerardo Guccini); and (3) the connection between Italian opera and ballet (Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell). This volume (the second in the series presented in English by the University of Chicago Press) exposes a larger readership to another dimension of Italian opera, specifically the often neglected visual elements of musical drama.
Opera on Stage is divided into three large chapters, each including a rich...
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